Diatom Red Lists: important tools to assess and preserve biodiversity and habitats in the face of direct impacts and environmental change

Private nuisance is, on the face of it, an old-fashioned tort, whose agrarian, antidevelopmental roots may make its contemporary relevance seem limited. On the other hand, both nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher hold obvious attractions for litigants whose interests have suffered as a result of environmental change. The potential apotheosis of nuisance into a ‘Toxic Tort’ presents tort lawyers and environmental lawyers with a number of pressing questions concerning the nature and scope of private law in this context.This article will seek to assess in outline the positive potential of tort law in this respect, but it will also be argued that there may nevertheless be real conflicts between the law of tort and central elements of environmental law. The nature of those potential conflicts can only be understood if we clarify the form (or forms) of liability effected by relevant torts, and here the tort of nuisance poses particular problems. Once clarified, however, I would suggest that these conflicts can contribute to debates, not just about tort law, but also about the basic aspirations of environmental law and policy.

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Evolution and seed dormancy shape plant genotypic structure through a successional cycle

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.2026212118 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 118 (34) ◽

pp. e2026212118

Author(s):

Anurag A. Agrawal ◽

Amy P. Hastings ◽

John L. Maron

Keyword(s):

Genetic Diversity ◽

Life History ◽

Environmental Change ◽

Seed Dormancy ◽

Life History Traits ◽

Rapid Evolution ◽

Insect Herbivory ◽

Oenothera Biennis ◽

The Face ◽

The Impact

Dormancy has repeatedly evolved in plants, animals, and microbes and is hypothesized to facilitate persistence in the face of environmental change. Yet previous experiments have not tracked demography and trait evolution spanning a full successional cycle to ask whether early bouts of natural selection are later reinforced or erased during periods of population dormancy. In addition, it is unclear how well short-term measures of fitness predict long-term genotypic success for species with dormancy. Here, we address these issues using experimental field populations of the plant Oenothera biennis, which evolved over five generations in plots exposed to or protected from insect herbivory. While populations existed above ground, there was rapid evolution of defensive and life-history traits, but populations lost genetic diversity and crashed as succession proceeded. After >5 y of seed dormancy, we triggered germination from the seedbank and genotyped >3,000 colonizers. Resurrected populations showed restored genetic diversity that reduced earlier responses to selection and pushed population phenotypes toward the starting conditions of a decade earlier. Nonetheless, four defense and life-history traits remained differentiated in populations with insect suppression compared with controls. These findings capture key missing elements of evolution during ecological cycles and demonstrate the impact of dormancy on future evolutionary responses to environmental change.

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Patterns of parent and offspring gene expression reflect canalization, not plasticity, in response to environmental stress

10.1101/2021.12.14.472162 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jeanette B Moss ◽

Christopher B Cunningham ◽

Elizabeth C McKinney ◽

Allen J. Moore

Keyword(s):

Gene Expression ◽

Environmental Change ◽

Environmental Stress ◽

Behavioral Plasticity ◽

Transcriptional Response ◽

Transcriptional Responses ◽

Behavioral Stability ◽

The Face ◽

Transcriptional Changes ◽

Hostile Environments

Parenting buffers offspring from hostile environments, but it is not clear how or if the genes that underlie parenting change their expression under environmental stress. We recently demonstrated that for the subsocial carrion beetle, Nicrophorus orbicollis, temperature during parenting does not affect parenting phenotypes. Here, we ask if transcriptional changes associated with parenting are likewise robust to environmental stress. The absence of a transcriptional response for parenting under stress would suggest that the genetic programs for parenting and being parented are canalized. Conversely, a robust transcriptional response would suggest that plasticity of underlying gene expression is critical for maintaining behavioral stability, and that these mechanisms provide a potential target for selection in the face of environmental change. We test these alternatives by characterizing gene expression of parents and offspring with and without parent-offspring interactions under a benign and a stressful temperature. We found that parent-offspring interactions elicit distinct transcriptional responses of parents and larvae irrespective of temperature. We further detected robust changes of gene expression in beetles breeding at 24 degrees C compared to 20 degrees C irrespective of family interaction. However, no strong interaction between parent-offspring interaction and temperature was detected for either parents or larvae. We therefore conclude that canalization, not plasticity of gene expression, most likely explains the absence of behavioral plasticity under thermal stress. This result suggests that species may not have the genetic variation needed to respond to all environmental change, especially for complex phenotypes.

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Climate-human-environment interactions: resolving our past

Climate of the Past Discussions ◽

10.5194/cpd-2-563-2006 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 2 (4) ◽

pp. 563-604 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

J. A. Dearing

Keyword(s):

Environmental Change ◽

Global Climate ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Global Environmental Change ◽

Essential Element ◽

Simulation Models ◽

Human Society ◽

Human Environment ◽

Local Case ◽

The Face

Abstract. The paper reviews how we can learn from the past about climate-human-interactions at the present time, and in the future. It focuses on data sources for environmental change at local and regional/global spatial scales, and shows the scope and limitations of each. The use of parallel histories in local case-studies is described in a case-study from China, where independent records help unravel the complexity of interactions and provide a basis for assessing the resilience and sustainability of the landscape system. Holocene global records for Natural Forcings (e.g. climate and tectonics), Human Society and Ecosystems are reviewed, and the problems of reconstructing global records of processes that are only recorded at local scales examined. Existing regional/global records are used to speculate about the veracity of anthropogenic forcing of global climate. The paper concludes that a full understanding of causes of earth system change through (at least) the Holocene can come only through the most rigorous reconstructions of climate, human activities and earth processes, and importantly their interactions, at all locations and at all scales. It follows that we need to promote inter-scale learning: regionalisation and generalisation of existing data would be useful first steps. There is now a need to develop long-term simulation models that can help anticipate complex ecosystem behaviour and environmental processes in the face of global environmental change – and resolving our past is an essential element in that endeavour.

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Anthropocene Dynamics in the Prehistoric Pacific

Nature and Culture ◽

10.3167/nc.2019.140202 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 119-146

Author(s):

Thomas P. Leppard

Keyword(s):

Environmental Change ◽

Large Scale ◽

Physical Change ◽

Earth Systems ◽

The Earth ◽

The Face ◽

Land Surfaces ◽

Few Data ◽

Degree Of Heterogeneity

How will human societies evolve in the face of the massive changes humans themselves are driving in the earth systems? Currently, few data exist with which to address this question. I argue that archaeological datasets from islands provide useful models for understanding long-term socioecological responses to large-scale environmental change, by virtue of their longitudinal dimension and their relative insulation from broader biophysical systems. Reviewing how colonizing humans initiated biological and physical change in the insular Pacific, I show that varied adaptations to this dynamism caused diversification in social and subsistence systems. This diversification shows considerable path dependency related to the degree of heterogeneity/homogeneity in the distribution of food resources. This suggests that the extent to which the Anthropocene modifies agroeconomic land surfaces toward or away from patchiness will have profound sociopolitical implications.

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