An insight into the quality of sacred groves – an island habitat – using leaf-litter ants as an indicator in a context of urbanization

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
T.P. Rajesh ◽  
Anjana P. Unni ◽  
U. Prashanth Ballullaya ◽  
K. Manoj ◽  
Palatty Allesh Sinu
Keyword(s):  
Functional Groups ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Home Garden ◽  
Sacred Groves ◽  
Ant Community ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Leaf Litter Ants ◽  
Local Contribution ◽  
Island Habitat

Abstract Sacred groves (SGs) of India are islets of forests providing ecosystem and spiritual services to man. Studies suggest that SGs are deteriorating on their quality due to urbanization, invasive species, land-use change, and religious modernization. We explored diversity, community, and abundance of overall and different functional groups of litter ants, including Anoplolepis gracilipes – an invasive ant – on paired SG-neighbouring home garden (HG) sites in rural and urban landscape to (a) assess the quality of SGs and (b) examine whether the variation in ant community of the two habitats was predicted by urbanization and abundance of A. gracilipes. We considered species and local contribution to β-diversity to identify species and sites crucial for conservation of sites. Abundance and richness of overall ants, proportional trap incidence of species, and abundance of A. gracilipes were similar on SG and HG, but species diversity and abundance of certain ant functional groups were higher on SG. Ant community of SG was different from HG, but was not affected by urbanization. A. gracilipes and rural SGs contributed the most to β diversity. A. gracilipes gave little pressure on native ant community. The study concludes that SGs, despite invaded by A. gracilipes, have potential for conserving biodiversity.

scholarly journals Spatiotemporal effects on dung beetle activities in island forests-home garden matrix in a tropical village landscape

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Asha ◽  
K. Manoj ◽  
P. P. Megha ◽  
Palatty Allesh Sinu
Keyword(s):  
Species Composition ◽  
Functional Groups ◽  
Dung Beetle ◽  
Dung Beetles ◽  
Home Gardens ◽  
Home Garden ◽  
Sacred Groves ◽  
Open Habitat ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Closed Habitat

AbstractInsects in seasonal tropics experience a wide range of temperatures along seasons, habitats, and a day. Therefore, the thermal tolerance of the insects can be a major driver for their habitat preference, temporal patterns of activity, and formation of communities. We examined the dung beetle communities of eleven pairs of neighboring open (home gardens) and closed habitats (sacred groves) during dry and wet seasons and diel periods (day and night) to understand the dung beetle activities along a spatiotemporal gradient constituted by the sacred groves—home garden matrix on a tropical village landscape. We tested the following hypotheses: (i) closed habitats have greater activities of dung beetles over open habitats; (ii) the diurnal communities of dung beetles are different from the nocturnal communities; and (iii) the diurnal-nocturnal activities of dung beetles could be predicted by the habitat and season. We considered abundance, richness, total biomass, and Shannon diversity of overall beetles, abundance of different functional groups, and species composition in communities as the quantitative measures in the predictive statistical models. In total, 2727 dung beetles belonging to 38 species, ten genera, and three functional groups were collected. The open habitat supported more number of dung beetles (N = 2318) than the closed habitat (N = 409). The diurnal communities were different from nocturnal communities, particularly in open habitat, where the temperature was different between day and night. The dominant species of the diurnal communities of open habitat hardly used the closed habitat in any context including dry–wet seasons, but the nocturnal communities of the open habitat were closer to the communities of closed habitat. The diel period and habitat predicted the abundance activity of functional groups; season was a poor predictor of dung beetle activities. Given that the species composition has turned over across habitats, and the closed habitat supported remarkably lesser number of beetles than the open habitats, the closed habitat is unlikely to be a thermal refuge for the open habitat species in village landscapes that have island forests, such as sacred groves, and home gardens form a matrix.

Classroom Management

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 201
Author(s):  
Elida Kurti
Keyword(s):  
Classroom Management ◽  
General Education ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Intellectual Level

This paper aims to reflect an effort to identify the problems associated with the educational learning process, as well as its function to express some inherent considerations to the most effective forms of the classroom management. Mentioned in this discussion are ways of management for various categories of students, not only from an intellectual level, but also by their behavior. Also, in the elaboration of this theme I was considering that in addition to other development directions of the country, an important place is occupied by the education of the younger generation in our school environments and especially in adopting the methods of teaching and learning management with a view to enable this generation to be competitive in the European labor market. This, of course, can be achieved by giving this generation the best values of behavior, cultural level, professional level and ethics one of an European family which we belong to, not just geographically. On such foundations, we have tried to develop this study, always improving the reality of the prolonged transition in the field of children’s education. Likewise, we have considered the factors that have left their mark on the structure, cultural level and general education level of children, such as high demographic turnover associated with migration from rural and urban areas, in the capacity of our educational institutions to cope with new situations etc. In the conclusions of this study is shown that there is required a substantial reform even in the pro-university educational system to ensure a significant improvement in the behavior of children, relations between them and the sound quality of their preparation. Used literature for this purpose has not been lacking, due to the fact that such problems are usually treated by different scholars. Likewise, we found it appropriate to use the ideas and issues discussed by the foreign literature that deals directly with classroom management problems. All the following treatise is intended to reflect the way of an effective classroom management.

scholarly journals Changes in Water Quality of the River das Antas as It Passes through Rural and Urban Areas

Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Valdemir Antoneli ◽  
Manuel Pulido-Fernández ◽  
João Anésio Bednarz ◽  
Leonardo Brandes ◽  
Michael Vrahnakis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rural Area ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
Ph Values ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Feasible Option ◽  
Decreasing Ph ◽  
The City

The catchment area of River das Antas (Irati, Paraná, Brazil) is of high importance both for human consumption and irrigation. Within Irati, this river passes through a rural area and through the city of Irati, crossing both poor and rich neighbourhoods. We selected three study areas downstream (a rural area, poor community, and rich neighbourhood) in which we measured turbidity, the concentration of sediments and pH during rainy days. Our results showed downstream trends of increasing turbidity and concentrations of sediments with decreasing pH. The values of turbidity and of concentration of sediments were significantly different in the rural area, while the pH values were significantly different between the three study areas. These findings highlight the effect of agricultural activities in the generation of sediments and turbidity. The—presumably expected—effects of organic urban waste from the poor neighbourhood were also detected in the pH values. We conclude that efforts should be made to ensure that land planning and training/education programmes on sustainable farming practices are undertaken by the authorities to reduce water pollution and its effects on water bodies during rainfall events, since paving streets is not a feasible option in the short term due to the high costs associated with this measure.

Stakeholders’ perceptions of the quality of education in rural schools in Kazakhstan

2021 ◽  
pp. 136548022110310
Author(s):  
Mir Afzal Tajik ◽  
Duishon Shamatov ◽  
Lyudmila Fillipova
Keyword(s):  
Urban Schools ◽  
Rural Schools ◽  
Education System ◽  
School Leaders ◽  
Quality Of Education ◽  
Educational Provision ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Education Managers

Since its independence in 1991, Kazakhstan has initiated major reforms to upgrade its education system. However, significant disparities exist in the quality of educational provision in rural and urban schools. This study presents the stakeholders’ – school leaders, teachers, students, parents, and education managers – vision, priorities, and aspirations of quality of education, as well as the opportunities, resources, and support available to them, and the disparities and challenges they face in achieving the quality of education they aspire for.

Europa 51: The Face of the Star in Neorealisms Urban Landscape

Film Studies ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-57
Author(s):  
Ora Gelley
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Social World ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Roberto Rossellini ◽  
The Face ◽  
Classical Style

Although Europa 51 (1952) was the most commercially successful of the films Roberto Rossellini made with the Hollywood star, Ingrid Bergman, the reception by the Italian press was largely negative. Many critics focussed on what they saw to be the ‘unreal’ or abstract quality of the films portrayal of the postwar urban milieu and on the Bergman character‘s isolation from the social world. This article looks at how certain structures of seeing that are associated in the classical style with the woman as star or spectacle - e.g., the repetitious return to her fixed image, the resistance to pulling back from the figure of the woman in order to situate her within a determinate location and set of relationships between characters and objects - are no longer restricted to her image but in fact bleed into or “contaminate” the depiction of the world she inhabits. In other words, whereas the compulsive return to the fixed image of the woman tends to be contained or neutralised by the narrative economy and editing patterns (ordered by sexual difference) of the classical style, in Rossellini‘s work this ‘insistent’ even aberrant framing in relation to the woman becomes a part of the (female) characters and the cameras vision of the ‘pathology’ of the urban landscape in the aftermath of the war.

scholarly journals Aesthetic Preferences for Visual Quality of Urban Landscape in Derak High-Rise Buildings (Shiraz)

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reza Keshtkaran ◽  
Amin Habibi ◽  
Hamidreza Sharif
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Grid Method ◽  
Visual Quality ◽  
Landscape Design ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Q Sort ◽  
Aesthetic Preferences ◽  
Psychophysical Approach

The purpose of this study is to extract the indices of Aesthetic preferences for visual quality of urban landscape in high-rise buildings which contribute designers to make better decisions for designing urban landscape. As the research focuses on the high-rise buildings, this study goal address the question as follows: ‘What are aesthetic preferences in high-rise buildings? How can these preferences be developed and categorized?’ To achieve this objective, the Derak district of Shiraz city was selected as a case study area using Photo grid method and then all high-rise buildings in this area were identified and analyzed. Aesthetic preferences data were evaluated by Q-SORT method with the psychophysical approach. Eventually, aesthetic factors have been presented in two main categories: 'primary and distinctive'. Findings lead to the development of APPD model which suggests that when the landscape design of a building moves toward distinctive factors, the degree of its aesthetic preferences increases.

scholarly journals Riparian thermal conditions across a mixed rural and urban landscape

2017 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 106-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chih-Wei Tsai ◽  
Thomas Young ◽  
Philip H. Warren ◽  
Lorraine Maltby
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Thermal Conditions ◽  
Rural And Urban
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