The loss of Banks’s legacy

1994 ◽  
Vol 344 (1307) ◽  
pp. 3-9 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Vascular Plants ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Hawaiian Islands ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
The World

Sir Joseph Banks had a profound love for nature and would have been horrified to witness the destruction and modification of the world’s natural habitats since his time, particularly as his own exploration efforts and agricultural interests contributed directly to the colonization of Australia and many Pacific islands. Unprecedented population growth and huge changes in human mobility in the last 250 years have created a wave of extinctions of many plants and animals throughout the world. In an effort to assess Banks’s legacy and calculate rates of extinction on a historical timescale, we examine changes since 1740 to the birds, mammals and vascular plants of three areas: Australia, the Hawaiian Islands, and the British Isles.

scholarly journals Eragrostis pilosa (India lovegrass).

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Angel Duenas-Lopez
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Native Range ◽  
Annual Grass ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Crop Fields ◽  
Disturbed Areas ◽  
The World

Abstract Eragrostis pilosa is an annual grass native to Eurasia and Africa that has become naturalized in many other tropical and temperate regions of the world. It is a common weed in disturbed areas such as roadsides and crop fields. It is invasive in a number of Pacific Islands, the Philippines, Australia, and North America but no further information is available about its impacts or invasiveness in natural or semi-natural habitats in its non-native range.

scholarly journals Analyses towards determining Madagascar’s place in global biogeography

2012 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Şerban Procheş ◽  
Syd Ramdhani
Keyword(s):  
Vascular Plants ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Tropical Asia ◽  
Taxonomic Level ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Plant Families ◽  
Different Levels

Abstract The relationships of Madagascan plant and animal taxa have been the object of much fascination, Madagascar sharing numerous lineages with Africa, others with Asia, Australia, or the Americas, and many others being of uncertain relationships. In commonly accepted global regionalization schemata, Madagascar is treated together with Africa for animals, and with Africa, tropical Asia and the Pacific islands in the case of plants. Here we examine the similarities between the biotic assemblages of (i) tropical Africa, (ii) Madagascar, and (iii) the rest of the world, on a basic taxonomic level, considering the families of vascular plants and vertebrates as analysis units. The percentages of endemic families, families shared pair-wise between regions, or present in all three, are roughly similar between the two broad groups, though plant families with ranges limited to one region are proportionally fewer. In dendrograms and multidimensional scaling plots for different groups, Madagascar clusters together with Africa, Asia or both, and sometimes with smaller Indian Ocean Islands, but quite often (though not in plants) as a convincingly separate cluster. Our results for vertebrates justify the status of full zoogeographic region for Madagascar, though an equally high rank in geobotanical regionalization would mean also treating Africa and Tropical Asia as separate units, which would be debatable given the overall greater uniformity of plant assemblages. Beyond the Madagascan focus of this paper, the differences between plant and vertebrate clusters shown here suggest different levels of ecological plasticity at the same taxonomic level, with plant families being much more environmentally-bound, and thus clustering along biome lines rather than regional lines.

Eragrostis pilosa (India lovegrass).

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Angel Duenas-Lopez
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Native Range ◽  
Annual Grass ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Crop Fields ◽  
Disturbed Areas ◽  
The World

Abstract Eragrostis pilosa is an annual grass native to Eurasia and Africa that has become naturalized in many other tropical and temperate regions of the world. It is a common weed in disturbed areas such as roadsides and crop fields. It is invasive in a number of Pacific Islands, the Philippines, Australia, and North America but no further information is available about its impacts or invasiveness in natural or semi-natural habitats in its non-native range.

New species list of plants and lichens of Russia for Turboveg for Windows

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-156
Author(s):  
A. P. Korablev ◽  
N. S. Liksakova ◽  
D. M. Mirin ◽  
D. G. Oreshkin ◽  
P. G. Efimov
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Vascular Plants ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Web Page ◽  
Species List ◽  
Internet Resources ◽  
The World ◽  
A New Species ◽  
The Web

A new species list of plants and lichens of Russia and neighboring countries has been developed for Turboveg for Windows, the program, intended for storage and management of phytosociological data (relevés), is widely used all around the world (Hennekens, Schaminée, 2001; Hennekens, 2015). The species list is built upon the database of the Russian website Plantarium (Plantarium…: [site]), which contains a species atlas and illustrated an online Handbook of plants and lichens. The nomenclature used on Plantarium was originally based on the following issues: vascular plants — S. K. Cherepanov (1995) with additions; mosses — «Flora of mosses of Russia» (Proect...: [site]); liverworts and hornworts — A. D. Potemkin and E. V. Sofronova (2009); lichens — «Spisok…» G. P. Urbanavichyus ed. (2010); other sources (Plantarium...: [site]). The new species list, currently the most comprehensive in Turboveg format for Russia, has 89 501 entries, including 4627 genus taxa compare to the old one with 32 020 entries (taxa) and only 253 synonyms. There are 84 805 species and subspecies taxa in the list, 37 760 (44.7 %) of which are accepted, while the others are synonyms. Their distribution by groups of organisms and divisions are shown in Table. A large number of synonyms in the new list and its adaptation to work with the Russian literature will greatly facilitate the entry of old relevé data. The ways of making new list, its structure as well as the possibilities of checking taxonomic lists on Internet resources are considered. The files of the species list for Turboveg 2 and Turboveg 3, the technique of associating existing databases with a new species list (in Russian) are available on the web page https://www.binran.ru/resursy/informatsionnyye-resursy/tekuschie-proekty/species_list_russia/.

Distribution and habitat preference of protected reindeer lichen species (Cladonia arbuscula, C. mitis and C. rangiferina) in the Balaton Uplands (Hungary)

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-282
Author(s):  
Mónika Sinigla ◽  
Erzsébet Szurdoki ◽  
László Lőkös ◽  
Dénes Bartha ◽  
István Galambos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Vascular Plants ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Soil Depth ◽  
Habitat Preferences ◽  
Habitat Type ◽  
Canopy Cover ◽  
Lichen Species ◽  
Oak Forests ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Cladonia Rangiferina

AbstractThe maintenance of protected lichen species and their biodiversity in general depends on good management practices based on their distribution and habitat preferences. To date, 10 of the 17 protected lichen species of Hungary have been recorded in the Bakony Mts including the Balaton Uplands region. Habitat preferences of three protected Cladonia species (C. arbuscula, C. mitis and C. rangiferina) growing on underlying rocks of red sandstone, basalt, Pannonian sandstone and gravel were investigated by detailed sampling. We recorded aspect, underlying rock type, soil depth, pH and CaCO3 content, habitat type (as defined by the General National Habitat Classification System Á-NÉR), all species of lichen, bryophyte and vascular plants as well as percentage cover of exposed rock, total bryophytes, lichens, vascular plants and canopy, degree of disturbance and animal impacts. Sporadic populations of these species mostly exist at the top of hills and mountains in open acidofrequent oak forests, but they may occur in other habitats, such as closed acidofrequent oak forests, slope steppes on stony soils, siliceous open rocky grasslands, open sand steppes, wet and mesic pioneer scrub and dry Calluna heaths. Cladonia rangiferina was found to grow beneath higher canopy cover than either C. arbuscula or C. mitis in the Balaton Uplands. Furthermore, there were significant differences in canopy cover between occupied and unoccupied quadrats in the case of all three species. Cladonia rangiferina is a good indicator species of natural habitats in Hungary due to its restricted distribution and low ecological tolerance. These results may lead to the adoption of effective conservation methods (e.g. game exclusion, artificial dispersal) in the future.

scholarly journals Comparative Analysis of Geolocation Information through Mobile-Devices under Different COVID-19 Mobility Restriction Patterns in Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Raquel Pérez-Arnal ◽  
David Conesa ◽  
Sergio Alvarez-Napagao ◽  
Toyotaro Suzumura ◽  
Martí Català ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
The Other ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Experimental Setting ◽  
Mobile Data ◽  
Restriction Patterns ◽  
Mobility Data ◽  
The World ◽  
Proper Interpretation

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the world in unprecedented and unpredictable ways. Human mobility, being the greatest facilitator for the spread of the virus, is at the epicenter of this change. In order to study mobility under COVID-19, to evaluate the efficiency of mobility restriction policies, and to facilitate a better response to future crisis, we need to understand all possible mobility data sources at our disposal. Our work studies private mobility sources, gathered from mobile-phones and released by large technological companies. These data are of special interest because, unlike most public sources, it is focused on individuals rather than on transportation means. Furthermore, the sample of society they cover is large and representative. On the other hand, these data are not directly accessible for anonymity reasons. Thus, properly interpreting its patterns demands caution. Aware of that, we explore the behavior and inter-relations of private sources of mobility data in the context of Spain. This country represents a good experimental setting due to both its large and fast pandemic peak and its implementation of a sustained, generalized lockdown. Our work illustrates how a direct and naive comparison between sources can be misleading, as certain days (e.g., Sundays) exhibit a directly adverse behavior. After understanding their particularities, we find them to be partially correlated and, what is more important, complementary under a proper interpretation. Finally, we confirm that mobile-data can be used to evaluate the efficiency of implemented policies, detect changes in mobility trends, and provide insights into what new normality means in Spain.

scholarly journals The World Checklist of Vascular Plants, a continuously updated resource for exploring global plant diversity

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafaël Govaerts ◽  
Eimear Nic Lughadha ◽  
Nicholas Black ◽  
Robert Turner ◽  
Alan Paton
Keyword(s):  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Vascular Plants ◽  
Sustainable Use ◽  
Data Reuse ◽  
Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽  
Full Dataset ◽  
The World ◽  
Technical Validation ◽  
International Data ◽  
Data Collation

AbstractThe World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) is a comprehensive list of scientifically described plant species, compiled over four decades, from peer-reviewed literature, authoritative scientific databases, herbaria and observations, then reviewed by experts. It is a vital tool to facilitate plant diversity research, conservation and effective management, including sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits. To maximise utility, such lists should be accessible, explicitly evidence-based, transparent, expert-reviewed, and regularly updated, incorporating new evidence and emerging scientific consensus. WCVP largely meets these criteria, being continuously updated and freely available online. Users can browse, search, or download a user-defined subset of accepted species with corresponding synonyms and bibliographic details, or a date-stamped full dataset. To facilitate appropriate data reuse by individual researchers and global initiatives including Global Biodiversity Information Facility, Catalogue of Life and World Flora Online, we document data collation and review processes, the underlying data structure, and the international data standards and technical validation that ensure data quality and integrity. We also address the questions most frequently received from users.

scholarly journals Epigenetic polymorphism in wild populations of Mus musculus

1963 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. Berry
Keyword(s):  
House Mouse ◽  
Mus Musculus ◽  
Stabilizing Selection ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Wild Populations ◽  
Local Populations ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Populations ◽  
Different Parts

It has been suggested (Berry & Searle, 1963) that the discontinuous (‘quasi-continuous’) variants studied by Grüneberg et al. in the skeleton of rodents can be regarded as constituting epigenetic polymorphism in different populations. Comparisons have been made between the incidences of skeletal variants in house mouse populations collected from: corn ricks on a single farm in Hampshire; eleven separated localities in different parts of the British Isles; and nine other places throughout the world. These showed that the method could profitably be used for genetically characterizing and hence comparing populations. There was evidence suggestive of genetical drift between local populations and stabilizing selection over a larger area.

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