scholarly journals Geographical and temporal distribution of hawkmoth (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae) species in Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Kioko ◽  
Alex Musyoki ◽  
Augustine Luanga ◽  
Mwinzi Kioko ◽  
Esther Mwangi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Species Diversity ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Temporal Distribution ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Distribution Data ◽  
Species Occurrence ◽  
Continuous Growth ◽  
Occurrence Data ◽  
National Museums

Hawkmoths consist of species where most adults are nocturnal, but there are some day-flying genera. Hawkmoth species have a wide variety of life-history traits, comprising species with adults (mostly nectarivorous though with some exceptions, honey-feeding), but there are also species that do not feed at all. The nectarivorous species are an important component of tropical ecosystems, with significant roles as major pollinators of both crops and wild flora with the pollination done by the adult stage. Pollinators are in decline world-wide and there is need for baseline data to provide information about their conservation strategies. Species occurrence data from Museum collections have been shown to be of great value as a tool for prioritising conservation actions in Africa. The National Museums of Kenya (NMK) have a large and active entomology collection that is in continuous growth. The NMK’s collection of hawkmoths had not been digitised prior to 2017. This moth family Sphingidae includes about 1,602 species and 205 genera worldwide (Kitching et al. 2018) with the majority of these species occurring in Africa. These moth species can also be used as indicators in biodiversity assessments as they can be easily sampled and identified. However, hawkmoths have rarely been surveyed over the long term for this purpose. Long-term datasets are of unquestionable significance for understanding and monitoring temporal changes in biodiversity. These hawkmoth data have addressed one of the most significant challenges to insect conservation, the lack of baseline information concerning species diversity and distribution and have provided key historic hawkmoth species diversity and distribution data that can be used to monitor their populations in the face of climate change and other environmental degradation issues that are facing the world today. The publication of the hawkmoth species occurrence data records in GBIF has enhanced data visibility to a wider audience promoting availability for use. The hawkmoth (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae) collection at the National Museums of Kenya was digitised from 2017 – 2020 and this paper presents details of species occurrence records as in the insect collection at the NMK, Nairobi, Kenya. The collection holds 5,095 voucher specimens consisting of 88 genera and 208 species. The collection covers the period between 1904 and 2020. The geographical distribution of the hawkmoths housed at the NMK covers East Africa at 81.41%, West Africa at 7.20%, Southern Africa at 6.89%, Central Africa at 4.02% and North Africa at 0.2%.

scholarly journals Swallowtail butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) species diversity and distribution in Africa: The Papilionidae collection at the National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Kioko ◽  
Alex Musyoki ◽  
Augustine Luanga ◽  
Mwinzi Kioko ◽  
Esther Mwangi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Species Diversity ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Distribution Data ◽  
Distribution Maps ◽  
Label Data ◽  
Western Africa ◽  
Conservation Actions ◽  
Baseline Information ◽  
National Museums ◽  
Swallowtail Butterflies

Species data from the Museum collections have been shown to be of great value as a tool for prioritising conservation actions in Africa (Fjeldsa and Tushabe 2005). The National Museums of Kenya (NMK) have an entomology collection, housed in 4,000 drawers in cabinets that contain over 1.5 million specimens, including the largest butterfly collection in Africa (Arnett et al. 1997). Lampe and Striebing (2005) demonstrated how to digitise large insect collections in order to make their associated label data into databases that can be used for functions, such as creating distribution maps. The NMK’s swallowtail butterflies' collection had not been digitised and thus there was a need to capture the label data to create a database that can be used for mapping the distribution of the species in Kenya and elsewhere. These data have addressed one of the most significant challenges to insect conservation i.e. the lack of baseline information concerning species diversity and distribution (Summerville and Crist 2003). These data have provided key historic papilionid species diversity and distribution data that can be used to monitor their populations, as butterflies are declining due to changes in land use, intensive agriculture and pestcide use, diseases and pest and climate change (Potts et al. 2016; Bongaarts 2019). The publication of the occurrence data records in GBIF has been undertaken, thus making the data available to a wider audience and promoting availability for use. The swallowtail butterflies collection at the National Museums of Kenya was digitised from 2017–2019 and this paper presents details of the Papilionid collection at the Zoology Department, NMK, Nairobi, Kenya. The collection holds 7,345 voucher specimens, consisting of three genera and 133 species. The collection covers the period between 1850 to 2019. The distribution of the swallowtail butterflies, housed at the NMK, covers East Africa with 88%, Central Africa (6%), Western Africa (4%) and Southern Africa (2%).

scholarly journals sampbias, a method for quantifying geographic sampling biases in species distribution data

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Zizka ◽  
Alexandre Antonelli ◽  
Daniele Silvestro
Keyword(s):  
R Package ◽  
Distribution Data ◽  
Species Occurrence ◽  
Biodiversity Research ◽  
Occurrence Data ◽  
Standard Tool ◽  
Moderate Effect ◽  
Taxonomic Groups ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Species Occurrences

AbstractGeo-referenced species occurrences from public databases have become essential to biodiversity research and conservation. However, geographical biases are widely recognized as a factor limiting the usefulness of such data for understanding species diversity and distribution. In particular, differences in sampling intensity across a landscape due to differences in human accessibility are ubiquitous but may differ in strength among taxonomic groups and datasets. Although several factors have been described to influence human access (such as presence of roads, rivers, airports and cities), quantifying their specific and combined effects on recorded occurrence data remains challenging. Here we present sampbias, an algorithm and software for quantifying the effect of accessibility biases in species occurrence datasets. Sampbias uses a Bayesian approach to estimate how sampling rates vary as a function of proximity to one or multiple bias factors. The results are comparable among bias factors and datasets. We demonstrate the use of sampbias on a dataset of mammal occurrences from the island of Borneo, showing a high biasing effect of cities and a moderate effect of roads and airports. Sampbias is implemented as a well-documented, open-access and user-friendly R package that we hope will become a standard tool for anyone working with species occurrences in ecology, evolution, conservation and related fields.

Species occurrence data from the Range-Wide Bull Trout eDNA Project

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Young ◽  
Daniel J. Isaak ◽  
Kevin S. McKelvey ◽  
Michael K. Schwartz ◽  
Kellie J. Carim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bull Trout ◽  
Species Occurrence ◽  
Occurrence Data

Severe conduit stenosis in a patient with Fontan circulation with a Y-shaped Dacron conduit

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Daiji Takajo ◽  
Preetha L. Balakrishnan ◽  
Sanjeev Aggarwal
Keyword(s):  
Energy Loss ◽  
Polyethylene Terephthalate ◽  
Rare Complication ◽  
Flow Distribution ◽  
Fontan Circulation ◽  
Distribution Data ◽  
Extracardiac Fontan ◽  
Fontan Palliation

Abstract Conduit stenosis is a major, albeit rare, complication following the Fontan palliation. A single-baffle conduit with polytetrafluoroethylene is widely used for an extracardiac type Fontan palliation. A polyethylene terephthalate conduit (Dacron) is sometimes used for the conduit when more flexibility is required. A Y-shaped conduit is rarely used, but it may reduce the energy loss and achieve better hepatic flow distribution. Data on the long-term patency and complications when using a Y-shaped Dacron conduit is lacking. We report a case of a severely stenotic Y-shaped Dacron conduit in a patient who underwent extracardiac Fontan palliation.

Nest cameras do not affect nest survival in a meadow-nesting shorebird

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
VOLKER SALEWSKI ◽  
LUIS SCHMIDT
Keyword(s):  
Nest Survival ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Survival Models ◽  
Northern Germany ◽  
Term Study ◽  
Long Term Study ◽  
Limosa Limosa ◽  
Study Sites

Summary Identifying the fate of birds’ nests and the causes of breeding failure is often crucial for the development of conservation strategies for threatened species. However, collecting these data by repeatedly visiting nests might itself contribute to nest failure or bias. To solve this dilemma, automatic cameras have increasingly been used as a time-efficient means for nest monitoring. Here, we consider whether the use of cameras itself may influence hatching success of nests of the Black-tailed Godwit Limosa limosa at two long-term study sites in northern Germany. Annually between 2013 and 2019, cameras were used to monitor godwit nests. In 2014 and 2019, nests were randomly equipped with cameras or not, and nest survival checked independently of the cameras. Nest-survival models indicated that survival probabilities varied between years, sites and with time of the season, but were unaffected by the presence of cameras. Even though predation is the main cause of hatching failure in our study system, we conclude that predators did not learn to associate cameras with food either when the cameras were initially installed or after they had been used for several years. Cameras were thus an effective and non-deleterious tool to collect data for conservation in this case. As other bird species may react differently to cameras at their nests, and as other sets of predators may differ in their ability to associate cameras with food, the effect of cameras on breeding success should be carefully monitored when they are used in a new study system.

scholarly journals Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation of Historical Panchromatic Orthomosaics in Central Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 523
Author(s):  
Nicholus Mboga ◽  
Stefano D’Aronco ◽  
Tais Grippa ◽  
Charlotte Pelletier ◽  
Stefanos Georganos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Cover ◽  
Domain Adaptation ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Semantic Segmentation ◽  
Target Domain ◽  
Convolutional Networks ◽  
Fully Convolutional Networks ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Performance Gains

Multitemporal environmental and urban studies are essential to guide policy making to ultimately improve human wellbeing in the Global South. Land-cover products derived from historical aerial orthomosaics acquired decades ago can provide important evidence to inform long-term studies. To reduce the manual labelling effort by human experts and to scale to large, meaningful regions, we investigate in this study how domain adaptation techniques and deep learning can help to efficiently map land cover in Central Africa. We propose and evaluate a methodology that is based on unsupervised adaptation to reduce the cost of generating reference data for several cities and across different dates. We present the first application of domain adaptation based on fully convolutional networks for semantic segmentation of a dataset of historical panchromatic orthomosaics for land-cover generation for two focus cities Goma-Gisenyi and Bukavu. Our experimental evaluation shows that the domain adaptation methods can reach an overall accuracy between 60% and 70% for different regions. If we add a small amount of labelled data from the target domain, too, further performance gains can be achieved.

scholarly journals Application Natura 2000 Data For The Invasive Plants Spread Prediction

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 159-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Pěknicová ◽  
D. Petrus ◽  
K. Berchová-Bímová
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Factors ◽  
Invasive Plants ◽  
Species Distribution ◽  
Natura 2000 ◽  
Distribution Model ◽  
Distribution Data ◽  
Habitat Types ◽  
Distribution Models ◽  
Occurrence Data ◽  
Heracleum Mantegazzianum

AbstractThe distribution of invasive plants depends on several environmental factors, e.g. on the distance from the vector of spreading, invaded community composition, land-use, etc. The species distribution models, a research tool for invasive plants spread prediction, involve the combination of environmental factors, occurrence data, and statistical approach. For the construction of the presented distribution model, the occurrence data on invasive plants (Solidagosp.,Fallopiasp.,Robinia pseudoaccacia,andHeracleum mantegazzianum) and Natura 2000 habitat types from the Protected Landscape Area Kokořínsko have been intersected in ArcGIS and statistically analyzed. The data analysis was focused on (1) verification of the accuracy of the Natura 2000 habitat map layer, and the accordance with the habitats occupied by invasive species and (2) identification of a suitable scale of intersection between the habitat and species distribution. Data suitability was evaluated for the construction of the model on local scale. Based on the data, the invaded habitat types were described and the optimal scale grid was evaluated. The results show the suitability of Natura 2000 habitat types for modelling, however more input data (e.g. on soil types, elevation) are needed.

Long-term deer exclusion in yew-wood and oakwood habitats in southwest Ireland: Changes in ground flora and species diversity

2011 ◽  
Vol 262 (12) ◽  
pp. 2328-2337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. Perrin ◽  
Fraser J.G. Mitchell ◽  
Daniel L. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Species Diversity ◽  
Ground Flora

Rising ecosystem water demand exacerbates the lengthening of tropical dry seasons

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Xu ◽  
Xu Lian ◽  
Ingrid Slette ◽  
Hui Yang ◽  
Yuan Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Demand ◽  
Potential Evapotranspiration ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Dry Season ◽  
Land Area ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Dry Seasons ◽  
The Tropics ◽  
Factor Governing

Abstract The timing and length of the dry season is a key factor governing ecosystem productivity and the carbon cycle of the tropics. Mounting evidence has suggested a lengthening of the dry season with ongoing climate change. However, this conclusion is largely based on changes in precipitation (P) compared to its long-term average (P ̅) and lacks consideration of the simultaneous changes in ecosystem water demand (measured by potential evapotranspiration, Ep, or actual evapotranspiration, E). Using several long-term (1979-2018) observational datasets, we compared changes in tropical dry season length (DSL) and timing (dry season arrival, DSA, and dry season end, DSE) among three common metrics used to define the dry season: P < P ̅, P < Ep, and P < E. We found that all three definitions show that dry seasons have lengthened in much of the tropics since 1979. Among the three definitions, P < E estimates the largest fraction (49.0%) of tropical land area likely experiencing longer dry seasons, followed by P < Ep (41.4%) and P < P ̅ (34.4%). The largest differences in multi-year mean DSL (> 120 days) among the three definitions occurred in the most arid and the most humid regions of the tropics. All definitions and datasets consistently showed longer dry seasons in southern Amazon (due to delayed DSE) and central Africa (due to both earlier DSA and delayed DSE). However, definitions that account for changing water demand estimated longer DSL extension over those two regions. These results indicate that warming-enhanced evapotranspiration exacerbates dry season lengthening and ecosystem water deficit. Thus, it is necessity to account for the evolving water demand of tropical ecosystems when characterizing changes in seasonal dry periods and ecosystem water deficits in an increasingly warmer and drier climate.

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