Knowledge gaps hamper understanding the relationship between fragmentation and biodiversity loss: the case of Atlantic Forest fruit-feeding butterflies

Background A key challenge for conservation biology in the Neotropics is to understand how deforestation affects biodiversity at various levels of landscape fragmentation. Addressing this challenge requires expanding the coverage of known biodiversity data, which remain to date restricted to a few well-surveyed regions. Here, we assess the sampling coverage and biases in biodiversity data on fruit-feeding butterflies at the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, discussing their effect on our understanding of the relationship between forest fragmentation and biodiversity at a large-scale. We hypothesize that sampling effort is biased towards large and connected fragments, which occur jointly in space at the Atlantic forest. Methods We used a comprehensive dataset of Atlantic Forest fruit-feeding butterfly communities to test for sampling biases towards specific geographical areas, climate conditions and landscape configurations. Results We found a pattern of geographical aggregation of sampling sites, independently of scale, and a strong sampling bias towards large and connected forest fragments, located near cities and roads. Sampling gaps are particularly acute in small and disconnected forest fragments and rare climate conditions. In contrast, currently available data can provide a fair picture of fruit-feeding butterfly communities in large and connected Atlantic Forest remnants. Discussion Biased data hamper the inference of the functional relationship between deforestation and biodiversity at a large-scale, since they are geographically clustered and have sampling gaps in small and disconnected fragments. These data are useful to inform decision-makers regarding conservation efforts to curb biodiversity loss in the Atlantic Forest. Thus, we suggest to expand sampling effort to small and disconnected forest fragments, which would allow more accurate evaluations of the effects of landscape modification.

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Participatory networks for large-scale monitoring of large carnivores: pumas and jaguars of the Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest

Oryx ◽

10.1017/s0030605310000840 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 45 (4) ◽

pp. 534-545 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Carlos De Angelo ◽

Agustín Paviolo ◽

Daniela Rode ◽

Laury Cullen ◽

Denis Sana ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Atlantic Forest ◽

Large Scale ◽

Puma Concolor ◽

Low Cost ◽

Collaborative Management ◽

Forest Fragments ◽

Large Carnivores ◽

Cultural Significance ◽

Participatory Monitoring ◽

Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest

AbstractMost large carnivores are secretive and threatened, and these characteristics pose problems for research on, and monitoring of, these species across extensive areas. Participatory monitoring, however, can be a useful tool for obtaining long-term data across large areas. Pumas Puma concolor and jaguars Panthera onca are the largest predators in the threatened Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest. To survey the presence of these two species we established a participatory network of volunteers and a partnership with researchers in the three countries that share the Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest (Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay). We trained participants in simple methods of collecting faeces and track imprints of large felids. Between 2002 and 2008 > 100 volunteers helped with monitoring, obtaining 1,633 records identified as pumas or jaguars across c. 92,890 km2. We confirmed jaguar presence in a large section of the Misiones Green Corridor in Argentina and in the largest protected areas of Brazil and Paraguay. Pumas exhibited a wider distribution, being recorded throughout Misiones province in Argentina and in some areas of Brazil and Paraguay where jaguars were not detected. Both species, and especially jaguars, were detected mainly in the few remaining medium and large forest fragments in this Forest. Although these carnivores are often in conflict with local people, their charisma and cultural significance makes them flagship species that motivated the participation of volunteers and institutions. Participatory monitoring allowed coverage of a vast area at relatively low cost whilst enhancing collaborative management policies among people and institutions from three countries.

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Borboletas frugívoras de fragmentos de Mata Atlântica no noroeste do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)

EntomoBrasilis ◽

10.12741/ebrasilis.v11i2.773 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 95-102

Author(s):

Thamyrys Pinho Da Silva ◽

Willian Falcão Pias ◽

Ricardo Giovenardi

Keyword(s):

Atlantic Forest ◽

Sugar Cane ◽

Rio Grande ◽

Sampling Effort ◽

Forest Fragments ◽

Rio Grande Do Sul ◽

Short Term ◽

Cane Juice ◽

Sugar Cane Juice ◽

The Family

Resumo: O presente estudo teve como objetivo principal fornecer uma lista e avaliar a diversidade das espécies de borboletas frugívoras em dois fragmentos de Floresta Estacional Decidual no noroeste do Rio Grande do Sul. As amostragens foram mensais entre junho de 2014 a março de 2015. Para a captura das borboletas foram utilizadas armadilhas com isca atrativa à base de banana fermentada em caldo de cana. Após um esforço amostral de 4800 horas, foram amostrados 760 indivíduos distribuídos em 49 espécies de borboletas. Satyrinae foi a subfamília com maior riqueza e abundância de espécies. Hypothyris euclea laphria (Doubleday) representou um novo registro para o estado. A abundância de borboletas apresentou-se de forma heterogênea em ambos os fragmentos no decorrer dos meses amostrados. Apesar de ser um inventariamento de curto prazo, a riqueza de borboletas foi bastante representativa no noroeste do Rio Grande do Sul. Recomenda-se intensificar estudos semelhantes, para prover informações no intuito de conservação dos hábitats.Butterflies from Atlantic Forest fragments in northwest of Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)Abstract. This study aimed to provide a list and evaluate the diversity of species of fruit-feeding butterflies in two fragments of Decidual Seasonal Forest in the northwest of Rio Grande do Sul. Samples were collected monthly, between June 2014 and March 2015. Traps with attractive baits of fermented banana in sugar cane juice were used to capture the butterflies. After a 4800 hours sampling effort, 760 butterflies were sampled and distributed into 49 species. Satyrinae was the family with the greatest wealth and abundance of species. Hypothyris euclea laphria (Doubleday) represented a new registry for the state. The abundance of butterflies was heterogeneous in both fragments during the months sampled. Despite being a short-term inventory, butterfly richness was quite representative in the northwest of Rio Grande do Sul. It is recommended to intensify similar studies to provide information for the conservation of habitats.

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Environmental Response of Dinoponera lucida Emery 1901 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), an Endemic Threatened Species of the Atlantic Forest Central Corridor

Sociobiology ◽

10.13102/sociobiology.v67i1.3662 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 67 (1) ◽

pp. 65

Author(s):

Soares Simon ◽

José Henrique Schoereder ◽

Marcos Da Cunha Teixeira

Keyword(s):

Atlantic Forest ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Logistic Models ◽

Climatic Variables ◽

Conservation Strategies ◽

Forest Fragments ◽

Environmental Response ◽

Forest Fragment ◽

Climate Conditions ◽

Presence And Absence

Endemic species of Atlantic Forest Central Corridor may have evolved under adverse climate conditions, but their response to modern climate change is unclear. The aim of this study is to evaluate the response of the endemic and endangered ant species Dinoponera lucida to biotics and abiotics factors based on three scales: ecological factors inside forest fragment, physical attributes of landscape and climatic variables of the assessed region. Data collection took place in a representative selection of forest fragments in the region where the species is distributed in. Pitfalls were used to collect samples and to assure the presence and absence of the species in the site. We also checked the abundance of food resources and applied a hemispherical photography technique to measure shading inside the fragment, in loco. Landscape attributes data and climatic predictors were collected through geoprocessing techniques. All predictors were associated with binary “presence” and “absence” data based applied in logistic models. There was no significant response to environmental aspects within the fragment or to landscape, but there was strong and peculiar response to climatic variables such as temperature and rainfall. Accordingly, D. lucida presents a restricted realized niche, a feature shared among many endangered species that can disappear due to displacement and to habitat loss caused by climate and environmental changes. This species presents all the criteria necessary to be considered as rare, which is a controversial subject with political implications for Espírito Santo state, and makes D. lucida the ideal target for urgent conservation strategies.

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Relationship between total plasma homocysteine and the risk of aneurysms – a meta-analysis

VASA ◽

10.1024/0301-1526/a000891 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-6

Author(s):

Hanji Zhang ◽

Dexin Yin ◽

Yue Zhao ◽

Yezhou Li ◽

Dejiang Yao ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Single Species ◽

Total Plasma ◽

Control Groups ◽

Randomized Controlled ◽

Randomized Controlled Studies ◽

The Difference ◽

The Relationship ◽

Healthy Participants

Summary: Our meta-analysis focused on the relationship between homocysteine (Hcy) level and the incidence of aneurysms and looked at the relationship between smoking, hypertension and aneurysms. A systematic literature search of Pubmed, Web of Science, and Embase databases (up to March 31, 2020) resulted in the identification of 19 studies, including 2,629 aneurysm patients and 6,497 healthy participants. Combined analysis of the included studies showed that number of smoking, hypertension and hyperhomocysteinemia (HHcy) in aneurysm patients was higher than that in the control groups, and the total plasma Hcy level in aneurysm patients was also higher. These findings suggest that smoking, hypertension and HHcy may be risk factors for the development and progression of aneurysms. Although the heterogeneity of meta-analysis was significant, it was found that the heterogeneity might come from the difference between race and disease species through subgroup analysis. Large-scale randomized controlled studies of single species and single disease species are needed in the future to supplement the accuracy of the results.

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New ''Cold War''

Diplomatic Service ◽

10.33920/vne-01-2001-04 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 27-34

Author(s):

Vladimir Batiuk

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Nuclear Weapons ◽

Armed Conflict ◽

Large Scale ◽

Arms Race ◽

Ideological Struggle ◽

Nuclear Arms Race ◽

The Cold War ◽

The Relationship ◽

Nuclear Arms

In this article, the ''Cold War'' is understood as a situation where the relationship between the leading States is determined by ideological confrontation and, at the same time, the presence of nuclear weapons precludes the development of this confrontation into a large-scale armed conflict. Such a situation has developed in the years 1945–1989, during the first Cold War. We see that something similar is repeated in our time-with all the new nuances in the ideological struggle and in the nuclear arms race.

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Investigating Diseases and Chemicals in COVID-19 Literature with Text Mining (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.21503 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Amir Karami ◽

Brandon Bookstaver ◽

Melissa Nolan

Keyword(s):

Text Mining ◽

Literature Review ◽

Topic Modeling ◽

Large Scale ◽

Clinical Manifestations ◽

International Health ◽

Research Papers ◽

Strategic Plans ◽

Funding Agencies ◽

The Relationship

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted nearly all aspects of life and has posed significant threats to international health and the economy. Given the rapidly unfolding nature of the current pandemic, there is an urgent need to streamline literature synthesis of the growing scientific research to elucidate targeted solutions. While traditional systematic literature review studies provide valuable insights, these studies have restrictions, including analyzing a limited number of papers, having various biases, being time-consuming and labor-intensive, focusing on a few topics, incapable of trend analysis, and lack of data-driven tools. OBJECTIVE This study fills the mentioned restrictions in the literature and practice by analyzing two biomedical concepts, clinical manifestations of disease and therapeutic chemical compounds, with text mining methods in a corpus containing COVID-19 research papers and find associations between the two biomedical concepts. METHODS This research has collected papers representing COVID-19 pre-prints and peer-reviewed research published in 2020. We used frequency analysis to find highly frequent manifestations and therapeutic chemicals, representing the importance of the two biomedical concepts. This study also applied topic modeling to find the relationship between the two biomedical concepts. RESULTS We analyzed 9,298 research papers published through May 5, 2020 and found 3,645 disease-related and 2,434 chemical-related articles. The most frequent clinical manifestations of disease terminology included COVID-19, SARS, cancer, pneumonia, fever, and cough. The most frequent chemical-related terminology included Lopinavir, Ritonavir, Oxygen, Chloroquine, Remdesivir, and water. Topic modeling provided 25 categories showing relationships between our two overarching categories. These categories represent statistically significant associations between multiple aspects of each category, some connections of which were novel and not previously identified by the scientific community. CONCLUSIONS Appreciation of this context is vital due to the lack of a systematic large-scale literature review survey and the importance of fast literature review during the current COVID-19 pandemic for developing treatments. This study is beneficial to researchers for obtaining a macro-level picture of literature, to educators for knowing the scope of literature, to journals for exploring most discussed disease symptoms and pharmaceutical targets, and to policymakers and funding agencies for creating scientific strategic plans regarding COVID-19.

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Strategic resources and smallholder performance at the bottom of the pyramid

International Food and Agribusiness Management Review ◽

10.22434/ifamr2018.0111 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 22 (3) ◽

pp. 365-380 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Matthias Olthaar ◽

Wilfred Dolfsma ◽

Clemens Lutz ◽

Florian Noseleit

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Business Environment ◽

Agricultural Economics ◽

Local Market ◽

Bottom Of The Pyramid ◽

Fine Grained ◽

Strategic Resources ◽

Relative Contribution ◽

The Relationship ◽

Resource Based Theory

In a competitive business environment at the Bottom of the Pyramid smallholders supplying global value chains may be thought to be at the whims of downstream large-scale players and local market forces, leaving no room for strategic entrepreneurial behavior. In such a context we test the relationship between the use of strategic resources and firm performance. We adopt the Resource Based Theory and show that seemingly homogenous smallholders deploy resources differently and, consequently, some do outperform others. We argue that the ‘resource-based theory’ results in a more fine-grained understanding of smallholder performance than approaches generally applied in agricultural economics. We develop a mixed-method approach that allows one to pinpoint relevant, industry-specific resources, and allows for empirical identification of the relative contribution of each resource to competitive advantage. The results show that proper use of quality labor, storage facilities, time of selling, and availability of animals are key capabilities.

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Lack of an association between gallstone disease and bilirubin levels with risk of colorectal cancer: a Mendelian randomisation analysis

British Journal of Cancer ◽

10.1038/s41416-020-01211-x ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Richard Culliford ◽

Alex J. Cornish ◽

Philip J. Law ◽

Susan M. Farrington ◽

Kimmo Palin ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Colorectal Cancer ◽

Large Scale ◽

Causal Effect ◽

Gallstone Disease ◽

Epidemiological Studies ◽

Mendelian Randomisation ◽

Linear Relationships ◽

Potential Risk Factors ◽

The Relationship ◽

Circulating Levels

Abstract Background Epidemiological studies of the relationship between gallstone disease and circulating levels of bilirubin with risk of developing colorectal cancer (CRC) have been inconsistent. To address possible confounding and reverse causation, we examine the relationship between these potential risk factors and CRC using Mendelian randomisation (MR). Methods We used two-sample MR to examine the relationship between genetic liability to gallstone disease and circulating levels of bilirubin with CRC in 26,397 patients and 41,481 controls. We calculated the odds ratio per genetically predicted SD unit increase in log bilirubin levels (ORSD) for CRC and tested for a non-zero causal effect of gallstones on CRC. Sensitivity analysis was applied to identify violations of estimator assumptions. Results No association between either gallstone disease (P value = 0.60) or circulating levels of bilirubin (ORSD = 1.00, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.96–1.03, P value = 0.90) with CRC was shown. Conclusions Despite the large scale of this study, we found no evidence for a causal relationship between either circulating levels of bilirubin or gallstone disease with risk of developing CRC. While the magnitude of effect suggested by some observational studies can confidently be excluded, we cannot exclude the possibility of smaller effect sizes and non-linear relationships.

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How does the position of firms in the supply chain affect their performance? An empirical study

Applied Network Science ◽

10.1007/s41109-021-00364-9 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Siddharth Arora ◽

Alexandra Brintrup

Keyword(s):

Supply Chain ◽

Empirical Data ◽

Large Scale ◽

Individual Performance ◽

Supply Network ◽

Supply Chain Networks ◽

Focal Firm ◽

Cooperative Competition ◽

Large Scale Networks ◽

The Relationship

AbstractThe relationship between a firm and its supply chain has been well studied, however, the association between the position of firms in complex supply chain networks and their performance has not been adequately investigated. This is primarily due to insufficient availability of empirical data on large-scale networks. To addresses this gap in the literature, we investigate the relationship between embeddedness patterns of individual firms in a supply network and their performance using empirical data from the automotive industry. In this study, we devise three measures that characterize the embeddedness of individual firms in a supply network. These are namely: centrality, tier position, and triads. Our findings caution us that centrality impacts individual performance through a diminishing returns relationship. The second measure, tier position, allows us to investigate the concept of tiers in supply networks because we find that as networks emerge, the boundaries between tiers become unclear. Performance of suppliers degrade as they move away from the focal firm (i.e., Toyota). The final measure, triads, investigates the effect of buying and selling to firms that supply the same customer, portraying the level of competition and cooperation in a supplier’s network. We find that increased coopetition (i.e., cooperative competition) is a performance enhancer, however, excessive complexity resulting from being involved in both upstream and downstream coopetition results in diminishing performance. These original insights help understand the drivers of firm performance from a network perspective and provide a basis for further research.

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The Relationships Between Serum DHEA-S and AMH Levels in Infertile Women: A Retrospective Cross-Sectional Study

Journal of Clinical Medicine ◽

10.3390/jcm10061211 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (6) ◽

pp. 1211

Author(s):

Li-Te Lin ◽

Kuan-Hao Tsui

Keyword(s):

Generalized Linear Models ◽

Large Scale ◽

Linear Models ◽

Positive Association ◽

Cross Sectional Study ◽

Dehydroepiandrosterone Sulphate ◽

Sectional Study ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Infertile Women ◽

The Relationship

The relationship between serum dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate (DHEA-S) and anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) levels has not been fully established. Therefore, we performed a large-scale cross-sectional study to investigate the association between serum DHEA-S and AMH levels. The study included a total of 2155 infertile women aged 20 to 46 years who were divided into four quartile groups (Q1 to Q4) based on serum DHEA-S levels. We found that there was a weak positive association between serum DHEA-S and AMH levels in infertile women (r = 0.190, p < 0.001). After adjusting for potential confounders, serum DHEA-S levels positively correlated with serum AMH levels in infertile women (β = 0.103, p < 0.001). Infertile women in the highest DHEA-S quartile category (Q4) showed significantly higher serum AMH levels (p < 0.001) compared with women in the lowest DHEA-S quartile category (Q1). The serum AMH levels significantly increased across increasing DHEA-S quartile categories in infertile women (p = 0.014) using generalized linear models after adjustment for potential confounders. Our data show that serum DHEA-S levels are positively associated with serum AMH levels.

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