Southeast Asian cultural landscape, resistance, and belonging in East Timor's FRETILIN Movement (1974–75)

The diversity of national imaginings within the East Timorese resistance movement against the Indonesian Occupation (1975–99) became visible through the country's post-independence politics. Namely, the contradiction between the returnee leaders and those who fought in East Timor over the representation of FRETILIN (the major nationalist movement since 1974) has been an important fault line. This article attempts to understand this discrepancy through a comparison of FRETILIN's campaigns in Tetun and Portuguese and how different audiences interpreted them. The article argues that FRETILIN modified its international rhetoric when it became a popular Tetun language movement to attract Timorese commoners. The Tetun version of FRETILIN provided sources for Timorese national imaginings based on local beliefs, sacred landscapes, and Southeast Asian social relations that deviated from how international audiences understood FRETILIN. This article thus contributes to the literature on Southeast Asian resistance and nationalism by revealing Timorese ideologies of resistance and nationhood.

The Construction of Regional Ecological Security Pattern Based on a Multi-Factor Comprehensive Model and Circuit Theory

Various ecological problems have become increasingly prominent due to the accelerated growth of urbanization. Ecological security and ecological conservation have become an important topics in the current scenario. This study took southern Anhui as an example, constructing comprehensive assessment models to conduct source identification from three perspectives, i.e. ecosystem services, ecological sensitivity and residents’ ecological needs. Landscape resistance surface was built based on the reciprocal of habitat quality and night-time light data. According to the circuit theory, the ecological process in the heterogeneous landscape was simulated to identify ecological corridors, extract pinch points and divide barriers that need improvement, thereby to construct the southern Anhui ecological security pattern (ESP). The pattern comprised 20 ecological sources, 37 ecological corridors, 9 pinch points and 2 levels of improvement areas. Specifically, ecological sources were mainly distributed within the area of Huangshan city and Xuancheng city, mostly covered with trees; ecological corridors were mostly located in the northern part of the research area; pinch points were mainly farmland or beside construction land; the primary improvement area was mainly in Chaohu city and Maanshan city, while the secondary improvement area was distributed around the primary area. The study discussed the diversified improvement strategies of different barriers and introduced the optimization scheme “one centre, two wings, one belt”, providing planning advice for decision-makers. The study expanded the construction of regional ESP, and partly guided the steady development of ESP of southern Anhui.

En route to the North: modelling crested porcupine habitat suitability and dispersal flows across a highly anthropized area in northern Italy

The crested porcupine (Hystrix cristata) underwent a rapid and widespread range expansion in Italy. Nowadays the species is moving towards the northernmost regions of the country and its occurrence is increasing in the highly anthropized Po Plain. Our objectives were to evaluate the suitability of the Po Plain for the species, as well as to identify dispersal corridors connecting the northern Apennines occurrence areas and the Prealps. We modelled the species home-range scale habitat suitability based on an ensemble modelling approach. Additionally, a habitat suitability prediction carried out at a finer scale was used to parametrize the landscape resistance, based on which we modelled the potential dispersal corridors for the species using a factorial least-cost path approach. The ensemble prediction estimated a potential occurrence of the crested porcupine in 27.4% of the study area. The species occurrence probability was mainly driven by the distribution of extensive cultivations, woodlands and shrublands, and water courses and by the annual mean temperature. Conversely, the movements of the species resulted mainly sustained by woodlands and shrublands and highly hindered by simple arable lands and rice paddies. The connectivity prediction showed that three main dispersal routes are likely to connect crested porcupine occurrence areas in the northern Apennines to currently unoccupied but highly suitable areas in the Prealps. The study allowed us to identify the areas in the Prealps with the highest probability to be colonized by the crested porcupine in the near future and provided important insights for the conservation of a strictly protected species in a human-dominated landscape.

Landscape Resistance Index Aiming At Functional Forest Connectivity

The terrestrial surface is the basis for defining the species dispersion paths and overcoming the matrix resistance. In this approach, connecting paths with high levels of integrity must avoid barriers and anthropized areas. In this context, the main objective of this study was to develop the Landscape Resistance Index based on environment integrity. It was developed through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), supported by the criteria of Land Surface Temperature, Nighttime Reflectance, and Inverted NDVI, which are called observed variables. The landscape studied in the Green Belt Biosphere Reserve of São Paulo has suffered from urban sprawl. However, it has significant remnants of the Atlantic Forest, which is a biodiversity hotspot. Our results indicated criteria variability in the landscape, however, modeled through the SEM, obtaining a significant adjustment of the Landscape Resistance Index, with CFI of 1.00 and RMSEA of 0.00. The index reflects the resistance levels of the land-use/land-cover, expressed by the class interval, ranging from 0% (1.73) to 100% (493.88), with the highest values associated with the anthropized uses and forest isolation. This way, the index based on environmental attributes reflects the structure of functional forest connectivity, supporting the planning design of forest corridors across landscapes.

SPATIAL-FUNCTIONAL METHOD LAND ORDER FORMATION OF AGRICULTURE LANDSCAPE RESISTANCE

Peculiarities of natural conditions of the territory of Ukraine have historically determined mainly the agricultural use of its lands, the indirect consequence of which was the formation of agro-landscapes as a specific form of spatial realization of anthropogenic activity. The study of agrolandscapes, a comprehensive assessment of their condition and development trends, development and implementation of adequate land management solutions are a key task to avoid degradation, especially arable land. In the context of the above, the shortcomings of modern proposals and indicators for assessing the state of agricultural landscapes and their land management are considered and identified. Concerns about the recommendations of domestic scientists and practitioners to transform about 12 million hectares of arable land into other lands are justified. The motivation for this decision was the idea of excessive plowing of the territory of Ukraine, although world experience provides positive evidence of successful agriculture, even under such conditions. Allegations of insufficient study of the problem of land management formation of sustainable agrolandscapes are given. It is proposed to use the term "sustainable" for the agro-landscape, the state of which corresponds to the ecological and social-industrial conditions of land use. Systematic analysis of the structural components (lands) of the agro-landscape revealed the significant role of their interaction in creating and maintaining a microclimate favorable for crop production in adverse natural conditions. The legitimacy and expediency and practical efficiency of using the spatial-functional method of land management formation of the stability of agro-landscapes are substantiated.

Landscape resistance constrains hybridization across contact zones in a reproductively and morphologically polymorphic salamander

Explicitly accounting for phenotypic differentiation together with environmental heterogeneity is crucial to understand the evolutionary dynamics in hybrid zones. Species showing intra-specific variation in phenotypic traits that meet across environmentally heterogeneous regions constitute excellent natural settings to study the role of phenotypic differentiation and environmental factors in shaping the spatial extent and patterns of admixture in hybrid zones. We studied three environmentally distinct contact zones where morphologically and reproductively divergent subspecies of Salamandra salamandra co-occur: the pueriparous S. s. bernardezi that is mostly parapatric to its three larviparous subspecies neighbours. We used a landscape genetics framework to: (i) characterise the spatial location and extent of each contact zone; (ii) assess patterns of introgression and hybridization between subspecies pairs; and (iii) examine the role of environmental heterogeneity in the evolutionary dynamics of hybrid zones. We found high levels of introgression between parity modes, and between distinct phenotypes, thus demonstrating the evolution to pueriparity alone or morphological differentiation do not lead to reproductive isolation between these highly divergent S. salamandra morphotypes. However, we detected substantial variation in patterns of hybridization across contact zones, being lower in the contact zone located on a topographically complex area. We highlight the importance of accounting for spatial environmental heterogeneity when studying evolutionary dynamics of hybrid zones.

Energy selection functions: modelling the energetic drivers of animal movement and habitat use

1. Energetics are a key driver of animal decision-making, as survival depends on the balance between foraging benefits and movement costs. This fundamental perspective is often missing from habitat selection studies, which mainly describe correlations between space use and environmental features, rather than the mechanisms behind these correlations. To address this gap, we present a new modelling framework, the energy selection function (ESF), to assess how moving animals choose habitat based on energetic considerations. 2. The ESF considers that the likelihood of an animal selecting a movement step depends directly on the corresponding energetic gains and costs. The parameters of the ESF measure selection for energetic gains and against energetic costs; when estimated jointly, these provide inferences about foraging and movement strategies. The ESF can be implemented easily with standard conditional logistic regression software, allowing for fast inference. We outline a workflow, from data-gathering to statistical analysis, and use a case study of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) as an illustrative example. 3. We show how defining gains and costs at the scale of the movement step allows us to include detailed information about resource distribution, landscape resistance, and movement patterns. We demonstrate this in the polar bear case study, in which the results show how cost-minimization may arise in species that inhabit environments with an unpredictable distribution of energetic gains. 4. The ESF combines the energetic consequences of both movement and resource selection, thus incorporating a key aspect of evolutionary behaviour into habitat selection analysis. Because of its close links to existing habitat selection models, the ESF is widely applicable to any study system where energetic gains and costs can be derived, and has immense potential for methodological extensions.

Integrating Multiple and Fine Scale Predictors of Habitat Selection and Landscape Resistance for Amphibian Distribution Modelling at Large Scale

Context – Species distribution modelling is a common tool in conservation biology but two main criticisms remain: (1) the use of simplistic variables that do not account for species movements and/or connectivity and (2) poor consideration of multi-scale processes driving species distributions. Objectives – We aimed to determine if including multi-scale and fine-scale movement processes in SDM predictors would improve accuracy of SDM for low-mobility amphibian species over species-level analysis.Methods – We tested and compared different SDMs for nine amphibian species with four different sets of predictors: (1) simple distance-based predictors; (2) single-scale compositional predictors; (3) multi-scale compositional predictors with a priori selection of scale based on knowledge of species mobility and scale-of-effect (4) multi-scale compositional predictors calculated using a friction-based functional grain to account for resource accessibility with landscape resistance to movement.Results - Using friction-based functional grain predictors produced slight to moderate improvements of SDM performance at large scale. The multi-scale approach, with a priori scale selection led to ambiguous results depending on the species studied, in particular for generalist species.Conclusion - We underline the potential of using a friction-based functional grain to improve SDM predictions for species-level analysis.