Dispersal syndrome and landscape fragmentation in the salt-marsh specialist spider Erigone longipalpis

Dispersal and its evolution play a key role for population persistence in fragmented landscapes where habitat loss and fragmentation increase the cost of between-habitat movements. In such contexts, it is important to know how variation in dispersal and other traits is structured, and whether responses to landscape fragmentation are aligned with underlying dispersal-trait correlations, or dispersal syndromes. We therefore studied trait variation in Erigone longipalpis, a spider species specialist of (often patchy) salt marshes. We collected spiders in two salt-marsh landscapes differing in habitat availability. We then reared lab-born spiders for two generations in controlled conditions, and measured dispersal and its association with various key traits. E. longipalpis population densities were lower in the more fragmented landscape. Despite this, we found no evidence of differences in dispersal, or any other trait we studied, between the two landscapes. While a dispersal syndrome was present at the among-individual level (dispersers were more fecund and faster growing, among others), there was no indication it was genetically driven: among-family differences in dispersal were not correlated with differences in other traits. Instead, we showed that the observed phenotypic covariations were mostly due to within-family correlations. We hypothesize that the dispersal syndrome is the result of asymmetric food access among siblings, leading to variation in development rates and carrying over to adult traits. Our results show we need to better understand the sources of dispersal variation and syndromes, especially when dispersal may evolve rapidly in response to environmental change.

Human Trafficking and Corruption of Public Officials

Most countries in the world have adopted legislation tackling human trafficking and are allocating resources to fighting it. However, the content of such domestic legislation differs from country to country and its enforcement remains a challenge in many cases. In this fragmented landscape, one of the challenges in the enforcement of anti-trafficking legislation is the corruption of anti-trafficking law enforcement authorities. This article focuses on the connection between corruption and human trafficking, and on the intersection between the UN legal frameworks against human trafficking and corruption on this specific issue. The article proceeds in two parts: part 1 presents the factual connection between trafficking and corruption; part 2 analyses the intersection between the two legal frameworks and identifies some areas where there is potential for enhanced coordination.

Wild snapdragon plant pedigree sheds light on limited connectivity enhanced by higher migrant reproductive success in a fragmented landscape

Background: In contrast with historical knowledge, a recent view posits that a non-negligible proportion of populations might respond positively to habitat fragmentation. Populations might thrive in a fragmented landscape if functional connectivity, i.e., the net flow of individuals or their genes moving among suitable habitat patches, is not restricted. Alternatively, functional connectivity might be typically limited but enhanced by a higher reproductive success of migrants. Methods: We tested for this hypothesis in wild snapdragon plants inhabiting six patches separated by seawater in a fragmented Mediterranean scrubland landscape. We reconstructed their pedigree by using a parentage assignment method based on microsatellite genetic markers. We then estimated functional connectivity and the reproductive success of plants resulting from between-patch dispersal events. Results: We found that wild snapdragon plants thrived in this fragmented landscape, although functional connectivity between habitat patches was weak (i.e. 2.9%). The progeny resulting from between-patch dispersal events had a higher reproductive success than residents. Conclusion: Our findings expose a remarkable aspect of fragmented landscapes, where weak functional connectivity was enhanced by higher reproductive success after migration. This process might have the potential to compensate at least partly the negative impact of fragmentation.

Performance of Multicriteria Evaluation and Heuristic Methods in the Delineation of Green Infrastructure in Areas with Fragmented Landscapes

The EU Commission has established Green infrastructure as one of the tools to preserve biodiversity and grant the provision of ecosystem services that reduce impacts on natural values like those produced by climate change. Therefore, a European green infrastructure strategy has been created that commit member states to incorporate green infrastructure to their territorial planning. Yet, methodologies to delimit green infrastructure so as to facilitate its inclusion in territorial plans are still scarce. The available methods are mainly based in multicriteria evaluation and focus on zoning general green infrastructure areas taking into account the provision potential of just a few ecosystem services. Considering the provision of a wide range of ecosystem services to delimit green infrastructure elements is key to grant their multifunctionality and increase their efficiency mitigating climate change impacts in natural values and human population. However, the lack of data or the high cost to accurately map ecosystem services provision potential, leads most of the time to infer it from land cover data. This creates problems when using these maps to delimit green infrastructure in areas with fragmented landscapes; since identified green infrastructure areas may be irregular and scattered. There are heuristic methods like simulated annealing that have been used to identify ecosystem services hot spots which consider the regularity and size of the identified patches. These methods can be used to delimit green infrastructure in fragmented landscapes finding a balance between the regularity of the areas and their potential to provide multiple ecosystem services. In the current work, a comparison has been made between the performance of simulated annealing and current multicriteria evaluation methods to delimit green infrastructure multifunctional buffer zones in an area of north-western Spain with a very fragmented landscape. Results have shown that simulated annealing delimits more regular multifunctional buffer areas but with a less average potential for providing multiple ecosystem services. The conclusions of the paper indicate that simulated annealing is good produces more regular multifunctional areas but with a lower ESs provision potential. It was observed that in the case of ESs that were mapped considering factors at landscape scale, their provision potential did not vary too much between the multifunctional buffer areas delimited with each of the methods. This indicates that delineation methods may produce more regular GI elements if ESs provision potential is mapped considering the influence of biophysical factors at a wider landscape scale.

FLINT: Flows for the Internet of Things

New protocols and technologies are continuously competing in the Internet of Things. This has resulted in a fragmented landscape that complicates the integration of different solutions. Standardization efforts try to avoid this problem, however within a certain ecosystem, multiple standards still require integration to enable trans-sector innovation. Moreover, existing devices require transformations to fit in an ecosystem. In this paper, we discuss several integration problems in the field of Low Power Wide Area Networks in the context of the Port of the Future and propose a new distributed platform architecture, called FLINT. FLINT is a framework to program flexible and configurable flows on a per device basis. A flow is constructed from fine-grained components, called adapters. Due to the modularity of an adapter, users can easily integrate existing software. We evaluated FLINT based on five levels of interoperability and show that FLINT can be used to interconnect non-interoperable systems and protocols on every level. We have also implemented FLINT in a container based environment and demonstrated that a basic configuration has a 99% forwarding rate of 17.500 513-byte packets per second, showing that the architecture can deliver good performance.

Habitat patches providing south–north connectivity are under-protected in a fragmented landscape

As species’ ranges shift to track climate change, conservationists increasingly recognize the need to consider connectivity when designating protected areas (PAs). In fragmented landscapes, some habitat patches are more important than others in maintaining connectivity, and methods are needed for their identification. Here, using the Condatis methodology, we model range expansion through an adaptation of circuit theory. Specifically, we map ‘flow’ through 16 conservation priority habitat networks in England, quantifying how patches contribute to functional South–North connectivity. We also explore how much additional connectivity could be protected via a connectivity-led protection procedure. We find high-flow patches are often left out of existing PAs; across 12 of 16 habitat networks, connectivity protection falls short of area protection by 13.6% on average. We conclude that the legacy of past protection decisions has left habitat-specialist species vulnerable to climate change. This situation may be mirrored in many countries which have similar habitat protection principles. Addressing this requires specific planning tools that can account for the directions species may shift. Our connectivity-led reserve selection procedure efficiently identifies additional PAs that prioritize connectivity, protecting a median of 40.9% more connectivity in these landscapes with just a 10% increase in area.