Identifying knowledge gaps for successful restorative aquaculture of Ostrea edulis: a bibliometric analysis

Background: Active restoration is necessary to enhance the recovery of Ostrea edulis reefs, which contribute to many ecosystem services. Restoration can be integrated within aquaculture practices, bringing positive environmental changes while maximising space utilisation. The restoration project MAREA (MAtchmaking Restoration Ecology and Aquaculture) aims to bring back O. edulis in the North-West Adriatic addressing the feasibility of its cultivation. Both successful restoration and sustainable aquaculture require a thorough understanding of the ecological needs, as the requirements of both activities need to be harmonized. Therefore, one of the preliminary activities before embarking on the pilot was the completion of a thorough literature review to identify research directions and gaps required for ‘restorative aquaculture’, aiming to gather the most up to date O. edulis knowledge on a global and local scale. Methods: Internet (Web of Science, Scopus, Google scholar) and physical resources (libraries) were searched for all available global and local knowledge on O. edulis. Bibliometrix was used to identify the main research topics using keywords, titles, and abstracts analyses. Studies were then manually screened and summarised to extract knowledge specific to restoration and aquaculture. Results: While restoration studies are recent, evidence for the loss of this species and potential causes (and solutions) have been discussed since the end of the 19th century. While diseases were a leading cause for reef loss, substratum limitation appears to be one of the leading limiting factors for both restoration and aquaculture of O. edulis, and was already mentioned in the early texts that were found. Conclusions: The review highlighted that restoration success and aquaculture feasibility depend upon the crucial stage of settlement. The project ‘MAREA’ will therefore increase its focus on this stage, both in terms of timing, location, and materials for settlement plates placement.

Fungal Perspective of Pine and Oak Colonization in Mediterranean Degraded Ecosystems

Forest restoration has become one of the most important challenges for restoration ecology in the recent years. In this regard, soil fungi are fundamental drivers of forest ecosystem processes, with significant implications for plant growth and survival. However, the post-disturbance recovery of belowground communities has been rarely assessed, especially in highly degraded systems such as mines. Our aim was to compare forests and mined systems for biomass and structure of fungal communities in soil during early stages of tree establishment after disturbance. We performed ergosterol analysis and PacBio and Illumina sequencing of internal transcribed spacer 2 amplicons across soil layers in P. sylvestris, Q. robur and Q. ilex (holm oak) forests and naturally revegetated mined sites. In pine forests, total fungal biomass was significantly higher in litter and humus compared to mineral layers, with dominance of the mycorrhizal genera Tomentella, Inocybe and Tricholoma. Conversely, in oak forests the most abundant mycorrhizal genera were Tomentella, Cortinarius and Sebacina, but the biomass of saprotrophic fungi was greater in the litter layer compared to mycorrhizal fungi, with the genus Preussia being the most abundant. In the revegetated mined sites, ectomycorrhizal fungi dominated in the humus and mineral layers, with the mycorrhizal genus Oidiodendron being dominant. In contrast, in holm oak forests saprotrophic fungi dominated both soil humus and mineral layers, with the genera of Alternaria, Bovista and Mycena dominating the soil humus forest layer, while the genus Cadophora dominated the mineral layer. The habitat-specific differences in soil fungal community composition and putative functions suggest that an understanding of soil–plant–microbial interactions for different tree species and use of specific soil/litter inoculum upon planting/seeding might help to increase the effectiveness of tree restoration strategies in Mediterranean degraded sites.

Forest Transformation in the Wake of Colonization: The Quijos Andean Amazonian Flank, Past and Present

Forest transformation modified the Quijos’ ancient mountainscapes in three ways: scientific approximation, entrepreneurial investing, and community engagement. We concentrate the study in the Cumandá Protected Forest reserve as exemplar in the Quijos valley. Our objective is to understand forest transition trends and prospects of sustainability by answering qualitative research questions of impact on cloud forest vegetation from a socioecological standpoint. We used ethnographic work, personal interviews, surveys to the community, and queries to authorities; our qualitative methods included critical discourse analyses, onomastic interpretation, and matrix comparison for ecological legacies, focused on three sectors of the economy that we posit impacted these forests, all indicative of a more competitive, globalized framework: forest tourism, retreating forest frontier, and mining forested watersheds. We found that these sectors also helped alleviate poverty in local communities so that ecotourism, non-traditional forest product harvest, and subsistence mining of water could become stewards, despite the fact that such a nuanced approach has not yet been fully implemented by local governments. We conclude that Hostería Cumandá promotes new conservation narratives in positive ways, since it fuels grassroots organizations to incorporate nature conservation into restoration ecology efforts, provides studies on mountain forest species of concern in the area, generates local employment, and converts a transitory, ephemeral attraction into an international tourism destination.

How far to build it before they come? Analyzing the use of the Field of Dreams hypothesis in bull kelp restoration

In restoration ecology, the Field of Dreams Hypothesis posits that restoration efforts that create a suitable environment could lead to eventual recovery of the remaining aspects of the ecosystem through natural processes. Natural processes following partial restoration has lead to ecosystem recovery in both terrestrial and aquatic systems. However, understanding the efficacy of a "field of dreams" approach requires comparison of different approaches to partial restoration in terms of spatial, temporal, and ecological scale to what would happen with more comprehensive restoration efforts. We explore the relative effect of partial restoration and ongoing recovery on restoration efficacy with a dynamical model based on temperate rocky reefs in Northern California. We analyze our model for both the ability and rate of bull kelp forest recovery under different restoration strategies. We compare the efficacy of a partial restoration approach with a more comprehensive restoration effort by exploring how kelp recovery likelihood and rate change with varying intensities of urchin removal and kelp outplanting over different time periods and spatial scales. We find that, for the case of bull kelp forests, setting more favorable initial conditions for kelp recovery through implementing both urchin harvesting and kelp outplanting at the start of the restoration project has a bigger impact on the kelp recovery rate than applying restoration efforts through a longer period of time. Therefore partial restoration efforts, in terms of spatial and temporal scale, can be significantly more effective when applied across multiple ecological scales in terms of both the capacity and rate of achieving the target outcomes.

Rooting Responses of Female and Male Cuttings of Leucadendron elimense E. Phillips subsp. elimense on the Type and Concentration of Auxin

Female and male plants of difficult-to-root species Leucadendron elimense subsp. elimense were investigated for rooting potential with three rooting hormones: indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA), and indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) at three different concentrations (2000 ppm, 4000 ppm, and 6000 ppm). The experiment was made under essential misting, bottom heat, and a naturally ventilated greenhouse. After 18 weeks the experiment terminated and callusing and rooting percentage, root number, and root length were determined. Female cuttings rooted in the highest percentage (80%), root number (>30), and root length (close to 100 mm) after treatment with IAA at 4000 ppm. Under the above treatment male cuttings rooted in 70%, with a mean root number of 24 and root length of 90 mm. The efficient rooting results could aid in saving the species in its natural habitat and supporting restoration ecology, as well as introducing this species into the flower market.

Identifying knowledge gaps for successful restorative aquaculture of Ostrea edulis: a bibliometric analysis

Background: Active restoration is necessary to enhance the recovery of Ostrea edulis reefs, which contribute to many ecosystem services. Restoration can be integrated within aquaculture practices, bringing positive environmental changes while maximising space utilisation. The restoration project MAREA (MAtchmaking Restoration Ecology and Aquaculture) aims to bring back O. edulis in the North-West Adriatic addressing the feasibility of its cultivation. Both successful restoration and sustainable aquaculture require a thorough understanding of the ecological needs, as the requirements of both activities (e.g. to maximise ecosystem services, seed production, settlement for maintaining population and for starting a new culture) need to be harmonized. Therefore, one of the preliminary activities before embarking on the pilot was the completion of a thorough literature review to identify research directions and gaps required for ‘restorative aquaculture’, aiming to gather the most up to date O. edulis knowledge on a global and local scale. Methods: Internet (Web of Science, Scopus, Google scholar) and physical resources (libraries) were searched for all available global and local knowledge on O. edulis. Bibliometrix was used to identify the main research topics using keywords, titles and abstracts analyses. Studies were then manually screened and summarised to extract knowledge specific to restoration and aquaculture. Results: While restoration studies are recent, evidence for the loss of this species and potential causes (and solutions) have been discussed since the end of the 19th century. While diseases was a leading cause for reef loss, substratum limitation appears to be one of the leading limiting factors for both restoration and aquaculture of O. edulis, and was already mentioned in the early texts that were found. Conclusions: Information regarding the best materials, location and timing for larval settlement were collated in this review, and the focus of MAREA will be shifted to the crucial stage of settlement.

Solutions in microbiome engineering: prioritizing barriers to organism establishment

Microbiome engineering is increasingly being employed as a solution to challenges in health, agriculture, and climate. Often manipulation involves inoculation of new microbes designed to improve function into a preexisting microbial community. Despite, increased efforts in microbiome engineering inoculants frequently fail to establish and/or confer long-lasting modifications on ecosystem function. We posit that one underlying cause of these shortfalls is the failure to consider barriers to organism establishment. This is a key challenge and focus of macroecology research, specifically invasion biology and restoration ecology. We adopt a framework from invasion biology that summarizes establishment barriers in three categories: (1) propagule pressure, (2) environmental filtering, and (3) biotic interactions factors. We suggest that biotic interactions is the most neglected factor in microbiome engineering research, and we recommend a number of actions to accelerate engineering solutions.