China’s space industry will exploit vacant niches

Subject China's commercial spaceflight sector. Significance Spaceflight is one of the few high-tech industries in which China is unquestionably a world leader, operating by far the largest number of satellites of any country besides the United States. Impacts The government may subsidise commercial launches for diplomatic and industrial policy reasons, but the aim is to make them profitable. China’s success in spaceflight will be a model and inspiration for other sectors seeking technological independence. Chinese space businesses will benefit from ‘military-civil fusion’, a policy for commercialising previously restricted military technology.

AFRICAN DIRECTION IN THE FOREIGN POLICYOF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

In his article, the author attempts to scientifically analyze and understand the problems of cooperation between Russia and the countries of the African continent in the diplomatic, economic, trade, ideological and other areas of cooperation. The construction of relations between the USSR and the countries of the African continent began after the end of the WW2 and was caused, first of all, by the need to find allies in various parts of the planet. In the postwar years and until 1990, cooperation developed most actively, in several directions at once. Specialists from the USSR were engaged in the training of the local people, building of factories and the economy as a whole, social security and resolution of the regional disputes, etc. But, unfortunately, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and to the present day, cooperation has not been restored to the previous level, primarily due to the fact that the vacant niches were occupied by the Western countries.

Main directions and results of researches of phytoinvasion

The aim of this work is to generalize the main trends and the research results related to the expansion of invasive plant species. The main hypotheses that explain the success of invasive species are reviewed. The hypotheses are: absence of natural enemies in the secondary area, influence of hybridization and allelopathy on the processes of invasion, the hypothesis of vacant niches, the emergence of new genotypes with expressive adaptive features, the rapid development of genetic traits associated with the pressure of natural selection in new environmental conditions, the importance of bioecological features of invasive species – by morphological and biomorphological plasticity, ecological versatility, ecological-phytocoenic strategies, features of reproduction, etc. Invasion of non-native species is primarily caused by anthropogenic transformation of the natural environment, which is aggravated by climate change. The increasing level of transformation of the environment leads to an increase in the degree of naturalization of non-native species, and as a consequence to modification of types of habitats and to a loss of individual populations of natural species. Processes of naturalization of invasive species are supported by a set of specific various systematic groups of factors. The lack of an effective monitoring system and information tools prevents effective control of invasive non-native species. The necessity to construct models of the behavior of invasive species and to check the predictions of their invasive activity is substantiated.

Coprolites reveal ecological interactions lost with the extinction of New Zealand birds

Over the past 50,000 y, biotic extinctions and declines have left a legacy of vacant niches and broken ecological interactions across global terrestrial ecosystems. Reconstructing the natural, unmodified ecosystems that preceded these events relies on high-resolution analyses of paleoecological deposits. Coprolites are a source of uniquely detailed information about trophic interactions and the behaviors, gut parasite communities, and microbiotas of prehistoric animal species. Such insights are critical for understanding the legacy effects of extinctions on ecosystems, and can help guide contemporary conservation and ecosystem restoration efforts. Here we use high-throughput sequencing (HTS) of ancient eukaryotic DNA from coprolites to reconstruct aspects of the biology and ecology of four species of extinct moa and the critically endangered kakapo parrot from New Zealand (NZ). Importantly, we provide evidence that moa and prehistoric kakapo consumed ectomycorrhizal fungi, suggesting these birds played a role in dispersing fungi that are key to NZ’s natural forest ecosystems. We also provide the first DNA-based evidence that moa frequently supplemented their broad diets with ferns and mosses. Finally, we also find parasite taxa that provide insight into moa behavior, and present data supporting the hypothesis of coextinction between moa and several parasite species. Our study demonstrates that HTS sequencing of coprolites provides a powerful tool for resolving key aspects of ancient ecosystems and may rapidly provide information not obtainable by conventional paleoecological techniques, such as fossil analyses.

Fishery Resources, Environment, and Conservation in the Mississippi and Yangtze (Changjiang) River Basins

<em>Abstract</em>.—A total of 13 alien fish species were introduced to the middle reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River with the development of aquaculture in recent years. Eight of these species now have established populations and five have not established. To explore the mechanism for alien fish species establishment in this river, we compiled 23 biological traits of those species and tested for differences in biological trait and ecological niche between the established and nonestablished fish species. The trait analysis results showed that successfully established fish species have smaller body length, smaller egg diameter, earlier sexual maturity, and wider diet breadth than the nonestablished species. Ecological niches between established and nonestablished fish species also differed significantly. Our results support the vacant niche hypothesis that the successfully established species could occupy the vacant niches in the introduced range. We also used a model to predict the invasion risk of 27 potentially introduced fish species in the middle reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River. The model predicted that there was a higher risk of establishment for 15 of the 27 species.

Extinction and ecological retreat in a community of primates

The lemurs of Madagascar represent a prodigious adaptive radiation. At least 17 species ranging from 11 to 160 kg have become extinct during the past 2000 years. The effect of this loss on contemporary lemurs is unknown. The concept of competitive release favours the expansion of living species into vacant niches. Alternatively, factors that triggered the extinction of some species could have also reduced community-wide niche breadth. Here, we use radiocarbon and stable isotope data to examine temporal shifts in the niches of extant lemur species following the extinction of eight large-bodied species. We focus on southwestern Madagascar and report profound isotopic shifts, both from the time when now-extinct lemurs abounded and from the time immediately following their decline to the present. Unexpectedly, the past environments exploited by lemurs were drier than the protected (albeit often degraded) riparian habitats assumed to be ideal for lemurs today. Neither competitive release nor niche contraction can explain these observed trends. We develop an alternative hypothesis: ecological retreat, which suggests that factors surrounding extinction may force surviving species into marginal or previously unfilled niches.

Ecomorphometric structure of Restinga da Marambaia lizard community, Rio de Janeiro, southeastern Brazil

In restinga areas of Marambaia, Rio de Janeiro, we recorded nine species of lizards, grouped in four families. The morphometric analysis suggested an invasion-structured pattern, with two distinct groups of species in the community: the "ground-runners", composed of animals with robust bodies and long limbs, represented by Tropidurus torquatus (Wied, 1820), Ameiva ameiva (Linnaeus, 1758), Liolaemus lutzae Mertens, 1938, Cnemidophorus littoralis Rocha, Araujo, Vrcibradic & Costa, 2000 and Tupinambis merianae (Duméril & Bibron, 1839); and the "hiders", composed of small-bodied animals with short limbs, represented by Hemidactylus mabouia (Moreau de Jonnès, 1818), Gymnodactylus darwinii (Gray, 1845), Mabuya agilis (Raddi, 1823) and M. macrorhyncha Hoge, 1947. The morphological relationships within the restinga lizard community reflect the influence of the habitat physical structure: bromeliad availability and other refugia, used by the "hiders", and the distribution of open areas, used by the "ground-runners". Our results also indicate that the restingas hold "ecomorphological spaces" (vacant niches) available for occupation by additional lizard species.

Changes in the structure and function of the North Sea fish foodweb, 1973–2000, and the impacts of fishing and climate

North Sea environmental and biological data were analysed to examine 30-year changes in production and consumption in the fish foodweb. The analysis revealed that the demand for secondary production placed on the ecosystem by fish declined from approximately 20 g C m−2 y−1 in the 1970s to 16 g C m−2 y−1 in the 1990s. Over the same period, the proportion of demand provided by zooplankton production increased from around 70% to 75%. The overall decrease was mainly due to a reduction in piscivorous demersal fish. Average secondary production by omnivorous zooplankton was estimated to be 35 g C m−2 y−1, and annual fluctuations were positively correlated with the gross production of planktivorous fish. The results suggest a “bottom-up” control of the pelagic foodweb. Individual planktivore species have been impacted by fishing, but the populations of other functionally similar species have expanded to fill the vacant niches, thus maintaining the planktivore role in the system. In contrast, the results indicate that benthos production was more “top-down” controlled. Overall, demersal fish species have been depleted by fishing, with no obvious species expansions to fill the vacant niche, releasing the benthos from predation pressure, and leading to an increase in benthic production and fisheries for invertebrates.