Earth History and the Evolution of Caribbean Bats

Although the natural history of the Caribbean is better understood now than ever before, a general biogeographic explanation for the peculiar faunal composition of the islands remains elusive. New molecular phylogenetic and divergence analyses presented here show that dispersal and diversification in Caribbean bats are synchronous with sea level drops during inter-stage transitions in the Miocene. The phylogenies indicate that several continental bat species descended from West Indian ancestors, as the exceptionally low sea level of the Miocene transitions allowed for two-way biotic exchange between the islands and the continent. These results suggest a common mechanism underlies colonization and subsequent speciation in the Caribbean, and underscore the importance of geological history in all biogeographic scenarios, including dispersal

Parameter selection and performance comparison of particle swarm optimization in sensor networks localization

Localization is a key technology in wireless sensor networks. Faced with the challenges of the sensors\u27 memory, computational constraints, and limited energy, particle swarm optimization has been widely applied in the localization of wireless sensor networks, demonstrating better performance than other optimization methods. In particle swarm optimization-based localization algorithms, the variants and parameters should be chosen elaborately to achieve the best performance. However, there is a lack of guidance on how to choose these variants and parameters. Further, there is no comprehensive performance comparison among particle swarm optimization algorithms. The main contribution of this paper is three-fold. First, it surveys the popular particle swarm optimization variants and particle swarm optimization-based localization algorithms for wireless sensor networks. Secondly, it presents parameter selection of nine particle swarm optimization variants and six types of swarm topologies by extensive simulations. Thirdly, it comprehensively compares the performance of these algorithms. The results show that the particle swarm optimization with constriction coefficient using ring topology outperforms other variants and swarm topologies, and it performs better than the second-order cone programming algorithm

Comparative study between metaheuristic algorithms for internet of things wireless nodes localization

Wireless networks are currently used in a wide range of healthcare, military, or environmental applications. Wireless networks contain many nodes and sensors that have many limitations, including limited power, limited processing, and narrow range. Therefore, determining the coordinates of the location of a node of the unknown location at a low cost and a limited treatment is one of the most important challenges facing this field. There are many meta-heuristic algorithms that help in identifying unknown nodes for some known nodes. In this manuscript, hybrid metaheuristic optimization algorithms such as grey wolf optimization and salp swarm algorithm are used to solve localization problem of internet of things (IoT) sensors. Several experiments are conducted on every meta-heuristic optimization algorithm to compare them with the proposed method. The proposed algorithm achieved high accuracy with low error rate (0.001) and low power consumption

Gap Analysis and the Geographical Distribution of Parasites

Sampling biases can have enormous impacts on studies of parasite biogeography. While complete sampling is sometimes possible for local or regional patterns of parasitism, continental and global analyses often rely on data collected in a heterogeneous manner. At these larger scales, spatially-explicit methods to quantify and correct for geographic sampling biases are necessary. Approaches based on “gap analysis” can contribute to the development of corrective measures by identifying geographical variation in our knowledge of parasites and quantifying how sampling varies in relation to host characteristics and habitat features. In this chapter, we review these methods and describe how they have been applied to study gaps in our knowledge of primate parasites.Human Evolutionary Biolog

Developing alternatives for optimal representation of seafloor habitats and associated communities in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary

The implementation of various types of marine protected areas is one of several management tools available for conserving representative examples of the biological diversity within marine ecosystems in general and National Marine Sanctuaries in particular. However, deciding where and how many sites to establish within a given area is frequently hampered by incomplete knowledge of the distribution of organisms and an understanding of the potential tradeoffs that would allow planners to address frequently competing interests in an objective manner. Fortunately, this is beginning to change. Recent studies on the continental shelf of the northeastern United States suggest that substrate and water mass characteristics are highly correlated with the composition of benthic communities and may therefore, serve as proxies for the distribution of biological biodiversity. A detailed geo-referenced interpretative map of major sediment types within Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (SBNMS) has recently been developed, and computer-aided decision support tools have reached new levels of sophistication. We demonstrate the use of simulated annealing, a type of mathematical optimization, to identify suites of potential conservation sites within SBNMS that equally represent 1) all major sediment types and 2) derived habitat types based on both sediment and depth in the smallest amount of space. The Sanctuary was divided into 3610 0.5 min2 sampling units. Simulations incorporated constraints on the physical dispersion of sampling units to varying degrees such that solutions included between one and four site clusters. Target representation goals were set at 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 percent of each sediment type, and 10 and 20 percent of each habitat type. Simulations consisted of 100 runs, from which we identified the best solution (i.e., smallest total area) and four nearoptimal alternates. We also plotted total instances in which each sampling unit occurred in solution sets of the 100 runs as a means of gauging the variety of spatial configurations available under each scenario. Results suggested that the total combined area needed to represent each of the sediment types in equal proportions was equal to the percent representation level sought. Slightly larger areas were required to represent all habitat types at the same representation levels. Total boundary length increased in direct proportion to the number of sites at all levels of representation for simulations involving sediment and habitat classes, but increased more rapidly with number of sites at higher representation levels. There were a large number of alternate spatial configurations at all representation levels, although generally fewer among one and two versus three- and four-site solutions. These differences were less pronounced among simulations targeting habitat representation, suggesting that a similar degree of flexibility is inherent in the spatial arrangement of potential protected area systems containing one versus several sites for similar levels of habitat representation. We attribute these results to the distribution of sediment and depth zones within the Sanctuary, and to the fact that even levels of representation were sought in each scenario. (PDF contains 33 pages.