Changing Bee and Hoverfly Pollinator Assemblages along an Urban-Rural Gradient

The potential for reduced pollination ecosystem service due to global declines of bees and other pollinators is cause for considerable concern. Habitat degradation, destruction and fragmentation due to agricultural intensification have historically been the main causes of this pollinator decline. However, despite increasing and accelerating levels of global urbanization, very little research has investigated the effects of urbanization on pollinator assemblages. We assessed changes in the diversity, abundance and species composition of bee and hoverfly pollinator assemblages in urban, suburban, and rural sites across a UK city.Bees and hoverflies were trapped and netted at 24 sites of similar habitat character (churchyards and cemeteries) that varied in position along a gradient of urbanization. Local habitat quality (altitude, shelter from wind, diversity and abundance of flowers), and the broader-scale degree of urbanization (e.g. percentage of built landscape and gardens within 100 m, 250 m, 500 m, 1 km, and 2.5 km of the site) were assessed for each study site. The diversity and abundance of pollinators were both significantly negatively associated with higher levels of urbanization. Assemblage composition changed along the urbanization gradient with some species positively associated with urban and suburban land-use, but more species negatively so. Pollinator assemblages were positively affected by good site habitat quality, in particular the availability of flowering plants.Our results show that urban areas can support diverse pollinator assemblages, but that this capacity is strongly affected by local habitat quality. Nonetheless, in both urban and suburban areas of the city the assemblages had fewer individuals and lower diversity than similar rural habitats. The unique development histories of different urban areas, and the difficulty of assessing mobile pollinator assemblages in just part of their range, mean that complementary studies in different cities and urban habitats are required to discover if these findings are more widely applicable

State of the climate in 2018

In 2018, the dominant greenhouse gases released into Earth’s atmosphere—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—continued their increase. The annual global average carbon dioxide concentration at Earth’s surface was 407.4 ± 0.1 ppm, the highest in the modern instrumental record and in ice core records dating back 800 000 years. Combined, greenhouse gases and several halogenated gases contribute just over 3 W m−2 to radiative forcing and represent a nearly 43% increase since 1990. Carbon dioxide is responsible for about 65% of this radiative forcing. With a weak La Niña in early 2018 transitioning to a weak El Niño by the year’s end, the global surface (land and ocean) temperature was the fourth highest on record, with only 2015 through 2017 being warmer. Several European countries reported record high annual temperatures. There were also more high, and fewer low, temperature extremes than in nearly all of the 68-year extremes record. Madagascar recorded a record daily temperature of 40.5°C in Morondava in March, while South Korea set its record high of 41.0°C in August in Hongcheon. Nawabshah, Pakistan, recorded its highest temperature of 50.2°C, which may be a new daily world record for April. Globally, the annual lower troposphere temperature was third to seventh highest, depending on the dataset analyzed. The lower stratospheric temperature was approximately fifth lowest. The 2018 Arctic land surface temperature was 1.2°C above the 1981–2010 average, tying for third highest in the 118-year record, following 2016 and 2017. June’s Arctic snow cover extent was almost half of what it was 35 years ago. Across Greenland, however, regional summer temperatures were generally below or near average. Additionally, a satellite survey of 47 glaciers in Greenland indicated a net increase in area for the first time since records began in 1999. Increasing permafrost temperatures were reported at most observation sites in the Arctic, with the overall increase of 0.1°–0.2°C between 2017 and 2018 being comparable to the highest rate of warming ever observed in the region. On 17 March, Arctic sea ice extent marked the second smallest annual maximum in the 38-year record, larger than only 2017. The minimum extent in 2018 was reached on 19 September and again on 23 September, tying 2008 and 2010 for the sixth lowest extent on record. The 23 September date tied 1997 as the latest sea ice minimum date on record. First-year ice now dominates the ice cover, comprising 77% of the March 2018 ice pack compared to 55% during the 1980s. Because thinner, younger ice is more vulnerable to melting out in summer, this shift in sea ice age has contributed to the decreasing trend in minimum ice extent. Regionally, Bering Sea ice extent was at record lows for almost the entire 2017/18 ice season. For the Antarctic continent as a whole, 2018 was warmer than average. On the highest points of the Antarctic Plateau, the automatic weather station Relay (74°S) broke or tied six monthly temperature records throughout the year, with August breaking its record by nearly 8°C. However, cool conditions in the western Bellingshausen Sea and Amundsen Sea sector contributed to a low melt season overall for 2017/18. High SSTs contributed to low summer sea ice extent in the Ross and Weddell Seas in 2018, underpinning the second lowest Antarctic summer minimum sea ice extent on record. Despite conducive conditions for its formation, the ozone hole at its maximum extent in September was near the 2000–18 mean, likely due to an ongoing slow decline in stratospheric chlorine monoxide concentration. Across the oceans, globally averaged SST decreased slightly since the record El Niño year of 2016 but was still far above the climatological mean. On average, SST is increasing at a rate of 0.10° ± 0.01°C decade−1 since 1950. The warming appeared largest in the tropical Indian Ocean and smallest in the North Pacific. The deeper ocean continues to warm year after year. For the seventh consecutive year, global annual mean sea level became the highest in the 26-year record, rising to 81 mm above the 1993 average. As anticipated in a warming climate, the hydrological cycle over the ocean is accelerating: dry regions are becoming drier and wet regions rainier. Closer to the equator, 95 named tropical storms were observed during 2018, well above the 1981–2010 average of 82. Eleven tropical cyclones reached Saffir–Simpson scale Category 5 intensity. North Atlantic Major Hurricane Michael’s landfall intensity of 140 kt was the fourth strongest for any continental U.S. hurricane landfall in the 168-year record. Michael caused more than 30 fatalities and $25 billion (U.S. dollars) in damages. In the western North Pacific, Super Typhoon Mangkhut led to 160 fatalities and$6 billion (U.S. dollars) in damages across the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau, mainland China, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Tropical Storm Son-Tinh was responsible for 170 fatalities in Vietnam and Laos. Nearly all the islands of Micronesia experienced at least moderate impacts from various tropical cyclones. Across land, many areas around the globe received copious precipitation, notable at different time scales. Rodrigues and Réunion Island near southern Africa each reported their third wettest year on record. In Hawaii, 1262 mm precipitation at Waipā Gardens (Kauai) on 14–15 April set a new U.S. record for 24-h precipitation. In Brazil, the city of Belo Horizonte received nearly 75 mm of rain in just 20 minutes, nearly half its monthly average. Globally, fire activity during 2018 was the lowest since the start of the record in 1997, with a combined burned area of about 500 million hectares. This reinforced the long-term downward trend in fire emissions driven by changes in land use in frequently burning savannas. However, wildfires burned 3.5 million hectares across the United States, well above the 2000–10 average of 2.7 million hectares. Combined, U.S. wildfire damages for the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons exceeded $40 billion (U.S. dollars)

OROBANCHE RIPARIA (OROBANCHACEAE), A NEW SPECIES FROM THE AMERICAN MIDWEST

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Cryptic host-specific diversity among western hemisphere broomrapes (Orobanche s.l., Orobanchaceae).

Background and aimsThe broomrapes, Orobanche sensu lato (Orobanchaceae), are common root parasites found across Eurasia, Africa and the Americas. All species native to the western hemisphere, recognized as Orobanche sections Gymnocaulis and Nothaphyllon, form a clade that has a centre of diversity in western North America, but also includes four disjunct species in central and southern South America. The wide ecological distribution coupled with moderate taxonomic diversity make this clade a valuable model system for studying the role, if any, of host-switching in driving the diversification of plant parasites.MethodsTwo spacer regions of ribosomal nuclear DNA (ITS + ETS), three plastid regions and one low-copy nuclear gene were sampled from 163 exemplars of Orobanche from across the native geographic range in order to infer a detailed phylogeny. Together with comprehensive data on the parasites' native host ranges, associations between phylogenetic lineages and host specificity are tested.Key resultsWithin the two currently recognized species of O. sect. Gymnocaulis, seven strongly supported clades were found. While commonly sympatric, members of these clades each had unique host associations. Strong support for cryptic host-specific diversity was also found in sect. Nothaphyllon, while other taxonomic species were well supported. We also find strong evidence for multiple amphitropical dispersals from central North America into South America.ConclusionsHost-switching is an important driver of diversification in western hemisphere broomrapes, where host specificity has been grossly underestimated. More broadly, host specificity and host-switching probably play fundamental roles in the speciation of parasitic plants

Identification of Thresholds on Population Density for Understanding Transmission of COVID-19

Pathways of transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in the human population are still emerging. However, empirical observations suggest that dense human settlements are the most adversely impacted, corroborating a broad consensus that human-to-human transmission is a key mechanism for the rapid spread of this disease. Here, using logistic regression techniques, estimates of threshold levels of population density were computed corresponding to the incidence (case counts) in the human population. Regions with population densities greater than 3,000 person per square mile in the United States have about 95% likelihood to report 43,380 number of average cumulative cases of COVID-19. Since case numbers of COVID-19 dynamically changed each day until 30 November 2020, ca. 4% of US counties were at 50% or higher probability to 38,232 number of COVID-19 cases. While threshold on population density is not the sole indicator for predictability of coronavirus in human population, yet it is one of the key variables on understanding and rethinking human settlement in urban landscapes