The influence of location on the structure and functioning of private land conservation networks in the Western Cape province of South Africa

Protected areas are an important tool for biodiversity conservation. Statutory protected areas are, however, perceived to currently be insufficient in extent and functioning for achieving conservation goals. Conservation action on privately owned land plays an increasingly vital role in expanding the global conservation estate. Private Land Conservation Areas (PLCAs) exist with internal properties and external contexts and do not occur isolated in space and time. They can thus best be described as linked social-ecological systems. Little comprehensive work has yet been done concerning the structure and functioning of PLCAs. However, an understanding of their emergence, long-term persistence and contribution to conservation is highly relevant. How can PLCAs maintain their identity against disturbances in order to be resilient into the future? Spatial patterns and relationships determine the answer to this question. Geographical location influences the private conservation estate through different drivers, namely biophysical conditions, network connections and membership, as well as socio-economic conditions. I thus used a comparative, spatially explicit and holistic approach to better understand spatial resilience of PLCAs in the Western Cape Province of South Africa as case study region. The approach was based on assessing representative measures for four elements of system identity (being components, relationships, sources of continuity, and sources of innovation). I expected that geographical location and spatial variation in social-ecological factors strongly influence PLCA types, socio-economic interaction networks among protected areas and other stakeholders, contribution to conservation by PLCAs and their ecotourism performance. Information and data for this research were obtained from personal interviews conducted with owners and managers of 70 PLCAs across the province. Additional data were derived via conservation authorities and online tools. My findings show that the identity and resilience of PLCAs are strongly dominated by the influence of spatial location and heterogeneity in factors such as ecological features or socioeconomic context. I was able to verify existing PLCA types, namely game and habitat reserves, which strongly depended on the biophysical context. Visitation rates were influenced by location which determined the adopted corporate model of PLCAs. Clear neighbourhood effects emerged in socioeconomic interaction networks, which further highlighted great potential to enhance collaboration across scales. PLCAs provided a substantial contribution to conservation targets in terms of importance (covering critical biodiversity areas) and urgency (protecting ecosystems of threatened status). My findings will be valuable to highlight opportunities for more effective conservation in the study region, and to advance insights into the spatial resilience of social-ecological systems

Emotional content in social misinformation affects mind, brain, and judgments

Misinformation, oder „Fake News“, ist in der Online-Kommunikation weit verbreitet und beeinflusst Diskurs und Zusammenleben. Es ist jedoch wenig darüber bekannt, wie wir auf individueller Ebene beeinflusst werden, wenn wir Meinungen bilden und Urteile ableiten. Diese Dissertation untersucht die kognitiven und Gehirn Mechanismen, die der Verarbeitung sozialer, personenbezogener Misinformation zugrunde liegen. Proband*innen wurden mit negativen, positiven oder relativ neutralen personenbezogenen Nachrichten konfrontiert, die entweder verbal als unglaubwürdig gekennzeichnet waren, z.B. "angeblich", oder aus bekannten Medienquellen stammten, die als glaubwürdig oder unglaubwürdig wahrgenommen wurden. Die Ergebnisse zeigten, dass soziale Urteile stark vom emotionalen Gehalt beeinflusst waren, unabhängig von der Glaubwürdigkeit. Elektrophysiologische Korrelate früher emotionaler und erregungsbezogener Prozesse sowie Korrelate späterer evaluierender Verarbeitung waren verstärkt für Personen, die mit emotionalen Inhalten assoziiert wurden—unabhängig von der Glaubwürdigkeit der Information. Emotionale Inhalte wirken also nicht nur auf die unwillkürliche und früher Reaktion auf Nachrichten, sondern sogar auf Prozesse, für die erwartet wurde, dass sie die Information aufgrund ihrer Glaubwürdigkeit evaluieren würden. Um zu intervenieren, bewerteten die Proband*innen vor der Konfrontation mit Schlagzeilen explizit die Glaubwürdigkeit der Quelle. Dies half teilweise, die Glaubwürdigkeit positiver Nachrichteninhalte zu verarbeiten. Die Einsicht in die fehlende Glaubwürdigkeit hatte jedoch keinen Einfluss auf die Effekte negativer Nachrichteninhalte. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, wie der emotionale Gehalt sozialer Misinformation das Gehirn und das Urteilsvermögen beeinflussen kann, selbst wider besseres Wissen über die fehlende Glaubwürdigkeit. Perspektivisch helfen diese Erkenntnisse, uns den Herausforderungen von Misinformation aus Sicht der individuellen Kognition zu stellen.Misinformation, also called “fake news”, is highly prevalent in online communication affecting public discourse and social coexistence. However, little is known about how we are affected by it on the individual level when we derive opinions and judgments. This dissertation investigates the cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying the processing of social, person-related misinformation. Participants were exposed to negative, positive, or relatively neutral news about other persons that was either verbally marked as untrustworthy by adding e.g., “allegedly”, or stemmed from well-known media sources perceived as trusted or distrusted. We found that social person judgments strongly relied on the emotional content independent of the credibility, showing how social misinformation affects person evaluation although it is perceived as untrustworthy. Electrophysiological indexes of early emotional and arousal-related processes, as well as correlates of later evaluative processing were enhanced for persons associated with emotional contents regardless of the credibility of the information. This shows the pronounced influence of emotional contents not only on the initial and early response to news, but even on processes that were expected to evaluate the information on merit of its credibility. In a first attempt to intervene, participants explicitly evaluated the credibility of the source before reading the headlines. This helped to overcome the bias for positive news and process its credibility to some degree. However, the insight into the lack of credibility had no influence on the effects of negative news on brain responses and social judgments. Our results demonstrate how emotional content in social misinformation can affect mind, brain, and judgments even against better knowledge of its lacking credibility. In perspective, these insights help to face the challenges of misinformation from the perspective of the individual’s cognition

The Social Ecology of Californisation & Littoralisation in Mediterranean France

Californisierungs- und Litoralisierungsprozesse im mediterranen Frankreich wurden mit besonderem Augenmerk auf Waldbrandrisiken, Waldbrandmanagement und Ökosystemleistungen vorgestellt. Enthalten ist auch eine Analyse der Ökosystemleistungen der Region Leucate im mediterranen Südfrankreich

Bycatch of lined seahorses (Hippocampus erectus) in a Gulf of Mexico shrimp trawl fishery

Bycatch studies have largely ignored population level effects on fish species of little commercial interest. Here we analyze bycatch of the lined seahorse (Hippocampus erectus) in the bait-shrimp trawl fishery in Hernando Beach, Florida, providing the first fisheries data for this species. Based on catch per unit of effort (CPUE), size, sex, and reproductive status of trawled H. erectus, 1) approximately 72,000 seahorses were caught annually by this fleet, from a population of unknown size, 2) trawling affected population cohorts differentially because of temporal and spatial variation in CPUE and population size, and 3) a greater proportion of females than males was removed in trawling. Our findings suggest that trawling may affect seahorse populations through direct mortality, social disruption, and habitat damage. However, the lack of specific abundance or catchability estimates for H. erectus means that the precise impact of trawling on this fish remains uncertain. This paper focuses attention on the need for research and monitoring of small fishes that are caught incidentally in nonselective gear

Juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) residency and early growth in the lower Fraser River estuary

The Fraser River has historically supported the most abundant salmon runs in North America, which have been declining for decades. Despite its importance and ongoing threats of climate change and habitat degradation, the Fraser River estuary is particularly understudied, with the latest comprehensive fish survey occurring in the early 1980s. We were particularly interested in the role of estuarine habitat in supporting juvenile salmon during the critical outmigration period. As part of a two-year study, which surveyed 20 sites in the lower estuary across three habitat types, we sampled over 3,000 juvenile Chinook salmon. We caught the majority of all salmon in the marsh habitat in both 2016 and 2017, despite large differences in seasonal flows, temperatures and previous escapement. In 2016 we retained a subsample of 264 Chinook salmon for genetic and growth analyses. The vast majority of these (237) were identified by the Pacific Biological Station as lower Fraser Chinook (Harrison or Chilliwack stock), which produce the highest proportion of fall-run, ocean type Chinook in the Salish Sea. Using a combination of visual and chemical analyses of the otoliths using LA-ICPMS, we can assess the precise entry timing of these fish into the estuary, and measure their estuarine growth. In our preliminary results, we have found diverse entry and residency times among these fish of presumed similar life history strategy. Importantly, we can detect an elemental signature for marine entry in fish that have been in the estuary for a short time, which indicates that studies focusing on Chinook at later time points may be attributing estuarine growth to marine growth. Our results will help us determine the importance of the lower estuary in the marine survival of these Chinook populations, and provide some insight into life history trade-offs for ocean type juveniles

On the tensor rank of multiplication in any extension of \F_2

In this paper, we obtain new bounds for the tensor rank of multiplication in any extension of \F_2. In particular, it also enables us to obtain the best known asymptotic bound. In this aim, we use the generalized algorithm of type Chudnovsky with derivative evaluations on places of degree one, two and four applied on the descent over \F_2 of a Garcia-Stichtenoth tower of algebraic function fields defined over \F_{2^4}

A Protocol for Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) is a branch of study concerned with constructing and broadcasting a message toward habitable planets. Since the Arecibo message of 1974, the handful of METI broadcasts have increased in content and complexity, but the lack of an established protocol has produced unorganized or cryptic messages that could be difficult to interpret. Here we outline the development of a self-consistent protocol for messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence that provides constraints and guidelines for the construction of a message in order to maximize the probability that the message effectively communicates. A METI protocol considers several factors including signal encoding, message length, information content, anthropocentrism, transmission method, and transmission periodicity. Once developed, the protocol will be released for testing on different human groups worldwide and across cultural boundaries. An effective message to extraterrestrials should at least be understandable by humans, and releasing the protocol for testing will allow us to improve the protocol and develop potential messages. Through an interactive website, users across the world will be able to create and exchange messages that follow the protocol in order to discover the types of messages better suited for cross-cultural communication. The development of a METI protocol will serve to improve the quality of messages to extraterrestrials, foster international collaboration, and extend astrobiology outreach to the public.Comment: Accepted for publication in Space Polic

Sustaining Canadian Marine Biodiversity: Policy and Statutory Progress

A 2012 Expert Panel Report on marine biodiversity by the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) concluded that Canada faced significant challenges in achieving sustainable fisheries, regulating aquacul- ture, and accounting for climate change. Relative to many countries, progress by Canada in fulfilling international obligations to sustain biodiversity was deemed poor. To track progress by Canada since 2012, the RSC struck a committee to track policy and statutory developments on matters pertaining to marine biodiversity and to identify policy challenges, and leading options for implementation that lie ahead. The report by the Policy Briefing Committee is presented here. It concluded that Canada has made moderate to good progress in some areas, such as prioritization of oceans stewardship and strengthening of the evidentiary use of science in decision-making. Key statutes were strengthened through amendments, including requirements to rebuild depleted fisheries (Fisheries Act) and new means of creating marine protected areas (Oceans Act) that allowed Canada to exceed its international obligation to protect 10% of coastal and marine areas by 2020. Public release of mandate letters has strengthened ministerial accountability. However, little or no progress has been made in reducing regulatory conflict with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), decreasing ministerial discretion under the Fisheries Act, clarifying the role of science in sustainable fisheries policy, and accounting for climate change. Five future policy challenges are identified: (1) Ensure climate change impacts and projections are incorporated into ocean-related decision making and planning processes; (2) Resolve DFO’s regulatory conflict to conserve and exploit biodiversity; (3) Limit ministerial discretionary power in fisheries management decisions; (4) Clarify ambiguities in how the Precautionary Approach is applied in sustainable fisheries policy; and (5) Advance and implement marine spatial planning. Since 2012, there has been progress in recover- ing and sustaining the health of Canada’s oceans. Failure to further strengthen biodiversity conservation threatens the capacity of Canada’s oceans to provide ecosystem services that contribute to the resilience of marine life and the well-being of humankind. Unprecedented and enduring changes in the ocean caused by climate change have made the achievement of meaningful progress all the more urgent

If historic marine pollution ceases, will the natural intertidal community return? How exposure to and release from pollution disturbance shapes rocky intertidal communities in the Salish Sea

Marine ecosystems in the Salish Sea are subject to a variety of pollution-based disturbances that restructure the composition of the vegetative and animal communities. A prime historical example of this is the effluent discharged from pulp mills across the province, which have been shown to have substantial negative impacts on coastal biodiversity. However, as environmental regulations have become more stringently enforced and the economic drivers of pulp mills have slowed down, in some areas much of this pollution has abated. The diminishment and in some cases, elimination of such disturbances provides a unique opportunity to assess the recovery of communities once affected by the mill discharge. This also allows an opportunity to better understand how to develop successful marine habitat reclamation strategies for coastal sites when pollution inputs may also be present. To develop a marine ecosystem assessment model, we used a long-term monitoring dataset spanning three decades to study rocky intertidal communities situated around Salish Sea pulp mills in Howe Sound, Powell River and compared with sites in Prince Rupert. Using this dataset, we demonstrate how proximity to the pollution source negatively influenced the intertidal community at these sites. Next, we examine how the community composition shifts and recovers once the pollution disturbance is alleviated. Lastly, we take a specific look at which species and which life history traits are best able to survive in a disturbed environment and which species are best able to recolonize those once disturbed locations. This research provides insight into classic ecological theory, applied understanding of the impacts and implications of anthropogenic activity in marine ecosystems via ecological risk assessment, and novel methods by which to assess those industrial impacts and recommend successful reclamation and restoration strategies