Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time, and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space. While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes, vast areas of the tropics remain understudied. In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity, but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases. To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge, it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost

Baseline Characterization of Retinal Vascular Disease in Eyes with Mild to Moderate Non Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy (NPDR) in Diabetes Type 2, Using Novel Non-Invasive Imaging Methods, in a Longitudinal, Prospective and Interventional 2-Year Clinical Study (Cordis)

Characterization of retinal microvascular changes occurring in eyes with mild to moderate non proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR), during a period of 2 years using lower than optical normal reflectivity (LOR) ratios obtained with OCT-Leakage. Capillary closure in the superficial and deep retinal vascular layers using OCTAngiography (OCTA) will be also analyzed in eyes that are at risk for developing sight threatening diabetic retinopathy (central involved macular edema (CIME) or proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio