Options for a new integrated natural resources monitoring framework for Wales. Phase 1 project report

Healthy natural resources underpin significant economic sectors in Wales including agriculture, fisheries, tourism and forestry, they also make a significant contribution across Cabinet policies including the health and well-being agenda. In order to develop policies that build social, economic and environmental resilience and to evaluate policy implementation, a robust natural resources monitoring framework is required. Current monitoring activities are of varying quality, not sufficiently aligned to the new legislative and policy landscape, disjointed and when considered as a whole, potentially not as cost-effective as they could be. This project was tasked with identifying options and developing recommendations for an integrated natural resources monitoring framework for Wales reflecting the ambitions and integrating principles of the Environment Act and Well Being of Future Generations Act. The monitoring community, the Welsh Government and Natural Resources Wales Core Evidence Group, the project team, stakeholders and partners, have agreed on a set of recommendations

Investigating odonates' response to climate change in Great Britain: a tale of two strategies

Aim Species are largely thought to maintain broadly static niches over time, an assumption underpinning much theoretical ecology including the implementation of ecological models to project species' current and future distributions. Here, we assess niche conservatism in odonates in Great Britain over the past six decades by simultaneously quantifying changes in species geographic distribution and evaluating temporal trends in species realised climatic niche.LocationGreat Britain. Methods Distributional changes were assessed by calculating changes in species distribution centres and deriving occupancy trends. Changes in climatic niches were assessed using a principal component analysis to quantify niche overlap, using information on both climate averages and extremes. Results We show that dragonflies and damselflies displayed distinct responses to changing climatic conditions. Dragonflies shifting to higher latitudes maintained, on average, greater consistency in their climatic niches, providing evidence for climate tracking. Greater climate niche flexibility and increased occupancy over time, on the other hand, were more common in damselflies. Main Conclusions We unveil evidence for climatic niche divergence in damselflies on a national scale, casting doubt on the relevance of species distribution models for predicting the impacts of climate change on this, and potentially other, groups of species. More broadly, our results call for more multi‐species temporal comparisons of spatial distributions and climate niches during recent periods of changes in climatic conditions to improve our ability to contrast species' vulnerability risk to the ongoing climate crisis

Investigating the potential of social media and citizen science data to track changes in species' distributions

How to best track species as they rapidly alter their distributions in response to climate change has become a key scientific priority. Information on species distributions is derived from biological records, which tend to be primarily sourced from traditional recording schemes, but increasingly also by citizen science initiatives and social media platforms, with biological recording having become more accessible to the general public. To date, however, our understanding of the respective potential of social media and citizen science to complement the information gathered by traditional recording schemes remains limited, particularly when it comes to tracking species on the move with climate change. To address this gap, we investigated how species occurrence observations vary between different sources and to what extent traditional, citizen science, and social media records are complementary, using the Banded Demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens) in Britain as a case study. Banded Demoiselle occurrences were extracted from citizen science initiatives (iRecord and iNaturalist) and social media platforms (Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter), and compared with traditional records primarily sourced from the British Dragonfly Society. Our results showed that species presence maps differ between record types, with 61% of the citizen science, 58% of the traditional, and 49% of the social media observations being unique to that data type. Banded Demoiselle habitat suitability maps differed most according to traditional and social media projections, with traditional and citizen science being the most consistent. We conclude that (i) social media records provide insights into the Banded Demoiselle distribution and habitat preference that are different from, and complementary to, the insights gathered from traditional recording schemes and citizen science initiatives; (ii) predicted habitat suitability maps that ignore information from social media records can substantially underestimate (by over 3500 km2 in the case of the Banded Demoiselle) potential suitable habitat availability

Monitoring ectomycorrhizal fungi at large scales for science, forest management, fungal conservation and environmental policy

International audienceKey message The ICP Forests network can be a platform for large-scale mycorrhizal studies. Mapping and monitoring of mycorrhizas have untapped potential to inform science, management, conservation and policy regarding distributions, diversity hotspots, dominance and rarity, and indicators of forest changes.ContextA dearth of information about fungi at large scales has severely constrained scientific, forest management, fungal conservation and environmental policy efforts worldwide. Nonetheless, fungi fulfil critical functional roles in our changing environments and represent a considerable proportion of terrestrial biodiversity. Mycorrhizal fungi are increasingly viewed as a major functional guild across forest ecosystems, and our ability to study them is expanding rapidly.AimsThis study aimed to discuss the potential for starting a mycorrhizal monitoring programme built upon the existing forest monitoring network, raise questions, propose hypotheses and stimulate further discussion.ResultsAn overview of the state-of-the-art regarding forest ectomycorrhizal ecology raises questions and recommendations for scaling up mycorrhizal assessments aimed at informing a variety of stakeholders, with a new focus on conservation and policy.ConclusionFungal research and conservation are areas that can be informed by ICP Forests and may lead to useful spin-offs; research linked to long-term forest monitoring plots will enhance the relevance of science and conservation

Glutamate Receptor Ion Channels: Structure, Regulation, and Function

The mammalian ionotropic glutamate receptor family encodes 18 gene products that coassemble to form ligand-gated ion channels containing an agonist recognition site, a transmembrane ion permeation pathway, and gating elements that couple agonist-induced conformational changes to the opening or closing of the permeation pore. Glutamate receptors mediate fast excitatory synaptic transmission in the central nervous system and are localized on neuronal and non-neuronal cells. These receptors regulate a broad spectrum of processes in the brain, spinal cord, retina, and peripheral nervous system. Glutamate receptors are postulated to play important roles in numerous neurological diseases and have attracted intense scrutiny. The description of glutamate receptor structure, including its transmembrane elements, reveals a complex assembly of multiple semiautonomous extracellular domains linked to a pore-forming element with striking resemblance to an inverted potassium channel. In this review we discuss International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology glutamate receptor nomenclature, structure, assembly, accessory subunits, interacting proteins, gene expression and translation, post-translational modifications, agonist and antagonist pharmacology, allosteric modulation, mechanisms of gating and permeation, roles in normal physiological function, as well as the potential therapeutic use of pharmacological agents acting at glutamate receptors