Continental-scale patterns in diel flight timing of high-altitude migratory insects

Many insects depend on high-altitude, migratory movements during part of their life cycle. The daily timing of these migratory movements is not random, e.g. many insect species show peak migratory flight activity at dawn, noon or dusk. These insects provide essential ecosystem services such as pollination but also contribute to crop damage. Quantifying the diel timing of their migratory flight and its geographical and seasonal variation, are hence key towards effective conservation and pest management. Vertical-looking radars provide continuous and automated measurements of insect migration, but large-scale application has not been possible because of limited availability of suitable devices. Here, we quantify patterns in diel flight periodicity of migratory insects between 50 and 500 m above ground level during March-October 2021 using a network of 17 vertical-looking radars across Europe. Independent of the overall daily migratory movements and location, peak migratory movements occur around noon, during crepuscular evening and occasionally the morning. Relative daily proportions of insect migration intensity and traffic during the diel phases of crepuscular-morning, day, crepuscular-evening and night remain largely equal throughout May-September and across Europe. These findings highlight, extend, and generalize previous regional-scale findings on diel migratory insect movement patterns to the whole of temperate Europe.This article is part of the theme issue 'Towards a toolkit for global insect biodiversity monitoring'

Continental-scale patterns in diel flight timing of high-altitude migratory insects

This is the final version. Available on open access from the Royal Society via the DOI in this recordData accessibility: The proportional migratory insect intensity and traffic data are available from the Zenodo repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10626690 [50].Many insects depend on high-altitude, migratory movements during part of their life cycle. The daily timing of these migratory movements is not random, e.g. many insect species show peak migratory flight activity at dawn, noon or dusk. These insects provide essential ecosystem services such as pollination but also contribute to crop damage. Quantifying the diel timing of their migratory flight and its geographical and seasonal variation, are hence key towards effective conservation and pest management. Vertical-looking radars provide continuous and automated measurements of insect migration, but large-scale application has not been possible because of limited availability of suitable devices. Here, we quantify patterns in diel flight periodicity of migratory insects between 50 and 500 m above ground level during March-October 2021 using a network of 17 vertical-looking radars across Europe. Independent of the overall daily migratory movements and location, peak migratory movements occur around noon, during crepuscular evening and occasionally the morning. Relative daily proportions of insect migration intensity and traffic during the diel phases of crepuscular-morning, day, crepuscular-evening and night remain largely equal throughout May-September and across Europe. These findings highlight, extend, and generalize previous regional-scale findings on diel migratory insect movement patterns to the whole of temperate Europe

Productivity affects the density–body mass relationship of soil fauna communities

The productivity of ecosystems and their disturbance regime affect the structure of animal communities. However, it is not clear which trophic levels benefit the most from higher productivity or are the most impacted by disturbance. The density-body mass (DBM) relationship has been shown to reflect changes in the structure of communities subjected to environmental modifications, so far, mainly in aquatic systems. We tested how different seawater inundation frequencies and cattle grazing, which both disturbed and impacted the productivity of a terrestrial system, a salt marsh, affected the size structure of soil fauna communities, expressed by their DBM relationship. We hypothesized that either: (1) all the trophic levels of soil fauna would benefit from higher productivity (i.e., amount of litter mass), reflected by a higher Y-intercept of the DBM relationship; (2) only smaller animals would benefit, reflected by a lower slope of the relationship; (3) or only larger animals would benefit, reflected by a higher slope of the relationship. We collected a large range of soil fauna from different elevation levels in grazed and ungrazed areas, thence subjected to different levels of productivity, represented by litter mass, with the most inundated and grazed area as the least productive one. Considering that pore size must be smaller in inundated and grazed areas, productivity seemed to be a greater factor influencing species distribution than soil structure. We found slopes lower than-0.75, showing that large animals dominated the community. However, a difference between the DBM relationships of the most and least frequently inundated ungrazed sites indicated that higher productivity benefited the smaller animals. Our findings show that high productivity does not equally affect the different trophic levels of this soil fauna community, suggesting inefficient transfers of energy from one trophic level to another, as smaller species benefitted more from higher productivity. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd

Status report of the VINCY Cyclotron

The VINCY Cyclotron is the main part of the TESLA Accelerator Installation. The diameter of the pole of this machine is 2000 mm. Its bending constant is 145 MeV while its focusing constant is 75 MeV. The radiofrequency system of the machine consists of two l/4-resonators with the eigenfrequency in the range from 17 to 31 MHz. Ions coming from a heavy ion source or a light ion source will be injected into the machine axially. They will be introduced into its median plane by a spiral inflector. Heavy ions accelerated in the machine will be extracted from it by a foil stripping system or by an electrostatic deflection system. Light ions will be extracted from it by the foil stripping system. The first programs of use of the VINCY Cyclotron are related to routine and experimental production of radioisotopes and radiopharmaceuticals, and to biomedical research with ion beams. The first beam extracted from the machine will be the proton beam of the energy of 22 MeV obtained from the H2+ beam extracted from the light ion source. This beam will be used first for production of radioisotope 18F and radio-pharmaceutical 18FDG, to be employed for positron emission tomograph

When Adam blogs : cultural work and the gender division of labour in Utopia

Taking as its starting point the current resurgence of interest in Utopian alternatives to capitalist forms of production, including those based on cultural co-production, this chapter takes a critical look at Utopias, from Thomas More to the present day, which propose idealized future societies in which people are emancipated from exploitative labour relations. It examines the ways in which these Utopias have envisaged cultural labour – whether as specialist artistic occupations or as a general creative dimension of all labour – and relates this to the gender divisions of labour envisaged for these idealized societies. It concludes that most Utopias fail to imagine future changes in the social division between paid and unpaid work. Where these have gone beyond a model of small self-sufficient agrarian communities, even if they have envisaged changes in the technical division of labour, they have reproduced existing gender divisions of labour, excluding unpaid reproductive work from their visions of emancipation and work-sharing. In so doing, they have constructed cultural labour as something which is supported invisibly by the reproductive labour of others.Peer reviewe