Predicting the effect of habitat change on waterfowl communities: a novel empirical approach

Natural environmental changes, such as coastal erosion, and human developments, ranging from roads and marinas to global climate change, are leading to much habitat change in wetlands. It would be valuable to conservationists, governments and developers tob be able to predict the likely act of such evolution on the internationally important waterbird populationsin European wetlands. We present a method, based on relatively easily and cheaply determined environmental variables, which allows the effect of habitat Change on estuary wateifowl cornmunities to be predicted. The factors that best describe waterfowl communities are estuary length, channel and shore widths, exposure to swell, sediment type, longitude and latitude. The implications for waterfowl of any habitat change that affects these variables are discussed. It is suggested that when human developments are being designed they should take these factors into account in an attempt to minimise their impact on waterfowl

England Biodiversity Strategy - towards adapation to climate change. Final report to Defra for contract CRO327

1. The evidence that the Earth’s climate is changing as a consequence of human activity is strong and accepted by the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion. The changing climate is beginning to have an impact on English ecosystems and this impact is expected to increase and accelerate in future, threatening the conservation of biodiversity. 2. The England Biodiversity Strategy (EBS) “Working with the Grain of Nature” aims to ensure that biodiversity considerations become embedded in all the main sectors of economic activity that have an impact on or relationship with delivery of biodiversity objectives, both public and private. 3. This report reviews the scientific evidence and summarises the potential impacts of climate change on the biodiversity of England within each of the sectors of the EBS: Agriculture, Water and Wetlands, Woodland and Forestry, Coastal and Marine, Towns and Cities. It includes direct impacts and indirect ones resulting from human responses to climate change. It gives a brief overview of the main non-climatic pressures on biodiversity and their possible interactions with climate change. Principles and measures for adapting biodiversity policy and management to climate change are presented

Correlation between self-reported rigidity and rule-governed insensitivity to operant contingencies

Adults were selected on the basis of their scores on the Scale for Personality Rigidity (Rehfisch, 1958a). Their scores served as a measure of hypothesized rule governance in the natural environment. Experiment 1 studied the effects of accurate versus minimal instructions and high versus low rigidity on performance on a multiple differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate (DRL) 4-s fixed-ratio (FR) 18 schedule. When the schedule was switched to extinction, accurate instructions and high rigidity were associated with greater perseveration in the response pattern subjects developed during the reinforcement phase. In Experiment 2, the effects of rigidity and of accurate versus inaccurate instructions were studied. Initially, all subjects received accurate instructions about an FR schedule. The schedule was then switched to DRL, but only half of the subjects received instructions about the DRL contingency, and the other half received FR instructions as before. Accurate instructions minimized individual differences because both high and low scorers on the rigidity scale earned points in DRL. However, when inaccurate instructions were provided, all high-rigidity subjects followed them although they did not earn points on the schedule, whereas most low-rigidity subjects abandoned them and responded appropriately to DRL. The experiments demonstrate a correlation between performances observed in the human operant laboratory and a paper-and-pencil test of rigidity that purportedly reflects important response styles that differentiate individuals in the natural environment. Implications for applied research and intervention are discussed