Ecological notes on the East Gippsland burrowing crayfish Engaeus orientalis, including burrow structure and associated fauna

Despite Australia having a high diversity of freshwater crayfish species, the ecology of many of these species remains poorly known, particularly burrowing crayfish of the genus Engaeus. Biological information on colour, behaviour, burrow structure, associated burrow fauna and habitat of the East Gippsland Burrowing Crayfish Engaeus orientalis obtained during incidental observations in 2007 and 2008 is provided. The burrow structure took the form of radiating runways under a rock slab, while the burrow location was in a semi-disturbed site away from water. Both are atypical for this species

A high altitude observation of the beautiful firetail Stagonopleura bella from East Gippsland, Victoria

There has been little research on the ecological requirements of the Beautiful Firetail Stagonopleura bella, and its habitat preferences are poorly understood. On mainland Australia, the Beautiful Firetail is generally considered to be a bird of coastal regions and the lowlands. This note reports an observation of Beautiful Firetails on the Great Dividing Range at a height of more than 1100 metres above sea level from an atypical habitat for mainland Australia. It appears that the observation may be the highest altitude at which this species has been recorded on the mainland

The influence of urbanisation on avifaunal composition in Melbourne

There are many questions that need to be examined regarding the effect of urbanisation on bird communities. Surprisingly little research has focused on the urban environment, and its potential to contribute to the sustainability of biodiversity. During the Autumn of 2002 we conducted a study examining the effect of urbanisation on bird community structure and composition in the urban streetscape and park environment. In this study we compared the bird communities of urban woodland parks, streets dominated by established native trees, streets dominated by established exotic trees and new developments with limited established vegetation. Results from this study suggested that the composition of bird communities is highly variable and dependent on the type of site (ie: park or streetscape) and the type of vegetation present (native versus exotic). The most significant trend was the loss of native bird species in the transition from park to non-park habitats, and the loss of native bird species in exotic streetscapes when compared to native streetscapes. Introduced bird species showed an interesting relationship with more species being found in the new developments and the streetscapes with exotic vegetation. This relationship is further highlighted when the density of exotic species is examined. The proportion of the bird density attributed for by introduced birds differed significantly between the different habitat treatments. New developments and exotic streetscapes had significantly higher proportions of the bird density composed of introduced species when compared to parks and sites with native streetscapes. This talk will discuss the effect of urbanisation on avifaunal composition in Melbourne and suggest possible management recommendations.<br /

Refugees and residents: densities and habitat preferences of lorikeets in urban Melbourne

Lorikeet densities were measured across four habitat types in urban Melbourne. Musk Glossopsitta concinna and Rainbow Lorikeets Trichoglossus haematodus were shown to preferentially use established streetscapes with predominantly native vegetation. The high densities of Musk Lorikeets recorded possibly reflect a paucity of flowering in Victorian BoxIronbark forests during the autumnlwinter of 2002 and the availability of supplementary nectar resources in the urban environment. Future planting decisions in recently developed streetscapes will dictate the long-term resource potential for lorikeets and other nectarivores in urban Melbourne.<br /

Health costs and benefits associated with economic transitions: linking records of address change, property value, and self-reported health

Deprivation is a major risk to population health, in particular when experienced during childhood. Poor health in the early years accumulates and is expressed in adult health inequalities. Policy makers may aim to mitigate against the ill effects of deprivation by trying to increase social mobility and facilitating moves towards better earnings and living conditions or by protecting against the effects of downward moves and the experience of deprivation. This paper uses address change and property value data at the individual and family level to examine whether poor health outcomes occur more frequently among people who move between addresses and particularly those who move to properties with lower property values. We use the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study, linking health and demographic data from 2001 and 2011 Censuses to house valuations for a representative 28% of the population aged 10–64 years (N = 342,681). Young persons (aged 10–15 years) living in a house valued at over £160,000 were half as likely to be reported as having mental ill health as those living in a house valued under £75,000 (OR = 0.49, CI: 0.31–0.78). There was no strong evidence that upward or downward mobility affected mental health or physical health for young people, but ill health of working aged persons showed a strong association with moving to houses of lower value. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding the dynamics of social mobility and health and in terms of how various policies towards poverty may influence population health

Sorption of active pharmaceutical ingredients in untreated wastewater effluent and effect of dilution in freshwater: Implications for an “impact zone” environmental risk assessment approach

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. Evidence of ecotoxicological effects of active pharmaceuticals ingredients (APIs) has increased research into their environmental fate. In low and low-middle income countries (LLMICs) the main source of APIs to surface waters is from discharge of untreated wastewater. Consequently, concentrations of APIs can be relatively high in the “impact zone” downstream of a discharge point. Little is known about the fate of APIs in these impact zones. In this laboratory scale investigation, the effect of successive dilution of synthetic untreated wastewater (dilution factor 1 to 10) on the distribution of APIs was studied. The sorption was consistent with the chemical properties of each compound: charge, lipophilicity, and structure. Dilution increased desorption of the basic and neutral APIs (up to 27.7%) and correlated with their lipophilicity (R 2 > 0.980); the positive charge was of secondary importance. Anions did not significantly desorb ( < 10% loss). Increased concentrations of dissolved organic matter at dilutions of 8 and 10 times that of untreated wastewater coincided with lower dissolved API concentrations. The data showed a clear trend in the desorption process of APIs that may lead to higher exposure risk than anticipated. Therefore, it is suggested that these aspects should be accounted for in the development of dedicated environmental risk assessment approach for APIs in riverine impact zones of LLMICs countries

Segmenting accelerometer data from daily life with unsupervised machine learning

Purpose: Accelerometers are increasingly used to obtain valuable descriptors of physical activity for health research. The cut-points approach to segment accelerometer data is widely used in physical activity research but requires resource expensive calibration studies and does not make it easy to explore the information that can be gained for a variety of raw data metrics. To address these limitations, we present a data-driven approach for segmenting and clustering the accelerometer data using unsupervised machine learning. Methods: The data used came from five hundred fourteen-year-old participants from the Millennium cohort study who wore an accelerometer (GENEActiv) on their wrist on one weekday and one weekend day. A Hidden Semi-Markov Model (HSMM), configured to identify a maximum of ten behavioral states from five second averaged acceleration with and without addition of x, y, and z-angles, was used for segmenting and clustering of the data. A cut-points approach was used as comparison. Results: Time spent in behavioral states with or without angle metrics constituted eight and five principal components to reach 95% explained variance, respectively; in comparison four components were identified with the cut-points approach. In the HSMM with acceleration and angle as input, the distributions for acceleration in the states showed similar groupings as the cut-points categories, while more variety was seen in the distribution of angles. Conclusion: Our unsupervised classification approach learns a construct of human behavior based on the data it observes, without the need for resource expensive calibration studies, has the ability to combine multiple data metrics, and offers a higher dimensional description of physical behavior. States are interpretable from the distributions of observations and by their duration

The effect of breed and diet type on the global transcriptome of hepatic tissue in beef cattle divergent for feed efficiency

peer-reviewedBackground Feed efficiency is an important economic and environmental trait in beef production, which can be measured in terms of residual feed intake (RFI). Cattle selected for low-RFI (feed efficient) have similar production levels but decreased feed intake, while also emitting less methane. RFI is difficult and expensive to measure and is not widely adopted in beef production systems. However, development of DNA-based biomarkers for RFI may facilitate its adoption in genomic-assisted breeding programmes. Cattle have been shown to re-rank in terms of RFI across diets and age, while also RFI varies by breed. Therefore, we used RNA-Seq technology to investigate the hepatic transcriptome of RFI-divergent Charolais (CH) and Holstein-Friesian (HF) steers across three dietary phases to identify genes and biological pathways associated with RFI regardless of diet or breed. Results Residual feed intake was measured during a high-concentrate phase, a zero-grazed grass phase and a final high-concentrate phase. In total, 322 and 33 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified across all diets for CH and HF steers, respectively. Three genes, GADD45G, HP and MID1IP1, were differentially expressed in CH when both the high-concentrate zero-grazed grass diet were offered. Two canonical pathways were enriched across all diets for CH steers. These canonical pathways were related to immune function. Conclusions The absence of common differentially expressed genes across all dietary phases and breeds in this study supports previous reports of the re-ranking of animals in terms of RFI when offered differing diets over their lifetime. However, we have identified biological processes such as the immune response and lipid metabolism as potentially associated with RFI divergence emphasising the previously reported roles of these biological processes with respect to RFI