Alien Registration- Fontaine, Joseph A. (Portland, Cumberland County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/23851/thumbnail.jp

Biodiversity Scale-Dependence and Opposing Multi-level Correlations Underlie Differences among Taxonomic, Phylogenetic and Functional Diversity

Aim: Biodiversity is a multidimensional property of biological communities that represents different information depending on how it is measured, but how dimensions relate to one another and under what conditions is not well understood. We explore how taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity can differ in scale-of-effect dependence and habitat-biodiversity relationships, and subsequently how spatial differences among biodiversity dimensions may arise. Location: Nebraska, United States. Taxon: Birds. Methods: Across 2016 and 2017, we conducted 2,641 point counts at 781 sites. We modeled the occupancy of 141 species using Bayesian Bernoulli-Bernoulli hierarchical logistic regressions. We calculated species richness (SR), phylogenetic diversity (PD), and functional diversity (FD) for each site and year based on predicted occupancy, accounting for imperfect detection. Using Bayesian latent indicator scale selection and multivariate modeling, we quantified the spatial scales-of-effect that best explained the relationships between environmental characteristics and SR, PD, and FD. Additionally, we decomposed the residual between-site and within-site biodiversity correlations using our repeated measures design. Results: Although relationships between specific land cover types and SR, PD, and FD were qualitatively similar, the spatial scales at which these variables were important in explaining biodiversity differed among dimensions. Between-site residual biodiversity correlations were negative, yet within-site biodiversity residual correlations were positive. Main conclusions: Our results demonstrate how spatial differences among biodiversity dimensions may arise from biodiversity-specific scale-dependent habitat relationships, low shared environmental correlations, and opposing residual correlations between dimensions, suggesting that single-scale and single-dimension analyses are not entirely appropriate for quantifying habitat-biodiversity relationships. After accounting for shared habitat relationships, we found positive within-site residual correlations between SR, PD, and FD, suggesting that habitat change over time influenced all biodiversity dimensions similarly. However, negative between-site residual correlation among biodiversity dimensions may indicate trade-offs in achieving maximum biodiversity across multiple biodiversity dimensions at any given location

Assessing Landscape Constraints on Species Abundance: Does the Neighborhood Limit Species Response to Local Habitat Conservation Programs?

Landscapes in agricultural systems continue to undergo significant change, and the loss of biodiversity is an ever-increasing threat. Although habitat restoration is beneficial, management actions do not always result in the desired outcome. Managers must understand why management actions fail; yet, past studies have focused on assessing habitat attributes at a single spatial scale, and often fail to consider the importance of ecological mechanisms that act across spatial scales. We located survey sites across southern Nebraska, USA and conducted point counts to estimate Ring-necked Pheasant abundance, an economically important species to the region, while simultaneously quantifying landscape effects using a geographic information system. To identify suitable areas for allocating limited management resources, we assessed land cover relationships to our counts using a Bayesian binomial-Poisson hierarchical model to construct predictive Species Distribution Models of relative abundance. Our results indicated that landscape scale land cover variables severely constrained or, alternatively, facilitated the positive effects of local land management for Ring-necked Pheasants

Translating statistical species-habitat models to interactive decision support tools

Understanding species-habitat relationships is vital to successful conservation, but the tools used to communicate species-habitat relationships are often poorly suited to the information needs of conservation practitioners. Here we present a novel method for translating a statistical species-habitat model, a regression analysis relating ring-necked pheasant abundance to landcover, into an interactive online tool. The Pheasant Habitat Simulator combines the analytical power of the R programming environment with the user-friendly Shiny web interface to create an online platform in which wildlife professionals can explore the effects of variation in local landcover on relative pheasant habitat suitability within spatial scales relevant to individual wildlife managers. Our tool allows users to virtually manipulate the landcover composition of a simulated space to explore how changes in landcover may affect pheasant relative habitat suitability, and guides users through the economic tradeoffs of landscape changes. We offer suggestions for development of similar interactive applications and demonstrate their potential as innovative science delivery tools for diverse professional and public audience

Bat Response to Differing Fire Severity in Mixed-Conifer Forest California, USA

Abstract Wildlife response to natural disturbances such as fire is of conservation concern to managers, policy makers, and scientists, yet information is scant beyond a few well-studied groups (e.g., birds, small mammals). We examined the effects of wildfire severity on bats, a taxon of high conservation concern, at both the stand (,1 ha) and landscape scale in response to the 2002 McNally fire in the Sierra Nevada region of California, USA. One year after fire, we conducted surveys of echolocation activity at 14 survey locations, stratified in riparian and upland habitat, in mixed-conifer forest habitats spanning three levels of burn severity: unburned, moderate, and high. Bat activity in burned areas was either equivalent or higher than in unburned stands for all six phonic groups measured, with four groups having significantly greater activity in at least one burn severity level. Evidence of differentiation between fire severities was observed with some Myotis species having higher levels of activity in stands of high-severity burn. Larger-bodied bats, typically adapted to more open habitat, showed no response to fire. We found differential use of riparian and upland habitats among the phonic groups, yet no interaction of habitat type by fire severity was found. Extent of high-severity fire damage in the landscape had no effect on activity of bats in unburned sites suggesting no landscape effect of fire on foraging site selection and emphasizing stand-scale conditions driving bat activity. Results from this fire in mixed-conifer forests of California suggest that bats are resilient to landscapescale fire and that some species are preferentially selecting burned areas for foraging, perhaps facilitated by reduced clutter and increased post-fire availability of prey and roosts

The Proximal Drivers of Large Fires: A Pyrogeographic Study

Variations in global patterns of burning and fire regimes are relatively well measured, however, the degree of influence of the complex suite of biophysical and human drivers of fire remains controversial and incompletely understood. Such an understanding is required in order to support current fire management and to predict the future trajectory of global fire patterns in response to changes in these determinants. In this study we explore and compare the effects of four fundamental controls on fire, namely the production of biomass, its drying, the influence of weather on the spread of fire and sources of ignition. Our study area is southern Australia, where fire is currently limited by either fuel production or fuel dryness. As in most fire-prone environments, the majority of annual burned area is due to a raelatively small number of large fires. We train and test an Artificial Neural Networks ability to predict spatial patterns in the probability of large fires (>1,250 ha) in forests and grasslands as a function of proxies of the four major controls on fire activity. Fuel load is represented by predicted forested biomass and remotely sensed grass biomass, drying is represented by fraction of the time monthly potential evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation, weather is represented by the frequency of severe fire weather conditions and ignitions are represented by the average annual density of reported ignitions. The response of fire to these drivers is often non-linear. Our results suggest that fuel management will have limited capacity to alter future fire occurrence unless it yields landscape-scale changes in fuel amount, and that shifts between, rather than within, vegetation community types may be more important. We also find that increased frequency of severe fire weather could increase the likelihood of large fires in forests but decrease it in grasslands. These results have the potential to support long-term strategic planning and risk assessment by fire management agencies.OP’s salary was provided by the NSW Rural Fire Service. MB was partly financially supported by the Bushfires and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre

Excess Synaptojanin 1 Contributes to Place Cell Dysfunction and Memory Deficits in the Aging Hippocampus in Three Types of Alzheimer’s Disease

The phosphoinositide phosphatase synaptojanin 1 (SYNJ1) is a key regulator of synaptic function. We first tested whether SYNJ1 contributes to phenotypic variations in familial Alzheimer’s disease (FAD) and show that SYNJ1 polymorphisms are associated with age of onset in both early- and late-onset human FAD cohorts. We then interrogated whether SYNJ1 levels could directly affect memory. We show that increased SYNJ1 levels in autopsy brains from adults with Down syndrome (DS/AD) are inversely correlated with synaptophysin levels, a direct readout of synaptic integrity. We further report age-dependent cognitive decline in a mouse model overexpressing murine Synj1 to the levels observed in human sporadic AD, triggered through hippocampal hyperexcitability and defects in the spatial reproducibility of place fields. Taken together, our findings suggest that SYNJ1 contributes to memory deficits in the aging hippocampus in all forms of AD

Genetic risk and a primary role for cell-mediated immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals, and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis

Sterol Intermediates of Cholesterol Biosynthesis Inhibit Hair Growth and Trigger an Innate Immune Response in Cicatricial Alopecia

Primary cicatricial alopecia (PCA) is a group of inflammatory hair disorders that cause scarring and permanent hair loss. Previous studies have implicated PPARγ, a transcription factor that integrates lipogenic and inflammatory signals, in the pathogenesis of PCA. However, it is unknown what triggers the inflammatory response in these disorders, whether the inflammation is a primary or secondary event in disease pathogenesis, and whether the inflammatory reaction reflects an autoimmune process. In this paper, we show that the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway is impaired in the skin and hair follicles of PCA patients. Treatment of hair follicle cells with BM15766, a cholesterol biosynthesis inhibitor, or 7-dehydrocholesterol (7-DHC), a sterol precursor, stimulates the expression of pro-inflammatory chemokine genes. Painting of mouse skin with 7-DHC or BM15766 inhibits hair growth, causes follicular plugging and induces the infiltration of inflammatory cells into the interfollicular dermis. Our results demonstrate that cholesterologenic changes within hair follicle cells trigger an innate immune response that is associated with the induction of toll-like receptor (TLR) and interferon (IFN) gene expression, and the recruitment of macrophages that surround the hair follicles and initiate their destruction. These findings reveal a previously unsuspected role for cholesterol precursors in PCA pathogenesis and identify a novel link between sterols and inflammation that may prove transformative in the diagnosis and treatment of these disorders