A checklist of the land Mollusca (Gastropoda) of the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, with new records and description of new taxa

The first comprehensive checklists since the works of Germain in 1916 are presented for the terrestrial mollusca of São Tomé and Príncipe. The fauna currently known comprises 59 species for São Tomé, 45 for Príncipe, and a total of 86 species in the country as a whole. Seven species of terrestrial Gastropoda are newly described from the island of São Tomé and six more from the island of Príncipe. The genera involved are Cyathopoma (Cyclophoridae), Maizania and Thomeomaizania (Maizaniidae), Pseudoveronicella (Veronicellidae), Nothapalus (Achatinidae), Gulella and Streptostele (Streptaxidae), Truncatellina (Truncatellinidae), Afroconulus (Euconulidae), Principicochlea n. gen., Principotrochoidea n. gen., Thomithapsia n. gen. and Thomitrochoidea n. gen. (Urocyclidae). Most of these are from natural forest habitats and are likely to be singleisland endemics. Aporachis n. gen. (Achatinidae s.l.) and Apothapsia n. gen. (Helicarionidae) are also described to accommodate previously known species. Rachis burnayi (Dohrn) and R. eminula (Morelet) are placed in the genus Gittenedouardia. Additional new island records are of ten species on São Tomé, one on Príncipe and two more on both islands. These include six species of “microgastropods” with wider ranges in tropical Africa that are likely to be hitherto overlooked parts of the indigenous fauna and six anthropogenic introductions. Pseudopeas crossei previously known only from Príncipe and Bioko is newly recorded on São Tomé. More detailed taxonomic notes are provided on identification and delimitation of species and genera in Cyclophoridae/ Maizaniidae, Veronicellidae, Achatinidae, Cerastidae, Helicarionidae, and on the forgotten but apparently valid Pseudoveronicella thomensis (Veronicellidae).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Foraging behaviour and diet of Brown boobies Sula leucogaster from Tinhosas Islands, Gulf of Guinea

Seabirds are a highly threatened group, yet the foraging ecology of several species remains poorly understood. Brown boobies breed in all oceans in the tropical region and are common across their range. In Tinhosa Grande (São Tomé and Príncipe), this species breeds in one of the largest colonies of seabirds in the east tropical Atlantic. We studied the foraging ecology of Brown boobies from this colony during the chick-rearing period. Thirty-three birds were tracked with GPS loggers and their diet was analysed from 11 regurgitations, using traditional and DNA barcoding techniques for prey identifcation. A total of 127 completed foraging trips were identifed, 89% of which lasted less than 24 h. Females performed signifcantly longer trips and both sexes foraged preferentially over deep oceanic waters. The diet of Brown boobies included juvenile fsh and squid (Sthenoteuthis pteropus), comprising mostly fsh species whose juvenile phases live in the pelagic environment, and only migrate to coastal waters when adults. The most frequent of those prey found was Flying gurnard (Dactylopterus volitans). The relevance of such prey shows that Brown booby conservation depends not only on the management of their foraging areas and breeding sites but also on the correct management of the coastal adjacent areas that support the adult individuals of some of their prey. Our results suggest that the areas closest to the colony do not have available resources for these birds to feed on and that Brown boobies may be associate with subsurface marine predators or with sargassum patches to forage.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCTinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A tale of two species: the importance of native ecosystems for long-term conservation on Príncipe Island, Gulf of Guinea

Since it was first described in 1901, the Príncipe thrush Turdus xanthorhynchus has been rare and restricted to the native forest in the south of Príncipe Island. The Obô giant land snail Archachatina bicarinata, however, was widespread across the island and at least locally abundant until the 1990s. Since then its population has collapsed, and now, like the thrush, it is also restricted to the native forest in the south of the island. Using species distribution modelling, we show that both species are currently strongly associated with rugged and remote areas of native forest at high altitudes. We argue that their current distribution might be negatively affected by anthropogenic pressures, as both are harvested, and also because invasive alien species are expected to have deleterious effects on these species, although further studies are needed to clarify interactions between these native and introduced species. The diachronic stories of these species highlight an overlooked value of native ecosystems: their role in the conservation of widespread species that might be unable to use anthropogenic landscapes in the future. They also reinforce the need for protected areas that strive to exclude most human activities in the context of particularly sensitive biodiversity, as is often the case on oceanic islands.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Who knows, who cares? Untangling ecological knowledge and nature connection among Amazonian colonist farmers

Conservationists often assume that connection with and caring about nature's well‐being is strongly linked to ecological knowledge. Existing evidence on the link between ecological knowledge and psychological nature connection is mixed, geographically limited to countries in the Global North, and does not scrutinise potential differences in determinants of ecological knowledge and nature connection. We investigate the relationship between psychological nature connection and ecological knowledge of local bird species, and assess their associations with potential drivers, including access to, contact with, and reliance on nature and socio‐demographic characteristics. Our study is carried among a novel participant population of colonist farmers living along a major deforestation frontier in the Brazilian Amazon. Our study context has high conservation relevance and provides an ideal setting to assess the extent to which conservation psychology's insights from the Global North hold true elsewhere. Tropical farm‐forest frontiers suffer from intense habitat and biodiversity loss, and farmers with migrant origins are important yet rarely studied conservation stakeholders. Importantly, farmers' experiences of nature are likely to vary considerably due to the wide range of socio‐demographic, economic, geographical and cultural diversity. Interviewees scored highly on two indices of nature connection, but scores were higher among older people and those with greater contact with nature. Bird identification knowledge was generally low to moderate, and higher among men and younger people. Species more frequently recognised were regionally common, larger‐bodied or associated with non‐forest habitats. Ecological knowledge of birds and nature connection were not correlated, and they did not have any predictors in common. Our results indicate that colonist farmers are capable of forming strong connections with nature, even if they rarely possess detailed knowledge of local forest biodiversity. Considering the complex and apparently context‐dependent relationship between knowing and caring about nature, it is unwise to assume that changing one would automatically affect the other

New dryocosmus giraud species associated with cyclobalanopsis and non-quercus host plants from the eastern palaearctic (hymenoptera, cynipidae, cynipini)

Volume: 53Start Page: 77End Page: 16

Food for pollinators: quantifying the nectar and pollen resources of urban flower meadows

Planted meadows are increasingly used to improve the biodiversity and aesthetic amenity value of urban areas. Although many ‘pollinator-friendly’ seed mixes are available, the floral resources these provide to flower-visiting insects, and how these change through time, are largely unknown. Such data are necessary to compare the resources provided by alternative meadow seed mixes to each other and to other flowering habitats. We used quantitative surveys of over 2 million flowers to estimate the nectar and pollen resources offered by two exemplar commercial seed mixes (one annual, one perennial) and associated weeds grown as 300m2 meadows across four UK cities, sampled at six time points between May and September 2013. Nectar sugar and pollen rewards per flower varied widely across 65 species surveyed, with native British weed species (including dandelion, Taraxacum agg.) contributing the top five nectar producers and two of the top ten pollen producers. Seed mix species yielding the highest rewards per flower included Leontodon hispidus, Centaurea cyanus and C. nigra for nectar, and Papaver rhoeas, Eschscholzia californica and Malva moschata for pollen. Perennial meadows produced up to 20x more nectar and up to 6x more pollen than annual meadows, which in turn produced far more than amenity grassland controls. Perennial meadows produced resources earlier in the year than annual meadows, but both seed mixes delivered very low resource levels early in the year and these were provided almost entirely by native weeds. Pollen volume per flower is well predicted statistically by floral morphology, and nectar sugar mass and pollen volume per unit area are correlated with flower counts, raising the possibility that resource levels can be estimated for species or habitats where they cannot be measured directly. Our approach does not incorporate resource quality information (for example, pollen protein or essential amino acid content), but can easily do so when suitable data exist. Our approach should inform the design of new seed mixes to ensure continuity in floral resource availability throughout the year, and to identify suitable species to fill resource gaps in established mixes

Psychosocial interventions for supporting women to stop smoking in pregnancy

Background: Tobacco smoking remains one of the few preventable factors associated with complications in pregnancy, and has serious long-term implications for women and babies. Smoking in pregnancy is decreasing in high-income countries, but is strongly associated with poverty and is increasing in low- to middle-income countries. Objectives: To assess the effects of smoking cessation interventions during pregnancy on smoking behaviour and perinatal health outcomes. Search methods: In this sixth update, we searched the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group's Trials Register (13 November 2015), checked reference lists of retrieved studies and contacted trial authors. Selection criteria: Randomised controlled trials, cluster-randomised trials, and quasi-randomised controlled trials of psychosocial smoking cessation interventions during pregnancy. Data collection and analysis: Two review authors independently assessed trials for inclusion and trial quality, and extracted data. Direct comparisons were conducted in RevMan, with meta-regression conducted in STATA 14. Main results: The overall quality of evidence was moderate to high, with reductions in confidence due to imprecision and heterogeneity for some outcomes. One hundred and two trials with 120 intervention arms (studies) were included, with 88 trials (involving over 28,000 women) providing data on smoking abstinence in late pregnancy. Interventions were categorised as counselling, health education, feedback, incentives, social support, exercise and dissemination. In separate comparisons, there is high-quality evidence that counselling increased smoking cessation in late pregnancy compared with usual care (30 studies; average risk ratio (RR) 1.44, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.19 to 1.73) and less intensive interventions (18 studies; average RR 1.25, 95% CI 1.07 to 1.47). There was uncertainty whether counselling increased the chance of smoking cessation when provided as one component of a broader maternal health intervention or comparing one type of counselling with another. In studies comparing counselling and usual care (largest comparison), it was unclear whether interventions prevented smoking relapse among women who had stopped smoking spontaneously in early pregnancy. However, a clear effect was seen in smoking abstinence at zero to five months postpartum (11 studies; average RR 1.59, 95% CI 1.26 to 2.01) and 12 to 17 months (two studies, average RR 2.20, 95% CI 1.23 to 3.96), with a borderline effect at six to 11 months (six studies; average RR 1.33, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.77). In other comparisons, the effect was unclear for most secondary outcomes, but sample sizes were small. Evidence suggests a borderline effect of health education compared with usual care (five studies; average RR 1.59, 95% CI 0.99 to 2.55), but the quality was downgraded to moderate as the effect was unclear when compared with less intensive interventions (four studies; average RR 1.20, 95% CI 0.85 to 1.70), alternative interventions (one study; RR 1.88, 95% CI 0.19 to 18.60), or when smoking cessation health education was provided as one component of a broader maternal health intervention. There was evidence feedback increased smoking cessation when compared with usual care and provided in conjunction with other strategies, such as counselling (average RR 4.39, 95% CI 1.89 to 10.21), but the confidence in the quality of evidence was downgraded to moderate as this was based on only two studies and the effect was uncertain when feedback was compared to less intensive interventions (three studies; average RR 1.29, 95% CI 0.75 to 2.20). High-quality evidence suggests incentive-based interventions are effective when compared with an alternative (non-contingent incentive) intervention (four studies; RR 2.36, 95% CI 1.36 to 4.09). However pooled effects were not calculable for comparisons with usual care or less intensive interventions (substantial heterogeneity, I2 = 93%). High-quality evidence suggests the effect is unclear in social support interventions provided by peers (six studies; average RR 1.42, 95% CI 0.98 to 2.07), in a single trial of support provided by partners, or when social support for smoking cessation was provided as part of a broader intervention to improve maternal health. The effect was unclear in single interventions of exercise compared to usual care (RR 1.20, 95% CI 0.72 to 2.01) and dissemination of counselling (RR 1.63, 95% CI 0.62 to 4.32). Importantly, high-quality evidence from pooled results demonstrated that women who received psychosocial interventions had a 17% reduction in infants born with low birthweight, a significantly higher mean birthweight (mean difference (MD) 55.60 g, 95% CI 29.82 to 81.38 g higher) and a 22% reduction in neonatal intensive care admissions. However the difference in preterm births and stillbirths was unclear. There did not appear to be adverse psychological effects from the interventions. The intensity of support women received in both the intervention and comparison groups has increased over time, with higher-intensity interventions more likely to have higher-intensity comparisons, potentially explaining why no clear differences were seen with increasing intervention intensity in meta-regression analyses. Among meta-regression analyses: studies classified as having 'unclear' implementation and unequal baseline characteristics were less effective than other studies. There was no clear difference between trials implemented by researchers (efficacy studies), and those implemented by routine pregnancy staff (effectiveness studies), however there was uncertainty in the effectiveness of counselling in four dissemination trials where the focus on the intervention was at an organisational level. The pooled effects were similar in interventions provided for women classified as having predominantly low socio-economic status, compared to other women. The effect was significant in interventions among women from ethnic minority groups; however not among indigenous women. There were similar effect sizes in trials with biochemically validated smoking abstinence and those with self-reported abstinence. It was unclear whether incorporating use of self-help manuals or telephone support increased the effectiveness of interventions. Authors' conclusions: Psychosocial interventions to support women to stop smoking in pregnancy can increase the proportion of women who stop smoking in late pregnancy and the proportion of infants born low birthweight. Counselling, feedback and incentives appear to be effective, however the characteristics and context of the interventions should be carefully considered. The effect of health education and social support is less clear. New trials have been published during the preparation of this review and will be included in the next update

Community level consequences of adaptive management through Climate Matching: oak galls as a model system

In the present century, ecosystems across the globe will be subject to profound changes in climate. Forests are expected to be particularly sensitive to such change as the long life span of trees limits the potential for rapid adaptation. In order to preserve commercial viability and the essential ecosystem services provided by forests, there has been much interest in strategies for managing the adaptation of trees to their climatic environment. Climate Matching has emerged as one such strategy, whereby climate models are used to identify provenances – tree populations at a particular locality - with seed expected to be well adapted to the future conditions of a particular planting site. Debate continues about the feasibility and merit of this and other approaches, but it has yet to be demonstrated that the underlying assumptions of Climate Matching are valid for focal European tree species. Furthermore, a potentially major omission thus far has been consideration of how the Climate Matching strategy might influence associated organisms. Given the widely demonstrated bottom-up effects of foundation species genotype that have emerged from the field of community genetics, it is possible that planting seed of non-local provenance could effect forest organisms such as insect herbivores. In this thesis, I investigate the underlying assumptions of Climate Matching and its community level consequences using a model system of cynipid oak galls on Quercus petraea. Following a general introduction to Climate Matching and the study system, in Chapter 2 I use data from a provenance trial of Q. petraea in France to explore a central assumption of the Climate Matching strategy: that provenances of focal tree species show climate associated variation in adaptive phenotypic traits. In Chapter 3, I explore correlations between these phenotypic traits and the abundance, diversity, and community composition of an associated guild of specialist gall-inducing herbivores. Tree phenological traits in particular showed strong patterns of adaptation to climatic gradients, and influenced the abundance and community structure of galling species. However, as the response to non-local tree provenances was not strongly negative, it was considered unlikely that mixed planting of local and Climate Matched provenances would have sever impact on the gallwasp community. Having assessed the bottom-up effects of provenance phenotypic variation on the galling community, my ultimate aim is to extend analysis to include associated hymenopteran inquilines and parasitoids. However, interpretation of effects at this level is hindered by taxonomic uncertainty, with a growing appreciation that morpho-taxa may not represent independently evolving lineages (i.e. ‘true’ species). In Chapters 4 & 5 I therefore develop approaches for addressing taxonomic uncertainty with this ultimate aim in mind. In Chapter 4, I apply a DNA barcoding approach to parasitoid and inquiline specimens reared from the provenance trial, and compare taxa based on barcodes with those based on morphology to identify points of taxonomic uncertainty. I also investigate the extent to which networks based on morphological and molecular taxa support contrasting conclusions of network properties. In Chapter 5 I explore the potential for molecular based resolution of species level taxonomic error in a challenging group of parasitoids: the genus Cecidostiba. Beginning with a framework of single locus DNA barcoding, I use data from multiple nuclear loci to reveal the existence of cryptic species. Finally, in Chapter 6 I explore the practicalities of Climate Matching in light of my empirical results, and suggest fruitful avenues for further research

Food web structure changes with elevation but not rainforest strata

Changes in species richness along elevational gradients are well documented. However, little is known about how trophic interactions between species and, in particular, the food webs that these interactions comprise, change with elevation. Here we present results for the first comparison of quantitative food webs in forest understorey and canopy along an elevational gradient. Replicate quantitative food webs were constructed for assemblages involving 23 species of cavity‐nesting Hymenoptera and 12 species of their parasitoids and kleptoparasites in subtropical rainforest in Australia. A total of 1589 insects were collected using trap nests across 20 plots distributed at sites ranging from 300 to 1100 m a.s.l. Insect abundance, insect diversity and parasitism rate generally decreased with increasing elevation. Food web structure significantly changed with elevation. In particular, weighted quantitative measures of linkage density, interaction evenness, nestedness (weighted NODF) and potential for enemy mediated interactions (PAC) decreased with increasing elevation, and network specialisation (H2′) increased with increasing elevation, even after controlling for matrix size; but there was no change in weighted connectance. Changes in forest type and temperature along the elevational gradient are likely to be, at least partly, responsible for the patterns observed. We found no significant differences in insect abundance, insect diversity or parasitism rate between canopy and understorey. Furthermore, there were no differences in food web structure between strata. These results contribute further evidence to studies revealing changes in food web structure along natural environmental gradients and provide information that can potentially be used for predicting how communities may respond to climate change.No Full Tex