23 research outputs found
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Rarity of monodominance in hyperdiverse Amazonian forests.
Tropical forests are known for their high diversity. Yet, forest patches do occur in the tropics where a single tree species is dominant. Such "monodominant" forests are known from all of the main tropical regions. For Amazonia, we sampled the occurrence of monodominance in a massive, basin-wide database of forest-inventory plots from the Amazon Tree Diversity Network (ATDN). Utilizing a simple defining metric of at least half of the trees ≥ 10 cm diameter belonging to one species, we found only a few occurrences of monodominance in Amazonia, and the phenomenon was not significantly linked to previously hypothesized life history traits such wood density, seed mass, ectomycorrhizal associations, or Rhizobium nodulation. In our analysis, coppicing (the formation of sprouts at the base of the tree or on roots) was the only trait significantly linked to monodominance. While at specific locales coppicing or ectomycorrhizal associations may confer a considerable advantage to a tree species and lead to its monodominance, very few species have these traits. Mining of the ATDN dataset suggests that monodominance is quite rare in Amazonia, and may be linked primarily to edaphic factors
Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research
Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost
Avaliação da competência de idosos diabéticos para o autocuidado
Estudo descritivo, de corte transversal e correlacional, que objetivou avaliar as competências de idosos com diabetes para o autocuidado, por meio da utilização da Escala para Identificação da Competência do Diabético para o Autocuidado, e os fatores pessoais associados ao resultado. A população do estudo foi composta por idosos cadastrados nas unidades básicas de saúde de Fortaleza, CE, Brasil. Da amostra, apenas 6% dos idosos foram considerados competentes para o autocuidado em diabetes e os fatores que se destacaram como influenciadores de baixa pontuação foram a baixa escolaridade e a diminuição da acuidade visual. Conforme os resultados, devido ao reduzido número de idosos considerados competentes para a prática do autocuidado, verifica-se a importância do desenvolvimento de ações de promoção da saúde direcionados para essa parcela da população, devendo-se estimular a prática do autocuidado, bem como avaliar as competências para execução da mesma, de modo a facilitar o direcionamento de ações de saúde