Mapping biodiversity value worldwide: combining higher-taxon richness from different groups

Maps of large-scale biodiversity are urgently needed to guide conservation, and yet complete enumeration of organisms is impractical at present. One indirect approach is to measure richness at higher taxonomic ranks, such as families. The difficulty is how to combine information from different groups on numbers of higher taxa, when these taxa may in effect have been defined in different ways, particularly for more distantly related major groups. In this paper, the regional family richness of terrestrial and freshwater seed plants, amphibians, reptiles and mammals is mapped worldwide by combining: (i) absolute family richness; (ii) proportional family richness; and (iii) proportional family richness weighted for the total species richness in each major group. The assumptions of the three methods and their effects on the results are discussed, although for these data the broad pattern is surprisingly robust with respect to the method of combination. Scores from each of the methods of combining families are used to rank the top five richness hotspots and complementary areas, and hotspots of endemism are mapped by unweighted combination of range-size rarity scores

Thermal tolerance, climatic variability and latitude

The greater latitudinal extents of occurrence of species towards higher latitudes has been attributed to the broadening of physiological tolerances with latitude as a result of increases in climatic variation. While there is some support for such patterns in climate, the physiological tolerances of species across large latitudinal gradients have seldom been assessed. Here we report findings for insects based on published upper and lower lethal temperature data. The upper thermal limits show little geographical variation. In contrast, the lower bounds of supercooling points and lower lethal temperatures do indeed decline with latitude. However, this is not the case for the upper bounds, leading to an increase in the variation in lower lethal limits with latitude. These results provide some support for the physiological tolerance assumption associated with Rapoport's rule, but highlight the need for coupled data on species tolerances and range size

Deeper discussion of Schr\"odinger invariant and Logarithmic sectors of higher-curvature gravity

The aim of this paper is to explore D-dimensional theories of pure gravity whose space of solutions contains certain class of AdS-waves, including in particular Schrodinger invariant spacetimes. This amounts to consider higher order theories, and the natural case to start with is to analyze generic square-curvature corrections to Einstein-Hilbert action. In this case, the Schrodinger invariant sector in the space of solutions arises for a special relation between the coupling constants appearing in the action. On the other hand, besides the Schrodinger invariant configurations, logarithmic branches similar to those of the so-called Log-gravity are also shown to emerge for another special choice of the coupling constants. These Log solutions can be interpreted as the superposition of the massless mode of General Relativity and two scalar modes that saturate the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound (BF) of the AdS space on which they propagate. These solutions are higher-dimensional analogues of those appearing in three-dimensional massive gravities with relaxed AdS_3 asymptotic. Other sectors of the space of solutions of higher-curvature theories correspond to oscillatory configurations, which happen to be below the BF bound. Also, there is a fully degenerated sector, for which any wave profile is admitted. We comment on the relation between this degeneracy and the non-renormalization of the dynamical exponent of the Schrodinger spaces. Our analysis also includes more general gravitational actions with non-polynomial corrections consisting of arbitrary functions of the square-curvature invariants. The same sectors of solutions are shown to exist for this more general family of theories. We finally consider the Chern-Simons modified gravity in four dimensions, for which we derive both the Schrodinger invariant as well as the logarithmic sectors.Comment: This paper is dedicated to the memory of Laurent Houar

Detection of the Gravitational Lens Magnifying a Type Ia Supernova

Objects of known brightness, like Type Ia supernovae (SNIa), can be used to measure distances. If a massive object warps spacetime to form multiple images of a background SNIa, a direct test of cosmic expansion is also possible. However, these lensing events must first be distinguished from other rare phenomena. Recently, a supernova was found to shine much brighter than normal for its distance, which resulted in a debate: was it a new type of superluminous supernova or a normal SNIa magnified by a hidden gravitational lens? Here we report that a spectrum obtained after the supernova faded away shows the presence of a foreground galaxy--the first found to strongly magnify a SNIa. We discuss how more lensed SNIa may be found than previously predicted.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in Scienc

Challenging the geographic bias in recognising large-scale patterns of diversity change

Aim: Geographic structure is a fundamental organising principle in ecological and Earth sciences, and our planet is conceptually divided into distinct geographic clusters (e.g. ecoregions and biomes) demarcating unique diversity patterns. Given recent advances in technology and data availability, however, we ask whether geographically clustering diversity time-series should be the default framework to identify meaningful patterns of diversity change. Location: North America. Taxon: Aves. Methods: We first propose a framework that recognises patterns of diversity change based on similarities in the behaviour of diversity time-series, independent of their specific or relative spatial locations. Specifically, we applied an artificial neural network approach, the self-organising map (SOM), to group time-series of over 0.9 million observations from the North American Breeding Birds Survey (BBS) data from 1973 to 2016. We then test whether time-series identified as having similar behaviour are geographically structured. Results: We find little evidence of strong geographic structure in patterns of diversity change for North American breeding birds. The majority of the recognised diversity time-series patterns tend to be indistinguishable from being independently distributed in space. Main Conclusions: Our results suggest that geographic proximity may not correspond to shared temporal trends in diversity; assuming that geographic clustering is the basis for analysis may bias diversity trend estimation. We suggest that approaches that consider variability independently of geographic structure can serve as a useful addition to existing organising rules of biodiversity time-series

Detecting non-orthology in the COGs database and other approaches grouping orthologs using genome-specific best hits

Correct orthology assignment is a critical prerequisite of numerous comparative genomics procedures, such as function prediction, construction of phylogenetic species trees and genome rearrangement analysis. We present an algorithm for the detection of non-orthologs that arise by mistake in current orthology classification methods based on genome-specific best hits, such as the COGs database. The algorithm works with pairwise distance estimates, rather than computationally expensive and error-prone tree-building methods. The accuracy of the algorithm is evaluated through verification of the distribution of predicted cases, case-by-case phylogenetic analysis and comparisons with predictions from other projects using independent methods. Our results show that a very significant fraction of the COG groups include non-orthologs: using conservative parameters, the algorithm detects non-orthology in a third of all COG groups. Consequently, sequence analysis sensitive to correct orthology assignments will greatly benefit from these findings

Observation of playa salts as nuclei in orographic wave clouds

During the Ice in Clouds Experiment-Layer Clouds (ICE-L), dry lakebed, or playa, salts from the Great Basin region of the United States were observed as cloud nuclei in orographic wave clouds over Wyoming. Using a counterflow virtual impactor in series with a single-particle mass spectrometer, sodium-potassium-magnesium-calcium-chloride salts were identified as residues of cloud droplets. Importantly, these salts produced similar mass spectral signatures to playa salts with elevated cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) efficiencies close to sea salt. Using a suite of chemical characterization instrumentation, the playa salts were observed to be internally mixed with oxidized organics, presumably produced by cloud processing, as well as carbonate. These salt particles were enriched as residues of large droplets (>19 μm) compared to smaller droplets (>7 μm). In addition, a small fraction of silicate-containing playa salts were hypothesized to be important in the observed heterogeneous ice nucleation processes. While the high CCN activity of sea salt has been demonstrated to play an important role in cloud formation in marine environments, this study provides direct evidence of the importance of playa salts in cloud formation in continental North America has not been shown previously. Studies are needed to model and quantify the impact of playas on climate globally, particularly because of the abundance of playas and expected increases in the frequency and intensity of dust storms in the future due to climate and land use changes