Deforestation and apparent extinctions of endemic forest beetles in Madagascar

Madagascar has lost about half of its forest cover since 1953 with much regional variation, for instance most of the coastal lowland forests have been cleared. We sampled the endemic forest-dwelling Helictopleurini dung beetles across Madagascar during 2002–2006. Our samples include 29 of the 51 previously known species for which locality information is available. The most significant factor explaining apparent extinctions (species not collected by us) is forest loss within the historical range of the focal species, suggesting that deforestation has already caused the extinction, or effective extinction, of a large number of insect species with small geographical ranges, typical for many endemic taxa in Madagascar. Currently, roughly 10% of the original forest cover remains. Species–area considerations suggest that this will allow roughly half of the species to persist. Our results are consistent with this prediction

ALKU vai alasajo? Aluehallintouudistus ja ympäristöhallinnon politisoituminen Helsingin Sanomissa

The article analyses the politicization of the debate concerning the renewal of the environmental administrationduring the reform project of the State Regional Administration in Finland. The data consists of 55newspaper articles in Helsingin Sanomat during 2008–2009. By using frame analysis, we recognized threedifferent frames through which the actors gave meanings to the reorganizing of environmental administration.The future of environmental administration was interpreted through the frames of nature protection,party politics and the inevitable reform of administrative structure. The most prominent actors in the publicdiscussion were environmental organizations, the representatives of Social Democrats, the Centre partyand the directors of the regional environmental centers. The newspaper itself was in a key position in termsof which actors got media coverage in the public debate and what kinds of topics were highlighted. Thearticle illustrates how the newspaper approached the substantial renewal of the environmental administrationmainly as an unavoidable systemic reform, thus leaving the politicization of the issue in the margin

Molecular evolution and radiation of dung beetles in Madagascar

Madagascar is the world's fourth largest island and has a wide range of climates and ecosystems. Environmental diversity combined with long history of isolation (160 Myr) has generated a high level of endemism at different taxonomic levels, making Madagascar one of the hotspots of global biodiversity. Dung beetles, represented by the two tribes of Canthonini and Helictopleurini, exemplify a large insect taxon. Helictopleurini are completely endemic to Madagascar while Canthonini are endemic at generic level. Using data from mitochondrial and nuclear genes, phylogenetic relationships were investigated in a sample of 44 species. The phylogeny for Canthonini consists of several distinct clades, possibly reflecting multiple colonization of Madagascar. The phylogeny does not support the current taxonomy for all genera. The phylogeny for Helictopleurini lacks statistical support at supra-specific level, and genetic divergence among the Helictopleurini species is comparable with that among species within genera in Canthonini. These results suggest that Helictopleurini has undergone rapid speciation and most likely more recently than Canthonini, consistent with the estimated radiation time based on mtDNA mutation rates in insects and with knowledge about the systematics and geographic distribution of dung beetles worldwide. A detailed analysis of sequence composition identified common patterns in Malagasy dung beetles and other insects. (c) The Willi Hennig Society 2007.status: publishe

When using Framingham data, the prediction accuracy is not much decreased even with 50,000 SNPs that were randomly selected from 389,265 SNPs.

<p>When using Framingham data, the prediction accuracy is not much decreased even with 50,000 SNPs that were randomly selected from 389,265 SNPs.</p