The effects of soil eutrophication propagate to higher trophic levels

Conservation Biolog

Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) : Finding the win–wins for energy, negative emissions and ecosystem services—size matters

Funding information Natural Environment Research Council, Grant/Award Number: NE/M019764/1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was supported by the NERC-funded UK Energy Research Centre, by the NERC project Addressing the Valuation of Energy and Nature Together (ADVENT, NE/M019764/1) and by The University of California, Davis with CD the recipient of a NERC PhD studentship (1790094). It also contributed to the NERC FAB-GGR project (NE/M019691/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Expression proteomics of UPF1 knockdown in HeLa cells reveals autoregulation of hnRNP A2/B1 mediated by alternative splicing resulting in nonsense-mediated mRNA decay

BACKGROUND: In addition to acting as an RNA quality control pathway, nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) plays roles in regulating normal gene expression. In particular, the extent to which alternative splicing is coupled to NMD and the roles of NMD in regulating uORF containing transcripts have been a matter of debate. RESULTS: In order to achieve a greater understanding of NMD regulated gene expression we used 2D-DiGE proteomics technology to examine the changes in protein expression induced in HeLa cells by UPF1 knockdown. QPCR based validation of the corresponding mRNAs, in response to both UPF1 knockdown and cycloheximide treatment, identified 17 bona fide NMD targets. Most of these were associated with bioinformatically predicted NMD activating features, predominantly upstream open reading frames (uORFs). Strikingly, however, the majority of transcripts up-regulated by UPF1 knockdown were either insensitive to, or even down-regulated by, cycloheximide treatment. Furthermore, the mRNA abundance of several down-regulated proteins failed to change upon UPF1 knockdown, indicating that UPF1`s role in regulating mRNA and protein abundance is more complex than previously appreciated. Among the bona fide NMD targets, we identified a highly conserved AS-NMD event within the 3` UTR of the HNRNPA2B1 gene. Overexpression of GFP tagged hnRNP A2 resulted in a decrease in endogenous hnRNP A2 and B1 mRNA with a concurrent increase in the NMD sensitive isoforms. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the large number of changes in protein expression upon UPF1 knockdown, a relatively small fraction of them can be directly attributed to the action of NMD on the corresponding mRNA. From amongst these we have identified a conserved AS-NMD event within HNRNPA2B1 that appears to mediate autoregulation of HNRNPA2B1 expression levels

Conservation of pollinators in traditional agricultural landscapes – New challenges in Transylvania (Romania) posed by EU accession and recommendations for future research

Farmland biodiversity is strongly declining in most of Western Europe, but still survives in traditional low intensity agricultural landscapes in Central and Eastern Europe. Accession to the EU however intensifies agriculture, which leads to the vanishing of traditional farming. Our aim was to describe the pollinator assemblages of the last remnants of these landscapes, thus set the baseline of sustainable farming for pollination, and to highlight potential measures of conservation. In these traditional farmlands in the Transylvanian Basin, Romania (EU accession in 2007), we studied the major pollinator groups-wild bees, hoverflies and butterflies. Landscape scale effects of semi-natural habitats, land cover diversity, the effects of heterogeneity and woody vegetation cover and on-site flower resources were tested on pollinator communities in traditionally managed arable fields and grasslands. Our results showed: (i) semi-natural habitats at the landscape scale have a positive effect on most pollinators, especially in the case of low heterogeneity of the direct vicinity of the studied sites; (ii) both arable fields and grasslands hold abundant flower resources, thus both land use types are important in sustaining pollinator communities; (iii) thus, pollinator conservation can rely even on arable fields under traditional management regime. This has an indirect message that the tiny flower margins around large intensive fields in west Europe can be insufficient conservation measures to restore pollinator communities at the landscape scale, as this is still far the baseline of necessary flower resources. This hypothesis needs further study, which includes more traditional landscapes providing baseline, and exploration of other factors behind the lower than baseline level biodiversity values of fields under agri-environmental schemes (AES)

Maximizing conservation benefit for grassland species with contrasting management requirements

Conservation management often encompasses multiple, alternative management actions on a given site, involving habitat restoration and maintenance for example. Which actions are preferable depends on the conservation goals, the expected outcomes of actions, and their associated costs. When actions affect habitat quality differently, species that vary in habitat requirements will not respond to the actions in the same way. When all these species are of conservation concern, trade-offs between them are inevitable and the selection of appropriate actions becomes less straightforward. Although this is a common planning problem, it has received little attention in the conservation planning literature. 2. We demonstrate how to obtain cost-effective planning solutions for a set of species with contrasting requirements, when multiple alternative conservation actions are available for each site. We investigate the strength of trade-offs between species with different habitat preferences, when planning optimal management of a set of semi-natural mesic grassland sites. A community of vascular plants and Lepidoptera species depends on such grasslands, which are maintained by cattle grazing. The various species differ in their responses to grazing intensity. We apply an algorithm that selects a grazing intensity for each site to maximize the benefit over all species, under a given budget constraint. 3. The optimal grazing intensity for sites, and consequently, the expected representation of species, was sensitive to the relative values assigned to species (weights) and the budget available. The outcome also depended on assumptions regarding species representation under suboptimal management. A sensitivity analysis showed that the trade-offs between species were strong, illustrating the potentially significant consequences of conservation decisions. 4. Synthesis and applications. Maximizing conservation benefit over all species may result in high representation of some species at the cost of others. Although this is a natural consequence of budget limitations and conservation priorities, understanding these consequences is essential if planning is to accommodate species with different conservation needs. Our methodology is a novel extension of conventional reserve selection methods and can support planning for species with contrasting requirements, leading to more robust and cost-effective conservation decision

Maximizing conservation benefit for grassland species with contrasting management requirements

Conservation management often encompasses multiple, alternative management actions on a given site, involving habitat restoration and maintenance for example. Which actions are preferable depends on the conservation goals, the expected outcomes of actions, and their associated costs. When actions affect habitat quality differently, species that vary in habitat requirements will not respond to the actions in the same way. When all these species are of conservation concern, trade-offs between them are inevitable and the selection of appropriate actions becomes less straightforward. Although this is a common planning problem, it has received little attention in the conservation planning literature. 2. We demonstrate how to obtain cost-effective planning solutions for a set of species with contrasting requirements, when multiple alternative conservation actions are available for each site. We investigate the strength of trade-offs between species with different habitat preferences, when planning optimal management of a set of semi-natural mesic grassland sites. A community of vascular plants and Lepidoptera species depends on such grasslands, which are maintained by cattle grazing. The various species differ in their responses to grazing intensity. We apply an algorithm that selects a grazing intensity for each site to maximize the benefit over all species, under a given budget constraint. 3. The optimal grazing intensity for sites, and consequently, the expected representation of species, was sensitive to the relative values assigned to species (weights) and the budget available. The outcome also depended on assumptions regarding species representation under suboptimal management. A sensitivity analysis showed that the trade-offs between species were strong, illustrating the potentially significant consequences of conservation decisions. 4. Synthesis and applications. Maximizing conservation benefit over all species may result in high representation of some species at the cost of others. Although this is a natural consequence of budget limitations and conservation priorities, understanding these consequences is essential if planning is to accommodate species with different conservation needs. Our methodology is a novel extension of conventional reserve selection methods and can support planning for species with contrasting requirements, leading to more robust and cost-effective conservation decision

Contrasting effects of habitat area and connectivity on evenness of pollinator communities

Losses of both habitat area and connectivity have been identified as important drivers of species richness declines, but little theoretical and empirical work exists that addresses the effect of fragmentation on relative commonness of highly mobile species such as pollinating insects. With a large dataset of wild bee and butterfly abundances collected across Europe, we first tested the effect of habitat area and connectivity on evenness in pollinator communities using a large array of indexes that give different weight to dominance and rarity. Second, we tested if traits related to mobility and diet breadth could explain the observed evenness patterns. We found a clear negative effect of area and a weaker, but positive effect of connectivity on evenness. Communities in small habitat fragments were mainly composed of mobile and generalist species. The higher evenness in small fragments could thereby be generated by highly mobile species that maintain local populations with frequent inter-fragment movements. Trait analysis suggested an increasing importance of dispersal over local recruitment, as we move from large to small fragments and from less to more connected fragments. Species richness and evenness were negatively correlated indicating that the two variables responded differently to habitat area and connectivity, although the mechanisms underlying the observed patterns are difficult to isolate. Even though habitat area and connectivity often decrease simultaneously due to habitat fragmentation, an interesting practical implication of the contrasting effect of the two variables is that the resulting community composition will depend on the relative strength of these two processes