Painful Lessons From Piney Mountain: A Framework For Development Dispute Resolution

Can the problems and positions encountered in certain development disputes effectively prevent any meaningful negotiation? Are there situations where a win-win outcome is not achieveable? The analysis presented in this case study suggests approaches that can be utilized by municipalities to avoid no-win situations

Partners No More: Relational Transformation and the Turn to Litigation in Two Conservationist Organizations

The rise in litigation against administrative bodies by environmental and other political interest groups worldwide has been explained predominantly through the liberalization of standing doctrines. Under this explanation, termed here the floodgate model, restrictive standing rules have dammed the flow of suits that groups were otherwise ready and eager to pursue. I examine this hypothesis by analyzing processes of institutional transformation in two conservationist organizations: the Sierra Club in the United States and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI). Rather than an eagerness to embrace newly available litigation opportunities, as the floodgate model would predict, the groups\u27 history reveals a gradual process of transformation marked by internal, largely intergenerational divisions between those who abhorred conflict with state institutions and those who saw such conflict as not only appropriate but necessary to the mission of the group. Furthermore, in contrast to the pluralist interactions that the floodgate model imagines, both groups\u27 relations with pertinent agencies in earlier eras better accorded with the partnership-based corporatist paradigm. Sociolegal research has long indicated the importance of relational distance to the transformation of interpersonal disputes. I argue that, at the group level as well, the presence or absence of a (national) partnership-centered relationship determines propensities to bring political issues to court. As such, well beyond change in groups\u27 legal capacity and resources, current increases in levels of political litigation suggest more fundamental transformations in the structure and meaning of relations between citizen groups and the state

The hyperoxic switch: assesing respiratory water loss rates in tracheate arthropods with continous gas exchange

Partitioning the relative contributions of cuticular and respiratory water loss in a tracheate arthropod is relatively easy if it undergoes discontinuous gas exchange cycles or DGCs, leaving its rate of cuticular water loss in primary evidence while its spiracles are closed. Many arthropods are not so obliging and emit CO2 continuously, making cuticular and respiratory water losses difficult or impossible to partition. We report here that by switching ambient air from 21 to 100% O2, marked spiracular constriction takes place, causing a transient but substantial - up to 90% - reduction in CO2 output. A reduction in water loss rate occurs at the same time. Using this approach, we investigated respiratory water loss in Drosophila melanogaster and in two ant species, Forelius mccooki and Pogonomyrmex californicus. Our results - respiratory water loss estimates of 23%, 7.6% and 5.6% of total water loss rates, respectively - are reasonable in light of literature estimates, and suggest that the 'hyperoxic switch' may allow straightforward estimation of respiratory water loss rates in arthropods lacking discontinuous gas exchange. In P. californicus, which we were able to measure with and without a DGC, presence or absence of a DGC did not affect respiratory vs total water loss rates

Joint Impacts of Drought and Habitat Fragmentation on Native Bee Assemblages in a California Biodiversity Hotspot

Global climate change is causing more frequent and severe droughts, which could have serious repercussions for the maintenance of biodiversity. Here, we compare native bee assemblages collected via bowl traps before and after a severe drought event in 2014 in San Diego, California, and examine the relative magnitude of impacts from drought in fragmented habitat patches versus unfragmented natural reserves. Bee richness and diversity were higher in assemblages surveyed before the drought compared to those surveyed after the drought. However, bees belonging to the Lasioglossum subgenus Dialictus increased in abundance after the drought, driving increased representation by small-bodied, primitively eusocial, and generalist bees in post-drought assemblages. Conversely, among non-Dialictus bees, post-drought years were associated with decreased abundance and reduced representation by eusocial species. Drought effects were consistently greater in reserves, which supported more bee species, than in fragments, suggesting that fragmentation either had redundant impacts with drought, or ameliorated effects of drought by enhancing bees’ access to floral resources in irrigated urban environments. Shifts in assemblage composition associated with drought were three times greater compared to those associated with habitat fragmentation, highlighting the importance of understanding the impacts of large-scale climatic events relative to those associated with land use change

Joint Impacts of Drought and Habitat Fragmentation on Native Bee Assemblages in a California Biodiversity Hotspot

Global climate change is causing more frequent and severe droughts, which could have serious repercussions for the maintenance of biodiversity. Here, we compare native bee assemblages collected via bowl traps before and after a severe drought event in 2014 in San Diego, California, and examine the relative magnitude of impacts from drought in fragmented habitat patches versus unfragmented natural reserves. Bee richness and diversity were higher in assemblages surveyed before the drought compared to those surveyed after the drought. However, bees belonging to the Lasioglossum subgenus Dialictus increased in abundance after the drought, driving increased representation by small-bodied, primitively eusocial, and generalist bees in post-drought assemblages. Conversely, among non-Dialictus bees, post-drought years were associated with decreased abundance and reduced representation by eusocial species. Drought effects were consistently greater in reserves, which supported more bee species, than in fragments, suggesting that fragmentation either had redundant impacts with drought, or ameliorated effects of drought by enhancing bees’ access to floral resources in irrigated urban environments. Shifts in assemblage composition associated with drought were three times greater compared to those associated with habitat fragmentation, highlighting the importance of understanding the impacts of large-scale climatic events relative to those associated with land use change

Joint Impacts of Drought and Habitat Fragmentation on Native Bee Assemblages in a California Biodiversity Hotspot

Global climate change is causing more frequent and severe droughts, which could have serious repercussions for the maintenance of biodiversity. Here, we compare native bee assemblages collected via bowl traps before and after a severe drought event in 2014 in San Diego, California, and examine the relative magnitude of impacts from drought in fragmented habitat patches versus unfragmented natural reserves. Bee richness and diversity were higher in assemblages surveyed before the drought compared to those surveyed after the drought. However, bees belonging to the Lasioglossum subgenus Dialictus increased in abundance after the drought, driving increased representation by small-bodied, primitively eusocial, and generalist bees in post-drought assemblages. Conversely, among non-Dialictus bees, post-drought years were associated with decreased abundance and reduced representation by eusocial species. Drought effects were consistently greater in reserves, which supported more bee species, than in fragments, suggesting that fragmentation either had redundant impacts with drought, or ameliorated effects of drought by enhancing bees’ access to floral resources in irrigated urban environments. Shifts in assemblage composition associated with drought were three times greater compared to those associated with habitat fragmentation, highlighting the importance of understanding the impacts of large-scale climatic events relative to those associated with land use change

Temporal beta diversity of native bees in reserve (gray boxes) and fragment plots (white boxes).

<p>Beta diversity was calculated as the multivariate dispersion of abundance-weighted bee assemblages in distinct temporal samples within each study plot. Boxes, whiskers, and asterisks are as in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0184136#pone.0184136.g002" target="_blank">Fig 2</a>.</p

Temporal gamma diversity of native bees in reserve (gray boxes) and fragment plots (white boxes).

<p>Box and whisker plots show (A) rarefied species richness, (B) logit-transformed rarefied assemblage evenness (Pielou’s <i>J</i>), (C) logit-transformed proportion of individuals belonging to generalist species, and (D) cube root-transformed average number of bees collected per temporal sample. Boxes show central 50% of data and median; whiskers show quantiles ± interquartile range × 1.5, or most extreme values of data, whichever is closest to median; and circles denote outliers. * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01, *** P < 0.005.</p

Temporal alpha diversity of native bees in reserve and fragment plots in 2011 (A-D) and 2012 (E-H).

<p>Scatterplots show (A,E) rarefied species richness, (B,F) logit-transformed rarefied assemblage evenness (Pielou’s <i>J</i>), (C,G) logit-transformed proportions of individuals belonging to generalist species, and (D,H) cube root-transformed number of bees collected per temporal sample. All plots show regression lines to visualize data trends. Significant main effects and interactions from linear mixed-effects models are indicated on each graph: T = treatment, S = temporal sample. * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01, *** P < 0.005.</p