Postglacial Colonization of Northern Coastal Habitat by Bottlenose Dolphins: A Marine Leading-Edge Expansion?

Oscillations in the Earth’s temperature and the subsequent retreating and advancing of ice-sheets around the polar regions are thought to have played an important role in shaping the distribution and genetic structuring of contemporary high-latitude populations. After the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), retreating of the ice-sheets would have enabled early colonizers to rapidly occupy suitable niches to the exclusion of other conspecifics, thereby reducing genetic diversity at the leading-edge. Bottlenose dolphins (genus Tursiops) form distinct coastal and pelagic ecotypes, with finer-scale genetic structuring observed within each ecotype. We reconstruct the postglacial colonization of the Northeast Atlantic (NEA) by bottlenose dolphins using habitat modeling and phylogenetics. The AquaMaps model hindcasted suitable habitat for the LGM in the Atlantic lower latitude waters and parts of the Mediterranean Sea. The time-calibrated phylogeny, constructed with 86 complete mitochondrial genomes including 30 generated for this study and created using a multispecies coalescent model, suggests that the expansion to the available coastal habitat in the NEA happened via founder events starting ~15 000 years ago (95% highest posterior density interval: 4 900–26 400). The founders of the 2 distinct coastal NEA populations comprised as few as 2 maternal lineages that originated from the pelagic population. The low effective population size and genetic diversity estimated for the shared ancestral coastal population subsequent to divergence from the pelagic source population are consistent with leading-edge expansion. These findings highlight the legacy of the Late Pleistocene glacial cycles on the genetic structuring and diversity of contemporary populations

Blueprints of Effective Biodiversity and Conservation Knowledge Products That Support Marine Policy

Biodiversity and conservation data are generally costly to collect, particularly in the marine realm. Hence, data collected for a given—often scientific—purpose are occasionally contributed toward secondary needs, such as policy implementation or other types of decision-making. However, while the quality and accessibility of marine biodiversity and conservation data have improved over the past decade, the ways in which these data can be used to develop and implement relevant management and conservation measures and actions are not always explicit. For this reason, there are a number of scientifically-sound datasets that are not used systematically to inform policy and decisions. Transforming these marine biodiversity and conservation datasets into knowledge products that convey the information required by policy- and decision-makers is an important step in strengthening knowledge exchange across the science-policy interface. Here, we identify seven characteristics of a selection of online biodiversity and conservation knowledge products that contribute to their ability to support policy- and decision-making in the marine realm (as measured by e.g., mentions in policy resolutions/decisions, or use for reporting under selected policy instruments; use in high-level screening for areas of biodiversity importance). These characteristics include: a clear policy mandate; established networks of collaborators; iterative co-design of a user-friendly interface; standardized, comprehensive and documented methods with quality assurance; consistent capacity and succession planning; accessible data and value-added products that are fit-for-purpose; and metrics of use collated and reported. The outcomes of this review are intended to: (a) support data creators/owners/providers in designing and curating biodiversity and conservation knowledge products that have greater influence, and hence impact, in policy- and decision-making, and (b) provide recommendations for how decision- and policy-makers can support the development, implementation, and sustainability of robust biodiversity and conservation knowledge products through the framing of marine policy and decision-making frameworks.This is a contribution to the “Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network” (EU BON) project (www.eubon.eu), a 7th Framework Programme funded by the European Union under grant agreement No. 308454. The authors would also like to acknowledge the Proteus Partnership, the European Commission, the CITES Secretariat, UN Environment, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the national agencies contributing to GBIF core funds for their financial contributions toward developing and maintaining these knowledge products

Blueprints of Effective Biodiversity and Conservation Knowledge Products That Support Marine Policy

Biodiversity and conservation data are generally costly to collect, particularly in the marine realm. Hence, data collected for a given—often scientific—purpose are occasionally contributed toward secondary needs, such as policy implementation or other types of decision-making. However, while the quality and accessibility of marine biodiversity and conservation data have improved over the past decade, the ways in which these data can be used to develop and implement relevant management and conservation measures and actions are not always explicit. For this reason, there are a number of scientifically-sound datasets that are not used systematically to inform policy and decisions. Transforming these marine biodiversity and conservation datasets into knowledge products that convey the information required by policy- and decision-makers is an important step in strengthening knowledge exchange across the science-policy interface. Here, we identify seven characteristics of a selection of online biodiversity and conservation knowledge products that contribute to their ability to support policy- and decision-making in the marine realm (as measured by e.g., mentions in policy resolutions/decisions, or use for reporting under selected policy instruments; use in high-level screening for areas of biodiversity importance). These characteristics include: a clear policy mandate; established networks of collaborators; iterative co-design of a user-friendly interface; standardized, comprehensive and documented methods with quality assurance; consistent capacity and succession planning; accessible data and value-added products that are fit-for-purpose; and metrics of use collated and reported. The outcomes of this review are intended to: (a) support data creators/owners/providers in designing and curating biodiversity and conservation knowledge products that have greater influence, and hence impact, in policy- and decision-making, and (b) provide recommendations for how decision- and policy-makers can support the development, implementation, and sustainability of robust biodiversity and conservation knowledge products through the framing of marine policy and decision-making frameworks.This is a contribution to the “Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network” (EU BON) project (www.eubon.eu), a 7th Framework Programme funded by the European Union under grant agreement No. 308454. The authors would also like to acknowledge the Proteus Partnership, the European Commission, the CITES Secretariat, UN Environment, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the national agencies contributing to GBIF core funds for their financial contributions toward developing and maintaining these knowledge products

Selective phosphodiesterase inhibitors: a promising target for cognition enhancement

# The Author(s) 2008. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Rationale One of the major complaints most people face during aging is an impairment in cognitive functioning. This has a negative impact on the quality of daily life and is even more prominent in patients suffering from neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and depression. So far, the majority of cognition enhancers are generally targeting one particular neurotransmitter system. However, recently phosphodiesterases (PDEs) have gained increased attention as a potential new target for cognition enhancement. Inhibition of PDEs increases the intracellular availability of the second messengers cGMP and/or cAMP. Objective The aim of this review was to provide an overvie

The Biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea: Estimates, Patterns, and Threats

The Mediterranean Sea is a marine biodiversity hot spot. Here we combined an extensive literature analysis with expert opinions to update publicly available estimates of major taxa in this marine ecosystem and to revise and update several species lists. We also assessed overall spatial and temporal patterns of species diversity and identified major changes and threats. Our results listed approximately 17,000 marine species occurring in the Mediterranean Sea. However, our estimates of marine diversity are still incomplete as yet—undescribed species will be added in the future. Diversity for microbes is substantially underestimated, and the deep-sea areas and portions of the southern and eastern region are still poorly known. In addition, the invasion of alien species is a crucial factor that will continue to change the biodiversity of the Mediterranean, mainly in its eastern basin that can spread rapidly northwards and westwards due to the warming of the Mediterranean Sea. Spatial patterns showed a general decrease in biodiversity from northwestern to southeastern regions following a gradient of production, with some exceptions and caution due to gaps in our knowledge of the biota along the southern and eastern rims. Biodiversity was also generally higher in coastal areas and continental shelves, and decreases with depth. Temporal trends indicated that overexploitation and habitat loss have been the main human drivers of historical changes in biodiversity. At present, habitat loss and degradation, followed by fishing impacts, pollution, climate change, eutrophication, and the establishment of alien species are the most important threats and affect the greatest number of taxonomic groups. All these impacts are expected to grow in importance in the future, especially climate change and habitat degradation. The spatial identification of hot spots highlighted the ecological importance of most of the western Mediterranean shelves (and in particular, the Strait of Gibraltar and the adjacent Alboran Sea), western African coast, the Adriatic, and the Aegean Sea, which show high concentrations of endangered, threatened, or vulnerable species. The Levantine Basin, severely impacted by the invasion of species, is endangered as well

Ecological Assessment of the Sustainable Impacts of Fisheries (EASI-Fish): a flexible vulnerability assessment approach to quantify the cumulative impacts of fishing in data-limited settings

In fisheries, vulnerability assessments - also commonly known as ecological risk assessments (ERAs) -have been an increasingly popular alternative to stock assessments to evaluate the vulnerability of non-target species in resource- and data-limited settings. The widely-used productivity-susceptibility analysis (PSA) requires detailed species-specific biological information and fishery susceptibility for a large number of parameters to produce a relative vulnerability score. The two major disadvantages of PSA are that each species is assessed against an arbitrary reference point, and PSA cannot quantify cumulative impacts of multiple fisheries. This paper introduces an Ecological Assessment of the Sustainable Impacts of Fisheries (EASI-Fish), a flexible approach that quantifies the cumulative impacts of fisheries on data-limited bycatch species, demonstrated in eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO) tuna fisheries. The method first estimates fishing mortality (F) based on the 'volumetric overlap' of each fishery with the distribution of each species. F is then used in length-structured per-recruit models to assess population vulnerability status using conventional biological reference points. Model results were validated by comparison with stock assessments for bigeye and yellowfin tunas in the EPO for 2016. Application of the model to 24 species of epipelagic and mesopelagic teleosts, sharks, rays, sea turtles and cetaceans and identification of the most vulnerable species is demonstrated. With increasing demands on fisheries to demonstrate ecological sustainability, EASI-Fish allows fishery managers to more confidently identify vulnerable species to which resources can be directed to either implement mitigation measures or collect further data for more formal stock assessment

A climate risk index for marine life

Climate change is impacting virtually all marine life. Adaptation strategies will require a robust understanding of the risks to species and ecosystems and how those propagate to human societies. We develop a unified and spatially explicit index to comprehensively evaluate the climate risks to marine life. Under high emissions (SSP5-8.5), almost 90% of ~25,000 species are at high or critical risk, with species at risk across 85% of their native distributions. One tenth of the ocean contains ecosystems where the aggregated climate risk, endemism and extinction threat of their constituent species are high. Climate change poses the greatest risk for exploited species in low-income countries with a high dependence on fisheries. Mitigating emissions (SSP1-2.6) reduces the risk for virtually all species (98.2%), enhances ecosystem stability and disproportionately benefits food-insecure populations in low-income countries. Our climate risk assessment can help prioritize vulnerable species and ecosystems for climate-adapted marine conservation and fisheries management efforts