Recruiting and retaining older persons within a home based pilot study using movement sensors

In this paper, we report on key aspects of recruiting and retaining a small group of community dwelling older adults in to a study, piloting motion sensors in their homes for 8 weeks. This was to further understanding of older adults’ falls at home. We consider our recruitment strategy in terms of informed consent and non-exploitation; planning and explaining, and our retention strategy in terms of communicating and recording and pacing and sharing data. Offering reflective analyses of our challenges and strategies may help develop skills that maximise the involvement of older adults in research, particularly technologies related research, whilst at the same time ensuring inclusive and non-exploitative research relationships

Inferring implications of climate change in south Florida hardwood hammocks through analysis of metacommunity structure

Aim In order to explore how variation in regional biogeography would affect forest responses to climate change, we analysed metacommunity structure of trees in natural forest fragments across a boundary between tropical and sub-tropical temperature regimes. We wished to determine whether species assemblages were constrained by periodic cold temperatures, dispersal limitation and/or local processes associated with fragment size, and consider how these influences might affect future species migration and community reassembly. Location Southeastern Florida, USA. Methods We collected complete tree species lists for 144 forest fragments, from our own surveys supplemented by publicly available sources. The resulting species-by-site data matrix was re-ordered based on an ordination that identified the latent environmental axis most responsible for variation in composition, and metacommunity structure was analysed for coherence, turnover and range boundary clumping. Matrix structure was tested for associations with site variables, and with community-aggregated functional traits related to cold tolerance, dispersal limitation and fragment size. Results Forest patch size was the strongest single correlate with composition and species richness, but mean January temperature and a neighbourhood index denoting degree of isolation from other patches contributed significantly to regression models. The species-by-site matrix was highly nested, with trees common to small upland fragments in the Everglades interior representing a distinct subset of the richer assemblages found in sites closer to the coast. Interior forests were smaller, more isolated, and subject to cooler minimum temperatures than more coastal forests, and were comprised primarily of early-successional, animal dispersed species. Main conclusions While warming winter temperatures may relax some constraints on the northward migration of tropical species through the region, sea level rise will raise ground water levels, decreasing the size and number of suitable mesic patches, and increasing their isolation. The result will be a loss in tree species diversity, especially among late-successional, edge-sensitive species