Environmental gradients and succession patterns of carabid beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in an Alpine glacier retreat zone

Accelerated by global warming, retreating glaciers leave behind spatially ordered moraines with underlying primary succession and disturbance. Current knowledge of primary succession comes mainly from studies of vegetation dynamics. Information about above-ground macroinvertebrates is still scarce. We used carabid beetles (Coleoptera; Carabidae) as indicator taxon to assess the effects of (1) terrain age (species turnover along the proglacial chronosequence) and (2) small-scale habitat architecture (vegetation cover, surface texture) on the carabid assembly. For this purpose, 33 sampling sites with pitfall traps were installed throughout the glacier foreland Morteratsch (Engadine, Switzerland), adjacent sparse forests serving as reference sites. With a total of 33 carabid species on the foreland and another 2 on the reference sites, the study area yielded a very high carabid species diversity compared to other glacier forelands. In general, the age of deglaciation proved to be a highly significant predictor for the carabid distribution, especially for particularly discriminant species. Observed species richness and activity densities showed bimodal patterns with a steep increase within the first ca. 40years, a decline between around 40-90years, and a further increase towards the terminal moraine. There was no evidence of dispersal-stochasticity: distinct clusters of sites with similar species composition were found. Microhabitat suitability proved to be a secondary effect, embedded in a temporal framework of primary succession. Surface cover with litter, herbs and dwarf-shrubs turned out to be the crucial habitat factors. Habitat loss as a result of climate warming will primarily affect cold-stenotopic carabids, but may potentially be absorbed by active selection for cooler microhabitat

Lebensraum Waffenplatz : Wiederfund der Gefleckten Keulenschrecke Myrmeleotettix maculatus (Thunberg, 1815) (Orthoptera: Acrididae) im Talraum der Ostschweiz nach über 80 Jahren

Erstmals seit über 80 Jahren gelang es am 17. Juli 2016, die Gefleckte Keulenschrecke Myrmeleotettix maculatus (Thunberg, 1815) im Talraum der Ostschweiz wieder nachzuweisen. Auf dem Waffenplatz Chur hat sich in einem für die Öffentlichkeit unzugänglichen Abschnitt eine Population dieser stark gefährdeten Heuschreckenart halten können. Detailuntersuchungen im Jahr 2017 an 34 Standorten mit M. maculatus-Vorkommen ergaben, dass auf dem Waffenplatz überwiegend Standorte mit spärlicher Vegetation besiedelt werden, auf denen der Deckungsgrad der Krautvegetation und der Moose /Flechten jeweils rund einen Drittel beträgt. Die bestehende Schafbeweidung wird an sich als adäquate Nutzungsform betrachtet, sollte aber künftig in geringerer Intensität erfolgen. Dies gilt insbesondere für die Trockenwiesen und -weiden von nationaler Bedeutung und deren unmittelbares Umfeld, da dort die Hauptvorkommen von M. maculatus liegen.Rediscovery of Myrmeleotettix maculatus (Thunberg, 1815) (Orthoptera: Acrididae) in the valley zone of eastern Switzerland after more than 80 years. On 17 July 2016, for the first time in more than 80 years, Myrmeleotettix maculatus (Thunberg, 1815) was detected in the valley zone of eastern Switzerland. A population of this highly endangered grasshopper species has survived in a section of the military training area Chur, which is inaccessible to the public. Detailed investigations in 2017 at 34 locations with M. maculatus occurrences showed that most of the sites had a sparse coverage; herbaceous vegetation and moss / lichens each accounted for about one third of the coverage. Existing sheep grazing is considered to be adequate, but should be less intensive in the future. This applies in particular to a subzone of protected dry grassland («Trockenwiese und -weide von nationaler Bedeutung») and its immediate surroundings with the main occurrence of M. maculatus

Environmental gradients and succession patterns of carabid beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in an alpine glacier retreat zone

Erworben im Rahmen der Schweizer Nationallizenzen (http://www.nationallizenzen.ch)Accelerated by global warming, retreating glaciers leave behind spatially ordered moraines with underlying primary succession and disturbance. Current knowledge of primary succession comes mainly from studies of vegetation dynamics. Information about above-ground macroinvertebrates is still scarce. We used carabid beetles (Coleoptera; Carabidae) as indicator taxon to assess the effects of (1) terrain age (species turnover along the proglacial chronosequence) and (2) small-scale habitat architecture(vegetation cover, surface texture) on the carabid assembly. For this purpose, 33 sampling sites with pitfall traps were installed throughout the glacier foreland Morteratsch (Engadine, Switzerland), adjacent sparse forests serving as reference sites. With a total of 33 carabid species on the foreland and another 2 on the reference sites, the study area yielded a very high carabid species diversity compared to other glacier forelands. In general, the age of deglaciation proved to be a highly significant predictor for the carabid distribution, especially for particularly discriminant species. Observed species richness and activity densities showed bimodal patterns with a steep increase within the first ca. 40 years, a decline between around 40-90 years, and a further increase towards the terminal moraine. There was no evidence of dispersal-stochasticity: distinct clusters of sites with similar species composition were found. Microhabitat suitability proved to be a secondary effect, embedded in a temporal framework of primary succession. Surface cover with litter, herbs and dwarf-shrubs turned out to be the crucial habitat factors. Habitat loss as a result of climate warming will primarily affect cold-stenotopic carabids, but may potentially be absorbed by active selection for cooler microhabitats.

Nudging Digital Learning – An Experimental Analysis of Social Nudges to Manage Self-Regulated Learning and Online Learning Success

Self-regulated learning competencies are of increasing importance to ensure learning success in online learning environments. We investigate the use of digital social nudges in a self-reliant online learning situation to support learners in better managing their self-regulated learning behaviors. We ground our research on dual-process theory and social comparison theory to design social nudges. To evaluate our research model, we conduct an online experiment (N=226). The results show that social nudges positively impact learning outcomes mediated by self-regulated learning behaviors manifested using learning strategies. We found that positive emotions can further strengthen the positive effect of social nudges. Our results help to understand how social nudges can be efficiently used in online learning environments to support learners in better managing their learning processes and achieving learning outcomes. We open new chances for researchers and designers of online learning materials to support online learning processes

On the electrooxidation of glucose on gold: Towards an electrochemical glucaric acid production as value-added chemical

The electrocatalytic oxidation of glucose to value-added chemicals, such as glucaric acid, has gathered increased interest in recent years. Glucose oxidation is a promising process which has the potential to contribute to establishing renewable resources as alternatives to fossil carbon sources. Herein, we present rotating disk electrode (RDE) studies on polycrystalline gold surfaces and subsequent Koutecký-Levich analysis as a benchmark to expand the understanding of reaction kinetics and competition between glucose, reaction intermediates and OH− at the catalyst surface. Based on the obtained results it follows that the glucose oxidation reaction (GOR) is predominately mass-transport controlled. Combining electrochemical studies and Raman spectroscopy, it is shown that increasing glucose concentrations lead to a delayed oxidation of the gold catalyst surface, presumably by increased consumption rates of Au-hydroxide species

RECOGNITION OF SPORTS EXERCISES USING INERTIAL SENSOR TECHNOLOGY

Supervised learning as a sub-discipline of machine learning enables the recognition of correlations between input variables (features) and associated outputs (classes) and the application of these to previously unknown data sets. In addition to typical areas of application such as speech and image recognition, fields of applications are also being developed in the sports and fitness sector. The purpose of this work was to implement a workflow for the automated recognition of sports exercises in the Matlab® programming environment and to carry out a comparison of different model structures. First, the acquisition of the sensor signals provided in the local network and their processing were implemented. The functionalities to be realised included the interpolation of lossy time series, the labelling of the activity intervals performed and, in part, the generation of sliding windows with statistical parameters. The preprocessed data were used for the training of classifiers and artificial neural networks (ANN). These were iteratively optimised in their corresponding hyper parameters for the data structure to be learned. The most reliable models were finally trained with an increased data set, validated and compared with regard to the achieved performance. In addition to the usual evaluation metrics such as F1 score and accuracy, the temporal behaviour of the assignments was also displayed graphically, which enabled statements to be made about potential causes for incorrect assignments. In this context, especially the transition areas between the classes were detected as erroneous assignments as well as exercises with insufficient or clearly deviating execution. The best overall accuracy achieved with ANN and the increased dataset was 93.7 %