SpORtI: The species originality and rarity index combines phylogenetic and functional originality with rarity metrics to provide a new perspective on species rarity

Methods used to assign rarity among species are fundamental to our ecological understanding and conservation of species that are most vulnerable to extinction or extirpation. Bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila) are at the forefront of declines in pollinator diversity and a comprehensive understanding of their conservation requirements in any landscape is essential. Rarity is generally defined in terms of numerical abundance and geographical distribution, though aspects of species life history, such as degree of specialization and taxonomic relatedness, are also widely recognized as important. Incomplete information on the life histories of many taxa obliges ecologists to rely on species-level classifications of specialization provided by expert opinion or in published site- or region-specific studies. Descriptions of specialization are therefore rooted in characterization of the habitat and introduce subjectivity into rarity calculations through assumptions of how species perceive and use resources. An alternative approach that may reduce this level of subjectivity is to incorporate important life-history elements into species rarity assessments, which are traits of the organism itself and not its environment. Phylogenetic and functional originality are metrics which have been presented as useful for characterizing the uniqueness of species, and thus for developing a more informed index of species rarity. This study describes our Species Originality and Rarity Index (SpORtI) for bees that includes variables reflecting five rarity and originality metrics for each species: numeric rarity, geographic rarity, phenological rarity, phylogenetic originality, and functional originality. We compared species-specific rarity weights generated with this approach against other indices using a bee dataset collected over three years across the 520,000-km2 land area of the Great Lakes Basin and within the United States and found that rankings using our approach differed significantly from other indices. Our index represents an improvement on previous approaches since it incorporates key information identified by other researchers and avoids potential subjectivity associated with assigning habitat specialization. Importantly, SpORtI has the added advantage to incorporate updated species life-history traits reported in the literature to allow for the most comprehensive and timely rarity index. This new index will aid researchers and practitioners in determining what species to focus conservation efforts on, as well as which management treatments and environmental factors affect our most vulnerable species of bees, or other taxa, so that limited resources can be applied to focal areas of conservation concern more effectively and efficiently

First Records of \u3cem\u3ePerdita bequaerti\u3c/em\u3e (Hymenopertera: Andrenidae) from New England

We document the first New England records of the bee Perdita bequaerti Viereck. Perdita bequaerti is a specialist on Asteraceae flowers, especially Helianthus, and is native to much of eastern North America, where it is often associated with predominantly sandy habitats. Previous records indicated P. bequaerti reached the northeastern extent of its range in the state of New York, but in August 2019, during a survey of bees on Helianthus, we collected five specimens of P. bequaerti at two sites in western Massachusetts. Both sites were located on small-scale farms with abundant non-native Helianthus, on soils characteristic of sandy outwash plains and silty floodplains. These records constitute an extension of P. bequaerti\u27s known range into New England

Bee Assemblages in Managed Early-Successional Habitats in Southeastern New Hampshire

We examined the abundance and species richness of bees at 10 sites managed for Sylvilagus transitionalis (New England Cottontail Rabbit) in southeastern New Hampshire. In 2015, we sampled bees using a streamlined bee-monitoring protocol (SBMP) developed for rapid assessment of bee communities, and in 2015 and 2016, we employed bee bowls (modified pan traps) painted fluorescent blue, yellow, or white and filled and with soapy water that were intended to mimic flower colors and attract bees. We compared the abundance of all species combined and species richness among management treatments (clearcuts, old fields, and gravel pits), patch area, and time since management action. We also compared the combined captures from bee bowls to relative abundance indices from the SBMP, as well as flower abundance and richness. Neither captured bee abundance nor species richness differed among management treatments; however, by removing a possible outlier, both abundance and richness were greatest in gravel pits compared to other habitats. There was no correlation between bee captures and the SBMP, and no correlation between captures and flower abundance or floral diversity. Our study demonstrates that habitats managed for New England Cottontail support a diverse assemblage of native bees. Gravel pits are potentially valuable targets for native bee conservation, but old fields and clearcuts offer alternatives in landscapes without gravel pits. Native bees are essential to support ecosystem function, and understanding their distribution and natural history is important to develop habitatmanagement efforts that benefit not only bees but multiple species of conservation concern within early-successional habitats

The contribution of canopy samples to assessments of forestry effects on native bees

Forest management is often practiced to enhance conditions for wildlife, including native bees. Evaluations of the effects of forest management on bees have shown that abundance and diversity are higher in newly created early-successional conditions. To date, studies have restricted sampling to the forest understory; however, recent research finds that bee abundance is as high or higher in forest canopies than in understories, suggesting that previous observations of substantially greater bee abundance and diversity in recently managed areas could be an artifact of incomplete sampling of the vertical gradient within forests. To examine the potential implications of sampling biases associated with the failure of previous studies to include canopy samples in comparisons of managed and unmanaged forests, we sampled bees within a recently harvested forest as well as the understory and canopy of adjacent unmanaged forest. Bee abundance and diversity were an order of magnitude higher in managed areas compared to the unmanaged forest, even when understory and canopy samples were combined. These results suggest that not sampling the canopy is inconsequential with respect to the broadly reported conclusion that managed areas support more abundant and diverse bee communities than surrounding forest cover

Validating Morphometrics with DNA Barcoding to Reliably Separate Three Cryptic Species of Bombus Cresson (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

Despite their large size and striking markings, the identification of bumble bees (Bombus spp.) is surprisingly difficult. This is particularly true for three North American sympatric species in the subgenus Pyrobombus that are often misidentified: B. sandersoni Franklin, B. vagans Smith B. perplexus Cresson. Traditionally, the identification of these cryptic species was based on observations of differences in hair coloration and pattern and qualitative comparisons of morphological characters including malar length. Unfortunately, these characteristics do not reliably separate these species. We present quantitative morphometric methods to separate these species based on the malar length to width ratio (MRL) and the ratios of the malar length to flagellar segments 1 (MR1) and 3 (MR3) for queens and workers, and validated our determinations based on DNA barcoding. All three measurements discriminated queens of B. sandersoni and B. vagans with 100% accuracy. For workers, we achieved 99% accuracy by combining both MR1 and MR3 measurements, and 100% accuracy differentiating workers using MRL. Moreover, measurements were highly repeatable within and among both experienced and inexperienced observers. Our results, validated by genetic evidence, demonstrate that malar measurements provide accurate identifications of B. vagans and B. sandersoni. There was considerable overlap in the measurements between B. perplexus and B. sandersoni. However, these species can usually be reliably separated by combining malar ratio measurements with other morphological features like hair color. The ability to identify bumble bees is key to monitoring the status and trends of their populations, and the methods we present here advance these efforts

The trail of water and the delivery of volatiles to habitable planets

Water is fundamental to our understanding of the evolution of planetary systems and the delivery of volatiles to the surfaces of potentially habitable planets. Yet, we currently have essentially no facilities capable of observing this key species comprehensively. With this white paper, we argue that we need a relatively large, cold space-based observatory equipped with a high-resolution spectrometer, in the mid- through far-infrared wavelength range (25-600~$\mu$m) in order to answer basic questions about planet formation, such as where the Earth got its water, how giant planets and planetesimals grow, and whether water is generally available to planets forming in the habitable zone of their host stars.Comment: Science white paper submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal Surve

Perspectives on Astrophysics Based on Atomic, Molecular, and Optical (AMO) Techniques

About two generations ago, a large part of AMO science was dominated by experimental high energy collision studies and perturbative theoretical methods. Since then, AMO science has undergone a transition and is now dominated by quantum, ultracold, and ultrafast studies. But in the process, the field has passed over the complexity that lies between these two extremes. Most of the Universe resides in this intermediate region. We put forward that the next frontier for AMO science is to explore the AMO complexity that describes most of the Cosmos.Comment: White paper submission to the Decadal Assessment and Outlook Report on Atomic, Molecular, and Optical (AMO) Science (AMO 2020

Perspectives on Astrophysics Based on Atomic, Molecular, and Optical (AMO) Techniques

About two generations ago, a large part of AMO science was dominated by experimental high energy collision studies and perturbative theoretical methods. Since then, AMO science has undergone a transition and is now dominated by quantum, ultracold, and ultrafast studies. But in the process, the field has passed over the complexity that lies between these two extremes. Most of the Universe resides in this intermediate region. We put forward that the next frontier for AMO science is to explore the AMO complexity that describes most of the Cosmos

Measuring performance on the Healthcare Access and Quality Index for 195 countries and territories and selected subnational locations: A systematic analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

Background: A key component of achieving universal health coverage is ensuring that all populations have access to quality health care. Examining where gains have occurred or progress has faltered across and within countries is crucial to guiding decisions and strategies for future improvement. We used the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) to assess personal health-care access and quality with the Healthcare Access and Quality (HAQ) Index for 195 countries and territories, as well as subnational locations in seven countries, from 1990 to 2016. Methods Drawing from established methods and updated estimates from GBD 2016, we used 32 causes from which death should not occur in the presence of effective care to approximate personal health-care access and quality by location and over time. To better isolate potential effects of personal health-care access and quality from underlying risk factor patterns, we risk-standardised cause-specific deaths due to non-cancers by location-year, replacing the local joint exposure of environmental and behavioural risks with the global level of exposure. Supported by the expansion of cancer registry data in GBD 2016, we used mortality-to-incidence ratios for cancers instead of risk-standardised death rates to provide a stronger signal of the effects of personal health care and access on cancer survival. We transformed each cause to a scale of 0-100, with 0 as the first percentile (worst) observed between 1990 and 2016, and 100 as the 99th percentile (best); we set these thresholds at the country level, and then applied them to subnational locations. We applied a principal components analysis to construct the HAQ Index using all scaled cause values, providing an overall score of 0-100 of personal health-care access and quality by location over time. We then compared HAQ Index levels and trends by quintiles on the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a summary measure of overall development. As derived from the broader GBD study and other data sources, we examined relationships between national HAQ Index scores and potential correlates of performance, such as total health spending per capita. Findings In 2016, HAQ Index performance spanned from a high of 97\ub71 (95% UI 95\ub78-98\ub71) in Iceland, followed by 96\ub76 (94\ub79-97\ub79) in Norway and 96\ub71 (94\ub75-97\ub73) in the Netherlands, to values as low as 18\ub76 (13\ub71-24\ub74) in the Central African Republic, 19\ub70 (14\ub73-23\ub77) in Somalia, and 23\ub74 (20\ub72-26\ub78) in Guinea-Bissau. The pace of progress achieved between 1990 and 2016 varied, with markedly faster improvements occurring between 2000 and 2016 for many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia, whereas several countries in Latin America and elsewhere saw progress stagnate after experiencing considerable advances in the HAQ Index between 1990 and 2000. Striking subnational disparities emerged in personal health-care access and quality, with China and India having particularly large gaps between locations with the highest and lowest scores in 2016. In China, performance ranged from 91\ub75 (89\ub71-93\ub76) in Beijing to 48\ub70 (43\ub74-53\ub72) in Tibet (a 43\ub75-point difference), while India saw a 30\ub78-point disparity, from 64\ub78 (59\ub76-68\ub78) in Goa to 34\ub70 (30\ub73-38\ub71) in Assam. Japan recorded the smallest range in subnational HAQ performance in 2016 (a 4\ub78-point difference), whereas differences between subnational locations with the highest and lowest HAQ Index values were more than two times as high for the USA and three times as high for England. State-level gaps in the HAQ Index in Mexico somewhat narrowed from 1990 to 2016 (from a 20\ub79-point to 17\ub70-point difference), whereas in Brazil, disparities slightly increased across states during this time (a 17\ub72-point to 20\ub74-point difference). Performance on the HAQ Index showed strong linkages to overall development, with high and high-middle SDI countries generally having higher scores and faster gains for non-communicable diseases. Nonetheless, countries across the development spectrum saw substantial gains in some key health service areas from 2000 to 2016, most notably vaccine-preventable diseases. Overall, national performance on the HAQ Index was positively associated with higher levels of total health spending per capita, as well as health systems inputs, but these relationships were quite heterogeneous, particularly among low-to-middle SDI countries. Interpretation GBD 2016 provides a more detailed understanding of past success and current challenges in improving personal health-care access and quality worldwide. Despite substantial gains since 2000, many low-SDI and middle- SDI countries face considerable challenges unless heightened policy action and investments focus on advancing access to and quality of health care across key health services, especially non-communicable diseases. Stagnating or minimal improvements experienced by several low-middle to high-middle SDI countries could reflect the complexities of re-orienting both primary and secondary health-care services beyond the more limited foci of the Millennium Development Goals. Alongside initiatives to strengthen public health programmes, the pursuit of universal health coverage hinges upon improving both access and quality worldwide, and thus requires adopting a more comprehensive view-and subsequent provision-of quality health care for all populations