Identifying nutrient thresholds for sustainable local management of British Columbia seagrass beds

Canada has vast seagrass ecosystems, yet they are virtually unprotected and experiencing threats associated with accelerating coastal development and climate change eutrophication, sedimentation, and increased temperature. In British Columbia, there is a long history of community effort to protect seagrass, but little formal legislative action. While federal measures are progressing under the convention on biological diversity (CBD), federal efforts will often miss seagrass which occurs only at the coastal margins. Local action is necessary to protect seagrass, though this will be primarily occurring on a case-by-case basis as individual communities and municipalities act to limit or reduce seagrass-harming actions. We propose a bottom-up ecological approach rather than top-down, with the goal of linking predictors of Zostera bed health, with a focus on nutrient loading, to impacts on trophic use by invertebrates and fish. Most importantly, this information will be used directly to inform local communities and governments of the thresholds of nutrient loading at which these negative impacts may occur. Analysis of data from Boundary Bay (49.0352° N, 122.9400° W) will be a priority because of the network of organizations monitoring and working towards local advocacy. Multiple stressors are likely impacting eelgrass habitat of Boundary Bay, including storm-water discharges and agricultural runoff from three rivers discharging into the bay. However, the eelgrass bed in this estuary is still expansive and may provide the opportunity to identify areas of concern, link them to changes in Zostera bed community structure, and mitigate human inputs of nutrients before large scale loss is experienced. The information collected from this study are being used to inform management-driven assessments of eutrophication in coastal environments starting with Boundary Bay, and be used as restoration targets to reduce nutrient and other stressors that indicate a negative impact to Zostera and the invertebrate community

Development of a Personalized Shared Decision-Making Tool for Knee Osteoarthritis and User-Testing With African American and Latina Women

BACKGROUND: Patients with chronic knee pain are often unaware of treatment options and likely outcomes-information that is critical to decision-making. A consistent framework for communicating patient-personalized information enables clinicians to provide consistent, targeted, and relevant information. Our objective was to user-test a shared decision-making (SDM) tool for chronic knee pain. METHODS: A cross-functional team developed a Markov-based health economics model and tested the model outputs with patient panels, patient and clinician focus groups, and clinical specialists. The resulting SDM tool was user-tested in a parallel-designed, randomized controlled study with 52 African American and 52 Latina women from geographically representative areas of the US. Participants were randomized to counseling with or without the SDM tool. Feedback was collected at intervention and at 1 month after intervention and analyzed with Student\u27s t-tests and Chi-squared analyses (alpha = 0.05). RESULTS: Qualitative results indicated patients understood the material, rated the overall experience highly, and were likely to recommend the physician. The SDM group reported high satisfaction with the tool. A greater proportion of the SDM group (56%) reported increased physical activity over baseline at 1 month compared with the control group (33%) ( CONCLUSION: Use of this innovative SDM tool was associated with high satisfaction and a significant increase in self-reported physical activity level at 1 month. The SDM tool may elicit behavioral changes to promote musculoskeletal health

The functional role of producer diversity in ecosystems

Over the past several decades, a rapidly expanding field of research known as biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has begun to quantify how the world\u27s biological diversity can, as an independent variable, control ecological processes that are both essential for, and fundamental to, the functioning of ecosystems. Research in this area has often been justified on grounds that (1) loss of biological diversity ranks among the most pronounced changes to the global environment and that (2) reductions in diversity, and corresponding changes in species composition, could alter important services that ecosystems provide to humanity (e.g., food production, pest/disease control, water purification). Here we review over two decades of experiments that have examined how species richness of primary producers influences the suite of ecological processes that are controlled by plants and algae in terrestrial, marine, and freshwater ecosystems. Using formal meta-analyses, we assess the balance of evidence for eight fundamental questions and corresponding hypotheses about the functional role of producer diversity in ecosystems. These include questions about how primary producer diversity influences the efficiency of resource use and biomass production in ecosystems, how primary producer diversity influences the transfer and recycling of biomass to other trophic groups in a food web, and the number of species and spatial /temporal scales at which diversity effects are most apparent. After summarizing the balance of evidence and stating our own confidence in the conclusions, we outline several new questions that must now be addressed if this field is going to evolve into a predictive science that can help conserve and manage ecological processes in ecosystems

Opportunities for behavioral rescue under rapid environmental change

Laboratory measurements of physiological and demographic tolerances are important in understanding the impact of climate change on species diversity; however, it has been recognized that forecasts based solely on these laboratory estimates overestimate risk by omitting the capacity for species to utilize microclimatic variation via behavioral adjustments in activity patterns or habitat choice. The complex, and often context‐dependent nature, of microclimate utilization has been an impediment to the advancement of general predictive models. Here, we overcome this impediment and estimate the potential impact of warming on the fitness of ectotherms using a benefit/cost trade‐off derived from the simple and broadly documented thermal performance curve and a generalized cost function. Our framework reveals that, for certain environments, the cost of behavioral thermoregulation can be reduced as warming occurs, enabling behavioral buffering (e.g., the capacity for behavior to ameliorate detrimental impacts) and “behavioral rescue” from extinction in extreme cases. By applying our framework to operative temperature and physiological data collected at an extremely fine spatial scale in an African lizard, we show that new behavioral opportunities may emerge. Finally, we explore large‐scale geographic differences in the impact of behavior on climate‐impact projections using a global dataset of 38 insect species. These multiple lines of inference indicate that understanding the existing relationship between thermal characteristics (e.g., spatial configuration, spatial heterogeneity, and modal temperature) is essential for improving estimates of extinction risk

An Empiricist’s Guide to Using Ecological Theory

A scientific understanding of the biological world arises when ideas about how nature works are formalized, tested, refined, and then tested again. Although the benefits of feedback between theoretical and empirical research are widely acknowledged by ecologists, this link is still not as strong as it could be in ecological research. This is in part because theory, particularly when expressed mathematically, can feel inaccessible to empiricists who may have little formal training in advanced math. To address this persistent barrier, we provide a general and accessible guide that covers the basic, step-by-step process of how to approach, understand, and use ecological theory in empirical work. We first give an overview of how and why mathematical theory is created, then outline four specific ways to use both mathematical and verbal theory to motivate empirical work, and finally present a practical tool kit for reading and understanding the mathematical aspects of ecological theory.We hope that empowering empiricists to embrace theory in their work will help move the field closer to a full integration of theoretical and empirical research

Measurement of Muon Neutrino Quasielastic Scattering on a Hydrocarbon Target at E-v similar to 3.5 GeV

We report a study of nu(mu) charged-current quasielastic events in the segmented scintillator inner tracker of the MINERvA experiment running in the NuMI neutrino beam at Fermilab. The events were selected by requiring a mu(-) and low calorimetric recoil energy separated from the interaction vertex. We measure the flux-averaged differential cross section, d sigma/dQ(2), and study the low energy particle content of the final state. Deviations are found between the measured d sigma/dQ(2) and the expectations of a model of independent nucleons in a relativistic Fermi gas. We also observe an excess of energy near the vertex consistent with multiple protons in the final state

Multiethnic Meta-Analysis Identifies Ancestry-Specific and Cross-Ancestry Loci for Pulmonary Function

Nearly 100 loci have been identified for pulmonary function, almost exclusively in studies of European ancestry populations. We extend previous research by meta-analyzing genome-wide association studies of 1000 Genomes imputed variants in relation to pulmonary function in a multiethnic population of 90,715 individuals of European (N = 60,552), African (N = 8429), Asian (N = 9959), and Hispanic/Latino (N = 11,775) ethnicities. We identify over 50 additional loci at genome-wide significance in ancestry-specific or multiethnic meta-analyses. Using recent fine-mapping methods incorporating functional annotation, gene expression, and differences in linkage disequilibrium between ethnicities, we further shed light on potential causal variants and genes at known and newly identified loci. Several of the novel genes encode proteins with predicted or established drug targets, including KCNK2 and CDK12. Our study highlights the utility of multiethnic and integrative genomics approaches to extend existing knowledge of the genetics of lung function and clinical relevance of implicated loci

Verbal Learning and Memory Deficits across Neurological and Neuropsychiatric Disorders: Insights from an ENIGMA Mega Analysis.

Deficits in memory performance have been linked to a wide range of neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions. While many studies have assessed the memory impacts of individual conditions, this study considers a broader perspective by evaluating how memory recall is differentially associated with nine common neuropsychiatric conditions using data drawn from 55 international studies, aggregating 15,883 unique participants aged 15–90. The effects of dementia, mild cognitive impairment, Parkinson’s disease, traumatic brain injury, stroke, depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder on immediate, short-, and long-delay verbal learning and memory (VLM) scores were estimated relative to matched healthy individuals. Random forest models identified age, years of education, and site as important VLM covariates. A Bayesian harmonization approach was used to isolate and remove site effects. Regression estimated the adjusted association of each clinical group with VLM scores. Memory deficits were strongly associated with dementia and schizophrenia (p \u3c 0.001), while neither depression nor ADHD showed consistent associations with VLM scores (p \u3e 0.05). Differences associated with clinical conditions were larger for longer delayed recall duration items. By comparing VLM across clinical conditions, this study provides a foundation for enhanced diagnostic precision and offers new insights into disease management of comorbid disorders

Biodiversity and food webs supported by BC eelgrass meadows

Eelgrass meadows throughout the Salish Sea support rich food webs of invertebrates, fish, mammals and seabirds. In addition to supplying food and protection for smaller animals, eelgrass meadows attract larger consumers to feed on the smaller animals. Animal biodiversity in seagrass meadows is therefore jointly shaped by top-down forces (predation) as well as bottom up influences on food availability and species tolerances of abiotic conditions. I will review recent advances in understanding how seasonal convergence of foraging by great blue herons and small fish such as shiner perch exert top down control on invertebrate communities in an intertidal Salish Sea eelgrass meadow. In addition to top-down control, animal biodiversity in and among eelgrass meadows reveals substantial spatial structure. Beta-diversity is a major component of regional biodiversity, such that species turnover among meadows is substantial. As British Columbia enhances spatial protection of marine habitats to meet Aichi targets of 10% protection by 2020, decisions about prioritizing marine habitats should reflect the importance of consumer-resource interactions and dispersal that integrate ecological processes across multiple spatial scales. This spatial integration leads to connections among habitats and habitat types that are likely central to the sustainability and resilience of marine ecosystems in the future, though our understanding of them for eelgrass habitats remains limited. Fortunately, interest and efforts to understand eelgrass-associated ecology and biodiversity in British Columbia continues to grow, and achieving effective conservation targets is within reach