Species-people correlations and the need to account for survey effort in biodiversity analyses

Aim Positive regional correlations between biodiversity and human population have been detected for several taxonomic groups and geographical regions. Such correlations could have important conservation implications and have been mainly attributed to ecological factors, with little testing for an artefactual explanation: more populated regions may show higher biodiversity because they are more thoroughly surveyed. We tested the hypothesis that the correlation between people and herptile diversity in Europe is influenced by survey effor

Telework Configurations and Labour Productivity: some stylized facts

The development of information and communication technologies has led to the rise of new working forms in firms, some of which are temporally and spatially dispersed, such as telework practices. However, ‘telework’ is a broad concept, including different forms of remote work as well as diverse reasons and performance implications for the separation of work from the firm’s premises. Following this consideration, this paper has explored two sides of telework: 1) the main types of telework practises adopted by firms in relation to their technological, organizational and environmental context; 2) the association between the adoption of telework practices and labour productivity. Specifically, analysing data gathered through a survey analysis conducted from 2005 and 2009 on Italian enterprises, we identified two main typologies of telework: 1) firms using forms of home‐based telework; 2) firms using mobile forms of telework. Whereas firms prevalently using the first type of telework modality do not exhibit a superior endowment of information systems and do not exhibit higher labour productivity, firms deploying “mobile work” practices are characterized by a higher adoption of information systems, deal with more dynamic business environments and exhibit higher labour productivity with respect to firms that do not use telework practices

Is the human population a large-scale indicator of the species richness of ground beetles?

Aim Positive regional correlations between biodiversity and human population have been detected for several taxonomic groups and geographical regions. Such correlations could have important conservation implications and have been mainly attributed to ecological factors, with little testing for an artefactual explanation: more populated regions may show higher biodiversity because they are more thoroughly surveyed. We tested the hypothesis that the correlation between people and herptile diversity in Europe is influenced by survey effor

Positive regional species-people correlations: A sampling artefact or a key issue for sustainable development?

Many studies are documenting positive large-scale species– people correlations (Luck, 2007; Schuldt & Assmann, 2010). The issue is scale dependent: the local association of species richness and people is in many cases a negative one (Pautasso, 2007; Pecher et al., 2010). This biogeographical pattern is thus important for conservation. If species-rich regions are also densely populated, preserving biodiversity becomes more difficult, ceteris paribus, than if species-rich regions were sparsely populated. At the same time, positive, regional species–people correlations are an opportunity for the biodiversity education of the majority of the human population and underline the importance of conservation in human-modified landscapes (e.g. Sheil & Meijaard, 2010; Ward, 2010)

The 'rotiferologist' effect and other global correlates of species richness in monogonont rotifers

Global biodiversity patterns are often driven by diff erent environmental variables at diff erent scales. However, it is still controversial whether there are general trends, whether similar processes are responsible for similar patterns, and/or whether confounding eff ects such as sampling bias can produce misleading results. Our aim is twofold: 1) assessing the global correlates of diversity in a group of microscopic animals little analysed so far, and 2) inferring the infl uence of sampling intensity on biodiversity analyses. As a case study, we choose rotifers, because of their high potential for dispersal across the globe. We assembled and analysed a new worldwide dataset of records of monogonont rotifers, a group of microscopic aquatic animals, from 1960 to 1992. Using spatially explicit models, we assessed whether the diversity patterns conformed to those commonly obtained for larger organisms, and whether they still held true after controlling for sampling intensity, variations in area, and spatial structure in the data. Our results are in part analogous to those commonly obtained for macroorganisms (habitat heterogeneity and precipitation emerge as the main global correlates), but show some divergence (potential absence of a latitudinal gradient and of a large-scale correlation with human population). Moreover, the eff ect of sampling eff ort is remarkable, accounting for 50% of the variability; this strong eff ect may mask other patterns such as latitudinal gradients. Our study points out that sampling bias should be carefully considered when drawing conclusions from large-scale analyses, and calls for further faunistic work on microorganisms in all regions of the world to better understand the generality of the processes driving global patterns in biodiversity