Harnessing practitioner knowledge to inform the conservation of a protected species, the hazel dormouse Muscardinus avellanarius

This is the final version. Available on open access from Wiley via the DOI in this recordData availability statement: Interview transcripts will not be made available to conform with participant consentConservation decisions are typically constrained by the availability of published evidence. Practitioners and non-academic experts often possess additional knowledge, including about the practical plausibility of conservation actions, which may lead to more effective planning and outcomes. However, practitioner knowledge is rarely considered during formal evidence syntheses. Alongside a formal literature review, we conducted 26 interviews involving 38 conservation professionals to elicit their knowledge of the conservation of a protected and declining species in England, the hazel dormouse Muscardinus avellanarius. Practitioners and non-academic experts provided additional insights about dormouse ecology and conservation, beyond those synthesized from the published literature, though we found few contradictions between these different information sources. Instead, practitioner knowledge helped to verify, clarify and expand upon evidence from empirical studies. In general, practitioners emphasized that dormice are far more adaptable than traditionally perceived, with thriving populations found in hedgerows, scrub, road verges and railway verges, rather than solely within broadleaf woodlands. Proposed opportunities for restoring dormouse populations included improving hedgerow management, creating new woodlands, bringing existing woodlands back into management, setting aside unproductive land and improving habitat connectivity. However, participants emphasized the need for landscape-scale approaches, accounting for the impacts of climate change, and better surveying and monitoring. Key practical considerations included overcoming time and financial constraints, providing better advice, knowledge and training, changing attitudes of land owners and managers and balancing other demands such as agricultural productivity and the requirements of other species. Despite the insights they provided, participants highlighted many remaining knowledge gaps. These included uncertainties arising from the published literature, as well as scarcely studied topics that are of major practical importance, namely the effectiveness of dormouse mitigation measures in planning and development, and the impacts of anthropogenic disturbance and pollution on dormice. Our findings improve the evidence base for restoring hazel dormouse populations and for further empirical evidence gathering. More generally, the study highlights how practitioner knowledge can help both to supplement traditional published evidence and to better frame conservation programmes, which may lead to more successful outcomes.Natural Englan

Road verges support pollinators in agricultural landscapes, but are diminished by heavy traffic and summer cutting

This is the final version. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Data available via the University of Exeter's institutional repository https://doi.org/10.24378/exe.1563Supporting pollinators in agricultural landscapes is important for reversing their global decline. Road verges and hedges are used by pollinators for feeding and reproduction, but few studies consider entire pollinator communities, and it remains unclear how they are distributed across adjacent verges, hedges and fields, or how they are affected by traffic and verge cutting. We surveyed flowers and pollinators, using transect counts and pan traps, to explore the role of road verges and their associated hedges in supporting pollinators in an agricultural landscape in southwest England, and the impacts of traffic and verge cutting. At 19 sites, we surveyed the road verge (verge edge and verge centre), the verge hedge (both sides), a field hedge and the field interior. Road verges and hedges had a much greater flower abundance, flower species richness and pollinator abundance than field interiors. Verge hedges had far less woody cover than field hedges, but greater flower species richness. There were fewer pollinators along verge edges (next to roads) than along verge centres (2–11 m from roads) and fewer pollinators in road verges next to busier roads. Road verges were generally cut once (in summer), and cuttings were never removed. There were substantially fewer flowers and pollinators in road verges that had been cut, even though surveys often took place many weeks after cutting. Synthesis and applications. Road verges and their associated hedges can provide hotspots of resources for pollinators in agricultural landscapes, but their capacity to do so is reduced by heavy traffic and summer verge cutting. We recommend that beneficial management for pollinators should prioritize wider road verges (at least 2 m wide), roads with less traffic, and areas away from the immediate vicinity of the road. Where possible, verge cutting should not be carried out during peak flowering times.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty uni

Spatial extent of road pollution: a national analysis

This is the final version. Available on open access from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordNatural Environment Research Council (NERC)Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Uni

Socio-psychological factors, beyond knowledge, predict people’s engagement with pollinator conservation (article)

This is the final version. Available on open access from Wiley via the DOI in this recordThe dataset associated with this article is located in ORE at: https://doi.org/10.24378/exe.2783Nature conservation often depends on the behaviour of individuals, which can be driven by socio-psychological factors such as a person’s attitude, knowledge and identity. Despite extensive ecological research about pollinator declines, there has been almost no social research assessing the drivers of people’s engagement in pollinator conservation behaviour. To address this gap, we used a large-scale, online questionnaire in the UK, broadly framed around the Theory of Planned Behaviour. We received a total of 1,275 responses from a wide range of ages, incomes and education levels, despite a selection bias towards people with a pre-existing interest in pollinators. A range of socio-psychological factors predicted people’s pollinator conservation actions and explained 45% of the variation. Respondents’ diversity of nature interactions and perceived behavioural control (feeling able to help pollinators) were consistently important predictors of people’s pollinator conservation actions, whilst the importance of other socio-psychological factors depended on the particular action. Notably, knowledge was far less important overall than people’s perceptions and other socio-psychological factors, highlighting a knowledge-action gap. Further unexplained variation in people’s behaviour can partly be explained by structural and contextual factors, particularly regarding social norms around tidiness. From a practical perspective, our findings reveal three main insights: (i) Several simple, low-cost pollinator conservation actions (reduced mowing, leaving areas unmown and creating patches of bare ground for ground-nesting bees) are currently under-utilised so should be priorities for pollinator conservation programmes. (ii) Strategies are needed to overcome reported practical barriers, for example by providing free resources (e.g. seeds of pollen- and nectar-rich plants) and communicating simple beneficial actions that can be carried out with limited time, space and money. (iii) Knowledge is just one (relatively less important) factor that predicts pollinator conservation behaviour – othersocio-psychological factors provide potential pathways for increasing uptake, and structural and contextual limitations also need to be considered. In practice, this could be achieved by engaging, inspiring and empowering the public to help pollinators and to take responsibility for their local environment, for example through environmental education and community programmes facilitating public interest and involvement in the management of greenspace.Halpin TrustNatural Environment Research Council (NERC)Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty unitEconomic and Social Research Council (ESRC)Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)European Regional Development Fund (ERDF

Socio-psychological factors, beyond knowledge, predict people’s engagement with pollinator conservation (dataset)

A questionnaire about people’s perceptions, knowledge and behaviour relating to pollinators was distributed from March-June 2018, primarily via social media and email. The survey received 1,275 responses, which are provided here, in a single csv data file.The article associated with this dataset is located in ORE at: http://hdl.handle.net/10871/123383This is the dataset used for the Knapp et al. (2020) article "Socio-psychological factors, beyond knowledge, predict people’s engagement with pollinator conservation" published in People and Nature.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)Halpin TrustEuropean Regional Development Fund (ERDF)Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) UnitCornwall CouncilWelsh Assembly Governmen

Road verge extent and habitat composition across Great Britain

This is the final version. Available on open access from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordThere is growing societal and scientific interest in enhancing road verges for nature and the environment. This is partly because they are estimated to cover large areas in some regions. Yet, to our knowledge, there has been no quantitative assessment of national road verge extent, or of the habitats they encompass. We present a novel method for characterising and classifying road verges remotely, with which we evaluate the extent and habitat composition of road verges across Great Britain, and opportunities for improving verges for nature and the environment. We use stratified random sampling of freely-available road maps combined with satellite (Google Earth) and ground-level imagery (Google Street View). Overall, we estimate that there are 2,579 km2 (2,149- 3,010 km2) of road verges across Great Britain, equivalent to 1.2% of land area, of which 707 km2 (27.47%) is short, frequently-mown grassland, 1,062 km2 (40.87%) is regular grassland, 480 km2 (18.73%) is woodland, and 272 km2 (10.66%) is scrub. By comparison, we estimate that there are 3,694 km2 of hard road surfaces across Great Britain, equivalent to 1.8% of land. Only 27% of frequently-mown grassland verges contained trees, indicating potential for planting trees or shrubs to provide environmental benefits. Our findings suggest that there are significant opportunities to enhance (i) verges along major roads, because these constitute a disproportionately large area of road verge and have the widest verges, and (ii) frequently-mown grassland verges for example by, where appropriate, reducing mowing frequencies and/or planting trees. Our method can be used, adapted and further developed to assess road verges across other regions, and in greater detailCornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) UnitNatural Environment Research Council (NERC

Experimental demonstration of quantum memory for light

The information carrier of today's communications, a weak pulse of light, is an intrinsically quantum object. As a consequence, complete information about the pulse cannot, even in principle, be perfectly recorded in a classical memory. In the field of quantum information this has led to a long standing challenge: how to achieve a high-fidelity transfer of an independently prepared quantum state of light onto the atomic quantum state? Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate a protocol for such quantum memory based on atomic ensembles. We demonstrate for the first time a recording of an externally provided quantum state of light onto the atomic quantum memory with a fidelity up to 70%, significantly higher than that for the classical recording. Quantum storage of light is achieved in three steps: an interaction of light with atoms, the subsequent measurement on the transmitted light, and the feedback onto the atoms conditioned on the measurement result. Density of recorded states 33% higher than that for the best classical recording of light on atoms is achieved. A quantum memory lifetime of up to 4 msec is demonstrated.Comment: 22 pages (double line spacing) incl. supplementary information, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Natur

Cyclophyllidea van Beneden in Braun, 1900

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A Dynamic Model of Interactions of Ca^(2+), Calmodulin, and Catalytic Subunits of Ca^(2+)/Calmodulin-Dependent Protein Kinase II

During the acquisition of memories, influx of Ca^(2+) into the postsynaptic spine through the pores of activated N-methyl-D-aspartate-type glutamate receptors triggers processes that change the strength of excitatory synapses. The pattern of Ca^(2+) influx during the first few seconds of activity is interpreted within the Ca^(2+)-dependent signaling network such that synaptic strength is eventually either potentiated or depressed. Many of the critical signaling enzymes that control synaptic plasticity, including Ca^(2+)/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII), are regulated by calmodulin, a small protein that can bind up to 4 Ca^(2+) ions. As a first step toward clarifying how the Ca^(2+)-signaling network decides between potentiation or depression, we have created a kinetic model of the interactions of Ca^(2+), calmodulin, and CaMKII that represents our best understanding of the dynamics of these interactions under conditions that resemble those in a postsynaptic spine. We constrained parameters of the model from data in the literature, or from our own measurements, and then predicted time courses of activation and autophosphorylation of CaMKII under a variety of conditions. Simulations showed that species of calmodulin with fewer than four bound Ca^(2+) play a significant role in activation of CaMKII in the physiological regime, supporting the notion that processing ofCa^(2+) signals in a spine involves competition among target enzymes for binding to unsaturated species of CaM in an environment in which the concentration of Ca^(2+) is fluctuating rapidly. Indeed, we showed that dependence of activation on the frequency of Ca^(2+) transients arises from the kinetics of interaction of fluctuating Ca^(2+) with calmodulin/CaMKII complexes. We used parameter sensitivity analysis to identify which parameters will be most beneficial to measure more carefully to improve the accuracy of predictions. This model provides a quantitative base from which to build more complex dynamic models of postsynaptic signal transduction during learning

Long nonlinear internal waves

Author Posting. © Annual Reviews, 2006. This article is posted here by permission of Annual Reviews for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 38 (2006): 395-425, doi:10.1146/annurev.fluid.38.050304.092129.Over the past four decades, the combination of in situ and remote sensing observations has demonstrated that long nonlinear internal solitary-like waves are ubiquitous features of coastal oceans. The following provides an overview of the properties of steady internal solitary waves and the transient processes of wave generation and evolution, primarily from the point of view of weakly nonlinear theory, of which the Korteweg-de Vries equation is the most frequently used example. However, the oceanographically important processes of wave instability and breaking, generally inaccessible with these models, are also discussed. Furthermore, observations often show strongly nonlinear waves whose properties can only be explained with fully nonlinear models.KRH acknowledges support from NSF and ONR and an Independent Study Award from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. WKM acknowledges support from NSF and ONR, which has made his work in this area possible, in close collaboration with former graduate students at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and MIT