Ecosystem services for prioritization of áreas for conservation of bats in the Atlantic Forest

Orientador: Dr. André Andrian PadialDissertação (Mestrado) – Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Biológicas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia e Conservação. Defesa : Curitiba, 30/08/2021Inclui referências: p. 31-38Resumo: Serviços ecossistêmicos são aspectos do ecossistema responsáveis por produzir direta ou indiretamente o bem-estar humano. Dada a imprescindível necessidade de dispor destes serviços em um futuro cada vez mais preocupante, as investigações têm-se concentrado cada vez mais na detecção e estimativa de valores de serviços prestados por diferentes modelos ecológicos. Apresentando a maior plasticidade alimentar entre todas as ordens de mamíferos, os morcegos são um táxon chave na provisão de serviços ecossistêmicos. Dessa forma, o presente estudo tem como objetivos: avaliar a importância dos serviços ecossistêmicos prestados por morcegos na Mata Atlântica brasileira, bem como calcular o valor desses serviços, a perda de habitat, abundância e riqueza de espécies de acordo com as mudanças climáticas, avaliar a cobertura atual de áreas protegidas na Mata Atlântica e identificar áreas prioritárias para a conservação de Phyllostomidae. Estimamos os valores de riqueza, abundância e serviços ecossistêmicos para 30 espécies de morcegos filostomídeos da Mata Atlântica. A partir desses dados, construímos modelos de distribuição e áreas prioritárias para a conservação de morcegos. Nossas projeções sugerem uma redução média nos serviços ecossistêmicos de US $900 milhões e uma redução na abundância de morcegos em aproximadamente 87 milhões de indivíduos até 2070 na Mata Atlântica. Nossos resultados também destacam o processo de homogeneização biótica que tende a se estabelecer na Mata Atlântica com as mudanças climáticas. Sugerimos que áreas protegidas com mais de 100 km de área têm papel indispensável na manutenção da riqueza de espécies de morcegos da Mata Atlântica, mostrando que escolher o local onde uma unidade de conservação será implantada pode ser tão importante quanto decidir o tamanho dessas unidades. De acordo com o supracitado, acreditamos que o presente trabalho pode apoiar a manutenção e a implementação de futuras unidades de conservação.Abstract: Ecosystem services are aspects of the ecosystem responsible for directly or indirectly produce human well-being. Because of the indispensable need to have these services in an increasingly worrying future, research have been increasingly focused in detecting and estimating values from services provided by several ecological entities. Showing the greatest food plasticity among all orders of mammals, bats are a key taxa in the provision of ecosystem services. This study aims to: (1) evaluate the importance of ecosystem services provided by bats in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, as well as (2) calculate the value of these services, the habitat loss, abundance and species richness according to climate change, (3) evaluate the current coverage of protected areas in the Atlantic Forest and (4) identify priority areas for Phyllostomidae's conservation. We estimate the values of richness, abundance and ecosystem services for 30 species of phyllostomid bats from the Atlantic Forest. From these data, we build distribution models and priority areas for bat conservation. Our projections suggest an average reduction in ecosystem services of US$ 900 million and a reduction in bat abundance in approximately 87 million individuals by 2070 in the Atlantic Forest. Our findings also highlight the process of biotic homogenization that tends to establish itself in the Atlantic Forest with climate change. We suggest that protected areas over 100 km of area play an indispensable role in maintaining the richness of bat species in the Atlantic Forest, showing that choosing the location where a protected area will be implanted can be just as important when deciding on its size. We believe that the present work can support maintenance and implementation of future protected areas

Assimetria flutuante em morcegos filostomídeos (chiroptera: phyllostomidae), na região sul do Brasil

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso, apresentado para obtenção do grau de Bacharel no curso de Ciências Biológicas, da Universidade do Extremo Sul Catarinense, UNESC.A ocorrência de atributos assimétricos está relacionada a fatores estressantes, os quais podem ter origem genética e/ou ambiental. Três são os tipos de assimetria existentes: antissimetria, assimetria direcional e assimetria flutuante, sendo a última correspondendo a variações aleatórias entre as superfícies direita e esquerda do corpo do organismo e a única utilizada para estudos de distúrbios de desenvolvimento. O objetivo deste estudo foi analisar se populações de Sturnira lilium e Artibeus lituratus, que ocorrem em ambientes naturais ou antrópicos, apresentam diferenças na ocorrência de assimetria flutuante em estruturas morfológicas externas, na região sul do Brasil. Para o estudo foi analisado material coletado em diferentes pontos dos estados de Santa Catarina e Paraná. Para ambas as espécies foram medidos 13 caracteres morfológicos externos dos lados direito e esquerdo do plano corpóreo dos morcegos. Para verificar se houve diferença entre os caracteres bilaterais, foi utilizado o teste de Wilcoxon, com nível de significância de 0,05.Para A. lituratus, a comparação dos valores de medida entre lado direito e esquerdo do corpo demonstra que quatro, dos 13 caracteres morfológicos analisados, foram assimétricos em ambientes antrópicos, ao passo que em ambientes naturais, somente três caracteres foram assimétricos. Já para S. lilium, cinco foram os caracteres assimétricos em ambientes antrópicos, e quatro em ambientes naturais. Sturnira lilium apresentou ainda que sutil, maior porcentagem de caracteres assimétricos (38%), quando comparado a A.lituratus (31%), o que sugere que esta espécie possa ser mais susceptível a ocorrência de assimetria flutuante em ambientes antrópicos, quando comparado a segunda. Essa diferença pode estar relacionada com o modo de forrageamento, capacidade de deslocamento e taxa metabólica das espécies. Diferente do observado em outros estudos, os caracteres assimétricos que expressaram assimetria em ambiente antrópico ficaram restritos aos membros anteriores, com exceção de tíbia e fíbula para S. lilium. Tal constatação pode ser explicada por possíveis mecanismos de neutralização corpórea na área das asas de morcegos. Sendo um estudo pioneiro em relação a comparação entre áreas com diferentes níveis de conservação, este estudo pode subsidiar novos estudos que busquem entender as causas e consequências das ações antrópicas em diferentes grupos zoológicos

A systematic literature review on the stochastic analysis of value streams

Value stream analysis is a very useful approach in the identification of non-value adding wastes and developing a systemic plan for achieving process improvement. However, traditional value stream mapping fails in considering the inherent variability of processes, hence reinforcing improvements that might not lead to significant results. In this sense, the uncertainties associated with value streams become an issue that can be curbed with the integration of stochastic methods. By conducting a systematic literature review, this research evaluates the level of integration of stochastic methods into value stream analysis and identifies those stochastic methods that are widely adopted to address uncertainties in the value stream analysis. Results from the review indicate that the application of the existing stochastic methods into value stream analysis is still at its infancy and is not systematically integrated. In addition, the few studies that consider stochasticity of value streams weakly examines the effect that uncertainty sources entail on each other

StarCraft Bots and Competitions

International audienceDefinition Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games is a sub-genre of strategy games where players need to build an economy (gathering resources and building a base) and military power (training units and researching technologies) in order to defeat their opponents (destroying their army and base). Artificial Intelligence (AI) problems related to RTS games deal with the behavior of an artificial player. Since 2010, many international competitions have been organized to match AIs, or bots, playing to the RTS game StarCraft. This chapter presents a review of all major international competitions from 2010 until 2015, and details some competing StarCraft bots. State of the Art Bots for StarCraft Thanks to the recent organization of international game AI competitions fo-cused around the popular StarCraft game, several groups have been working on integrating many of the techniques developed for RTS game AI into complete "bots", capable of playing complete StarCraft games. In this chapter we will overview some of the currently available top bots, and their results of recent competitions

Zebrafish retinal ganglion cells asymmetrically encode spectral and temporal information across visual space

In vertebrate vision, the tetrachromatic larval zebrafish permits non-invasive monitoring and manipulating of neural activity across the nervous system in vivo during ongoing behavior. However, despite a perhaps unparalleled understanding of links between zebrafish brain circuits and visual behaviors, comparatively little is known about what their eyes send to the brain via retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). Major gaps in knowledge include any information on spectral coding and information on potentially critical variations in RGC properties across the retinal surface corresponding with asymmetries in the statistics of natural visual space and behavioral demands. Here, we use in vivo two-photon imaging during hyperspectral visual stimulation as well as photolabeling of RGCs to provide a functional and anatomical census of RGCs in larval zebrafish. We find that RGCs’ functional and structural properties differ across the eye and include a notable population of UV-responsive On-sustained RGCs that are only found in the acute zone, likely to support visual prey capture of UV-bright zooplankton. Next, approximately half of RGCs display diverse forms of color opponency, including many that are driven by a pervasive and slow blue-Off system—far in excess of what would be required to satisfy traditional models of color vision. In addition, most information on spectral contrast was intermixed with temporal information. Taken together, our results suggest that zebrafish RGCs send a diverse and highly regionalized time-color code to the brain

Evolutionary Dynamics of Co-Segregating Gene Clusters Associated with Complex Diseases

BACKGROUND: The distribution of human disease-associated mutations is not random across the human genome. Despite the fact that natural selection continually removes disease-associated mutations, an enrichment of these variants can be observed in regions of low recombination. There are a number of mechanisms by which such a clustering could occur, including genetic perturbations or demographic effects within different populations. Recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) suggest that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with complex disease traits are not randomly distributed throughout the genome, but tend to cluster in regions of low recombination. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we investigated whether deleterious mutations have accumulated in regions of low recombination due to the impact of recent positive selection and genetic hitchhiking. Using publicly available data on common complex diseases and population demography, we observed an enrichment of hitchhiked disease associations in conserved gene clusters subject to selection pressure. Evolutionary analysis revealed that these conserved gene clusters arose by multiple concerted rearrangements events across the vertebrate lineage. We observed distinct clustering of disease-associated SNPs in evolutionary rearranged regions of low recombination and high gene density, which harbor genes involved in immunity, that is, the interleukin cluster on 5q31 or RhoA on 3p21. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that multiple lineage specific rearrangements led to a physical clustering of functionally related and linked genes exhibiting an enrichment of susceptibility loci for complex traits. This implies that besides recent evolutionary adaptations other evolutionary dynamics have played a role in the formation of linked gene clusters associated with complex disease traits

Coupled, Physics-Based Modeling Reveals Earthquake Displacements are Critical to the 2018 Palu, Sulawesi Tsunami

The September 2018, Mw 7.5 Sulawesi earthquake occurring on the Palu-Koro strike-slip fault system was followed by an unexpected localized tsunami. We show that direct earthquake-induced uplift and subsidence could have sourced the observed tsunami within Palu Bay. To this end, we use a physics-based, coupled earthquake–tsunami modeling framework tightly constrained by observations. The model combines rupture dynamics, seismic wave propagation, tsunami propagation and inundation. The earthquake scenario, featuring sustained supershear rupture propagation, matches key observed earthquake characteristics, including the moment magnitude, rupture duration, fault plane solution, teleseismic waveforms and inferred horizontal ground displacements. The remote stress regime reflecting regional transtension applied in the model produces a combination of up to 6 m left-lateral slip and up to 2 m normal slip on the straight fault segment dipping 65∘ East beneath Palu Bay. The time-dependent, 3D seafloor displacements are translated into bathymetry perturbations with a mean vertical offset of 1.5 m across the submarine fault segment. This sources a tsunami with wave amplitudes and periods that match those measured at the Pantoloan wave gauge and inundation that reproduces observations from field surveys. We conclude that a source related to earthquake displacements is probable and that landsliding may not have been the primary source of the tsunami. These results have important implications for submarine strike-slip fault systems worldwide. Physics-based modeling offers rapid response specifically in tectonic settings that are currently underrepresented in operational tsunami hazard assessment