Opuntia in México: Identifying Priority Areas for Conserving Biodiversity in a Multi-Use Landscape

BACKGROUND: México is one of the world's centers of species diversity (richness) for Opuntia cacti. Yet, in spite of their economic and ecological importance, Opuntia species remain poorly studied and protected in México. Many of the species are sparsely but widely distributed across the landscape and are subject to a variety of human uses, so devising implementable conservation plans for them presents formidable difficulties. Multi-criteria analysis can be used to design a spatially coherent conservation area network while permitting sustainable human usage. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Species distribution models were created for 60 Opuntia species using MaxEnt. Targets of representation within conservation area networks were assigned at 100% for the geographically rarest species and 10% for the most common ones. Three different conservation plans were developed to represent the species within these networks using total area, shape, and connectivity as relevant criteria. Multi-criteria analysis and a metaheuristic adaptive tabu search algorithm were used to search for optimal solutions. The plans were built on the existing protected areas of México and prioritized additional areas for management for the persistence of Opuntia species. All plans required around one-third of México's total area to be prioritized for attention for Opuntia conservation, underscoring the implausibility of Opuntia conservation through traditional land reservation. Tabu search turned out to be both computationally tractable and easily implementable for search problems of this kind. CONCLUSIONS: Opuntia conservation in México require the management of large areas of land for multiple uses. The multi-criteria analyses identified priority areas and organized them in large contiguous blocks that can be effectively managed. A high level of connectivity was established among the prioritized areas resulting in the enhancement of possible modes of plant dispersal as well as only a small number of blocks that would be recommended for conservation management

An approach to support the Web User Interfaces evolution

Abstract. Currently, there is a growing group of Web 1.0 applications that is migrating towards Web 2.0 where their data and business logic could be maintained but their User Interface (UI) must be adapted. Our proposal facilitates the adaptation of existing Web 1.0 applications to Web 2.0, focusing on UIs and taking advantage of functionality already provided by legacy Web Models. In this paper we present, as an example, how to adapt applications already modelled with WebML to RUX-Model, a method that allows designing rich UIs for multi-device Web 2.0 UIs. One of our main goals in attending the workshop is discussing other potential adaptations for applications modelled with OOHDM, UWE or OO-H among others

Areas of endemism of Mexican terrestrial mammals: A case study using species' ecological niche modeling, Parsimony Analysis of Endemicity and Goloboff fit

Areas of endemism of Mexican terrestrial mammals using ecological niche modeling projected as species' potential distributions were identified to compare its performance with a previous analysis that used point occurrence data, and to incorporate Goloboff fit to Parsimony Analysis of Endemicity (PAE) for improving identification of areas of endemism. Six PAE were performed, combined or not, with Goloboff fit (k=0 and 2) using species' potential distributions of 429 terrestrial mammals overlaid on 248 by 232 quadrats of 1 degrees latitudelongitude countrywide. Consistency (CI) and retention (RI) indices were used for identifying endemic, characteristic, and possibly endemic species. Based on the strict consensus cladogram with k=0, seven areas of endemism defined by two or more species were identified: the Mexican Plateau, the Baja California Peninsula (with a nested pattern of endemism in the south and north), Chiapas (with a nested pattern of endemism in the south and north), the Mexican Pacific Coast, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Sierra Madre Occidental, and the Yucatan Peninsula. PAE cladograms using species' potential distributions showed a better resolution than those produced using point occurrence data, showing consensus with fewer number of steps and higher number of synapomorphies. Goloboff fit (k) allowed individual downweighting of "noisy" species, thus increasing the number of synapomorphies in the cladograms, and even identifing more areas of endemism. Cladograms with k=0 had the largest number of synapomorphies, whereas k=2 allowed to obtain a smaller number of cladograms

State-of-the Art and trends in the Systematic Development of Rich Internet Applications

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are widely adopted Web applications that add the richer interaction, presentation, and client-side computation capabilities of desktop applications to the Web. However, the evolution from Web applications towards RIAs comes at the cost of increased complexity in their development. For this reason, a wide variety of tools and technologies have been proposed in order to streamline their development effort. This paper investigates the current state of the art of the RIA development approaches. The review shows that the current industrial development practice lacks a comprehensive approach to RIA development, supporting all the development steps from the design to implementation, test and maintenance, and helping identifying correct design choices. This is in part due to the severe fragmentation of current RIA technologies that prevents the adoption of a commonly recognized set of best practices resulting in ad-hoc development processes. These aspects are in part treated by research methodologies and some innovative industrial solutions, but also these approaches present some limitations. The paper identifies future research directions for RIAs to fully support their development process and to support their design in a more comprehensive and systematic way, from both industrial and research perspectives