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Global changes and their environmental stressors have a significant impact on soil biodiversity—A meta-analysis
No full textIdentifying the main threats to soil biodiversity is crucial as soils harbor ∼60% of global biodiversity. Many previous meta-analyses investigating the impact of different global changes (GCs) on biodiversity have omitted soil fauna or are limited by the GCs studied. We conducted a broad-scale meta-analysis focused on soil fauna communities, analyzing 3,161 effect sizes from 624 publications studying climate change, land-use intensification, pollution, nutrient enrichment, invasive species and habitat fragmentation. Land-use intensification resulted in large reductions in soil fauna communities, especially for the larger-bodied groups. Unexpectedly, pollution caused the largest negative impact on soil biodiversity - particularly worrying due to continually increasing levels of pollution and poor mechanistic understanding of impacts relative to other GCs. Not all GCs and stressors were detrimental; organic-based nutrient enrichment often resulted in positive responses. Including soil biodiversity in large-scale analyses is vital to fully understand the impact of GCs across the different realms.Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The linked file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor
Human remains from the River Thames: new dating evidence
Get PDFThe River Thames, winding through the English capital of London, is the source of a substantial archaeological assemblage that includes hundreds of human bones, but the lack of a robust chronology for these finds limits interpretation. Here, 30 new radiocarbon dates are reported for the human remains. In combination with other available dates (some of which are also published here for the first time), this improved chronological framework demonstrates a predominance of Bronze and Iron Age dates and emphasises the need to explore the Thames assemblage in the broader context of watery deposition practices of later prehistoric north-west Europe.The attached file is the accepted version of the article. You are advised to consult the published version if you wish to cite from it.NHM Repositor
Adapting genetic algorithms for multifunctional landscape decisions: A theoretical case study on wild bees and farmers in the UK
No full textAbstract - Spatial modelling approaches to aid land‐use decisions which benefit both wildlife and humans are often limited to the comparison of pre‐determined landscape scenarios, which may not reflect the true optimum landscape for any end‐user. Furthermore, the needs of wildlife are often under‐represented when considered alongside human financial interests in these approaches.
We develop a method of addressing these gaps using a case‐study of wild bees in the UK, an important group whose declines may adversely affect both human economies and surrounding ecosystems. By combining the genetic algorithm NSGA‐II with a process‐based pollinator model which simulates bee foraging and population dynamics, Poll4pop, we ‘evolve’ a typical UK agricultural landscape to identify optimum land cover configurations for three different guilds of wild bee. These configurations are compared to those resulting from optimisations for farm income alone, as well as optimisations that seek a compromise between bee populations and farm income objectives.
We find that the land cover proportions in landscapes optimised for each bee guild reflect their nesting habitat preferences rather than foraging preferences, highlighting a limiting resource within the study landscape. The spatially explicit nature of these optimised landscapes illustrates how improvement for a given target species may be limited by differences between their movement range and the scale of the units being improved. Land cover composition and configuration differ significantly in landscapes optimised for farm income and bee population growth simultaneously and illustrate how human agents are required to compromise much more when the multifaceted nature of biodiversity is recognised and represented by multiple objectives within an optimisation framework. Our methods provide a way to quantify the extent to which real‐life landscapes promote or compromise objectives for different landscape end‐users.
Our investigation suggests that optimisation set‐up (decision‐unit scales, traditional choice of a single biodiversity metric) can bias outcomes towards human‐centric solutions. It also demonstrates the importance of representing the individual requirements of different actors with different landscape‐level needs when using genetic algorithms to support biodiversity‐inclusive decision‐making in multi‐functional landscapes.Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Methods in Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.14424. The linked file is the published version of the article,.NHM Repositor
The genome sequence of the Shoulder-striped Wainscot moth, Leucania comma Linnaeus, 1761
Get PDFWe present a genome assembly from an individual female Leucania comma (the Shoulder-striped Wainscot moth; Arthropoda; Insecta; Lepidoptera; Noctuidae). The genome sequence spans 751.70 megabases. Most of the assembly is scaffolded into 32 chromosomal pseudomolecules, including the Z and W sex chromosomes. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled and is 15.37 kilobases in length. Gene annotation of this assembly on Ensembl identified 12,477 protein-coding genes.Copyright: © 2024 Holt S et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor
The genome sequence of the Common Wainscot moth, Mythimna pallens Linnaeus, 1758
Get PDFWe present a genome assembly from an individual male Mythimna pallens (the Common Wainscot moth; Arthropoda; Insecta; Lepidoptera; Noctuidae). The genome sequence has a total length of 719.10 megabases. Most of the assembly is scaffolded into 31 chromosomal pseudomolecules, including the Z sex chromosome. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled and is 15.33 kilobases in length. Gene annotation of this assembly on Ensembl identified 18,343 protein-coding genes.Copyright: © 2024 Holt S et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor
Long-term decline in fledging body condition of Flesh-footed Shearwaters (Ardenna carneipes)
Get PDFAbstract - Marine systems are under increasing pressure from anthropogenic activities. In recent decades, the deteriorating condition of the world’s seabird populations suggests these pressures have reached a tipping point. For young birds, body mass can significantly influence survival in the critical period between nest departure and recruitment to the breeding population. On Lord Howe Island, we measured Flesh-footed Shearwater (Ardenna carneipes) fledglings in the colony and adjacent beaches to determine how body condition changed during 2010–2022. Overall, we found chick body mass as well as wing, culmen, and head + bill length declined over time with larger declines observed in beach-washed birds. Culmen and head + bill length declined by 0.17 and 0.23 mm/year, respectively, and body mass by 16.1 g/year. The number of chicks fledging at <400 g has increased sharply in recent years, meaning significant numbers of birds are unlikely to survive after departing the island. Our results point to a deepening of the division in the shearwater population: adult birds who can successfully provision sufficient nutrient reserves so their chick fledges successfully, and those who cannot. In this latter group, failure at the fledging stage (beached birds) is resulting in birds in increasingly poor condition, the likes of which were seldom documented 13 years ago.Copyright © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor
The problems of resolving historical specimen data, focusing on a specimen of Myotis austroriparius (Mammalia, Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae) collected by Thomas Drummond
Get PDFThe geographical itineraries of Thomas Drummond’s two separate expeditions to Canada (1825–1827) and the United States of America (1831–1835) are used to provide historical context for the specimens collected and their localities. The coordinates for these locations are estimated and their geographical positions mapped. The difficulties of resolving various problems with historical specimens are explored and several examples are provided, including the contentious origin and identification of a southeastern myotis, Myotis austroriparius (Rhoads, 1897) (NHMUK 1837.4.8.127). Information about type specimens is discussed and the geographical position of several type localities of rodents and a mustelid in the Rocky Mountains and a lagomorph in the USA are refined.The attached file is the accepted manuscript of the article. You are advised to consult the published version if you wish to cite from it.NHM Repositor
Editorial: Integrative and Translational Uses of Herbarium Collections Across Time, Space, and Species
Get PDFCopyright © 2020 Rønsted, Grace and Carine. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor
