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Human–wildlife conflict and local community attitudes towards wildlife conservation in Konta Special District, southwest Ethiopia
No full textUnderstanding local communities’ attitudes towards wildlife conservation is important for policymakers and conservationists in implementing sustainable wildlife conservation strategies. The present study was undertaken to assess local communities’ attitudes towards wildlife conservation and the types of human–wildlife conflict (HWC) in the Konta Special District (KSD). A total of 95 household respondents were randomly selected for questionnaire interviews from two study kebeles. In addition, focus group discussions (FGD) and personal observations were used to collect qualitative data. Descriptive statistics and the chi-square test were applied to analyze the data. Overall, 51.6% of the respondents reported both crop damage and livestock depredation as the main types of HWC. The respondents ranked baboons (95.8%) and monkeys (65.5%) as the principal wildlife responsible for property damage. Habitat loss (75.6%) was reported as the main threat to wildlife existence. A total of 91.6% of the respondents expressed a positive attitude towards wildlife conservation, and there was no statistically significant difference between study kebeles, sex, or education level of respondents. Guarding (75.8%) was identified as the dominant traditional method used to reduce damage. Development activities should not compromise wildlife conservation goals. Employing effective protection methods and providing alternative livelihoods such as ecotourism, beekeeping, and livestock fattening were recommended to ensure coexistence between humans and wildlife and to promote sustainable development in the KSD
Non-native plant species on inselbergs of Brazilian tropical forests: checklist and insights for biodiversity management and conservation
No full textThe invasion of non-native species into spatially restricted habitats with unique plant communities poses a major challenge to biodiversity conservation. Inselbergs, granitic and/or gneissic outcrops with distinct abiotic conditions, host highly specialised plant species, but are increasingly threatened by the colonisation of exotic plants. This study aimed to: (1) compile the first comprehensive checklist of non-native plant species on inselbergs in two Brazilian phytogeographic domains: Atlantic Forest (AF) and Caatinga (CA), with a focus on identifying the invasive species; (2) analyse domain-specific associations of non-native species; (3) evaluate whether specific life forms of non-native species are associated with a particular domain; and (4) propose future research directions and management strategies. We documented 99 non-native species across AF (71 spp.) and CA (54 spp.) inselbergs using data from public online databases and published literature, of which 33 (33.3%) were classified as invasive. Therophytes were significantly associated with CA inselbergs and chamaephytes with AF inselbergs, reinforcing that certain life forms amongst non-native species exhibit domain-specific affinities, likely reflecting adaptations to contrasting environmental conditions. The findings of this study reveal that non-native species are widespread across inselbergs in both analysed domains, with many of them being invasives, underscoring the urgent need for early intervention. Future studies should concentrate on linking functional traits to invasion patterns in inselbergs, as well as integrating biogeographic and phylogenetic information, which will be crucial to anticipating and mitigating the spread of invasive species in these vulnerable environments
Responsief Auditen: over de wenselijkheid en toegevoegde waarde bij complexe vraagstukken
No full textVanuit literatuuronderzoek zijn er aanwijzingen dat binnen internal audit een alternatieve manier van onderzoek wenselijk is, mogelijk gestoeld op sociaal constructionistische principes. Een voorbeelduitwerking hiervan is de Responsieve Evaluatie, waarbij verhalen van belanghebbenden en onderlinge dialoog kernconcepten zijn. In deze bijdrage wordt een concreet plan van aanpak beschreven waarin de principes van een Responsieve Evaluatie zijn uitgewerkt. Hieruit volgt dat Responsief Auditen mogelijkheden biedt voor het onderzoeken van complexe vraagstukken met veel verschillende belangengroepen, binnen het brede spectrum van internal audit. Zodoende kan het bijdragen aan dieperliggend leren in organisaties in hun omgang met complexiteit
Internal Audit’s Strategic Role in Sustainability and ESG Transformation
No full textThe global rise of sustainability and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) presents Internal Audit (IA) with a strategic opportunity to strengthen governance, build trust, and support long-term value creation. As regulatory demands increase and stakeholder scrutiny intensifies, IA is evolving from a compliance-oriented function to a proactive business partner. This paper offers practical guidelines and tools, including a four-stage maturity model, to support IA’s transformation. Drawing on international guidance, case studies, and regional insights, the paper demonstrates how IA can enhance ESG assurance, contribute to integrated risk management, and enable sustainable decision-making. These tools are designed to help IA deliver improved data reliability, clearer ESG insights for the board, and credible assurance that builds stakeholder confidence
Earthworm diversity in an unexplored Himalayan landscape: Patterns across forest, orchard and crop field ecosystems
No full textThe present study was undertaken to explore the earthworm diversity in the Bani Valley, situated at an elevation range of 1200-2000 m above sea level, in the western Himalayan Region. Over the course of two years (March 2021 to January 2023), eight earthworm species were documented in three distinct habitat-types (forest, orchard and crop field), characterised by varying levels of anthropogenic interference. Notably, the crop field habitat exhibited highest earthworm density as well as biomass, while the forest habitat was observed to exhibit least earthworm abundance despite negligible human interference. Year-wise comparison showed that Octolasion tyrtaeum exhibited the highest mean density during both the years [34.31± 2.54 m-² (2021-22) and 27.91 ± 1.88 m-² (2022-23)], while the least density was recorded for Amynthas corticis (2.84 ± 1.06 m-²) during 2021-22, but for Drawida nepalensis (1.60 ± 0.63 m-²) during 2022-23 period. Moreover, an aggressive dominance of exotic earthworm species was observed in the study area with the occurrence of only one native species i.e. Drawida nepalensis. Maximum Likelihood Phylogram analysis of different earthworm species revealed three major clades, largely consistent with classical taxonomy. However, intergeneric clustering between Drawida nepalensis and Octolasion tyrtaeum suggests a potential case of cryptic similarity warranting further investigation. Analysis of Variance followed by multivariate ordination through canonical correspondence analysis suggested that the earthworm community structure was governed by the interactive effects of different soil physico-chemical properties. Despite the valuable insights with regard to earthworm diversity of the Bani Valley, further investigations are required in other unexplored patches to develop a comprehensive inventory of the earthworm fauna of the Himalayan Region
Redescription, DNA barcoding, and new distributional records of Mordellistena microgemellata Ermisch, 1965 (Coleoptera, Mordellidae)
No full textMordellistena microgemellata Ermisch, 1965, recorded from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, and Hungary, is here reported for the first time from Tunisia. A detailed redescription of the species, supplemented with photographs and illustrations of key diagnostic characters, is provided based on the examination of the holotype and 25 additional specimens. Furthermore, six sequences of the DNA barcoding fragment of the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene generated in this study represent the first available DNA data for the species
A FAIR and Open Approach for the Study and Integrated Management of Invasive Alien Species in Italy
No full textNotwithstanding the global interest and ongoing efforts to manage Invasive Alien Species (IAS), limit their spread and/or their impact on native communities and ecosystems, the path to this goal remains lengthy and fraught with significant challenges.A variety of approaches to support an efficient management of IAS have been outlined, including effective data sharing, iterative collaboration between stakeholders, as well as scientific communication and engagement, among others (Onley et al. 2025). Specifically for data sharing, several guidelines have emerged to ensure the accurate management and communication of scientific information, including the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles and open science practices. FAIR adoptions are vital to enable the interoperablity and reusability of digital research products (Wilkinson et al. 2016), and open science enhances their transparency and reliability (Bertram et al. 2023). In addition to such broadly applicable guidelines, specific recommendations and standards have emerged for IAS research and data management (Groom et al. 2017; Groom et al. 2019). Implementing effective data management practices alongside enhanced collaboration and communication between stakeholders can support the evidence-based management of IAS.The opportunity to test and validate this integrated approach was provided by USEit - Use of operational synergies for the study and integrated management of invasive alien species in Italy - a multidisciplinary, multi-ecosystem, and multi-taxonomic Italian project focusing on IAS. USEit combines expertise from scientists studying IAS in different ecosystems (aquatic and terrestrial) to find synergies across different data collection and data management methods, ultimately outlining operational and technical recommendations suitable for adoption within and beyond the project. The recommendations were drafted based on an evaluation of the responses to a national survey, subsequently reviewed by national experts of biological invasions, and validated through SWOT analysis, i.e. semi-quantitative analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats identified for each recommendation (Azzurro et al. 2025). Such recommendations were adopted and further expanded within USEit. Through this process, detailed technical guidelines for IAS data management were collaboratively defined and incorporated into the project's Data Management Plan (DMP). The DMP was published as a machine-actionable, open access document describing standards, schemas, and repositories used for a diverse array of (meta)data, including occurrences, stable isotopes, elemental composition, remote sensing, DNA metabarcoding, citizen science, and acoustic telemetry (Rosati and Di Muri 2025). Overall, USEit data, services and related metadata are published into open-access repositories and available through the LifeWatch Italy Data Portal and Metadata Catalogue (LifeWatch Italy Data Portal 2025; Tarallo et al. 2025). All digital research products are assigned with persistent identifiers, described by clear metadata and enriched with controlled vocabularies to enable their interpretation, reuse and interoperation. In addition, all digital products generated and published within the project are shared within a unique landing page representing the main access point to USEit research outcomes as well as to communication material and events for public engagements (LifeWatch Italy 2025). These results could be readily translated into practical solutions for IAS management, showing that the implementation of community-shared FAIR practices across multidisciplinary contexts enhances our ability to manage natural resources effectively while fostering new opportunities for scientific and societal growth
Sounds of Life: A FAIR Platform to Unlock the Potential of ioacoustic Data for Discovery and Interoperability
No full textContext and motivationEcoacoustics is an emerging discipline that studies environmental sounds across spatial and temporal scales to understand biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics, from species behaviour to landscape-level change (Sueur and Farina 2015).Soundscapes encompass biological, abiotic, and anthropogenic acoustic sources, providing a comprehensive and dynamic view of ecosystems. Despite the increasing abundance of recordings collected worldwide, environmental acoustic data remain scattered, inconsistently described, and difficult to reuse due to the absence of shared international standards and interoperable workflows (Sugai et al. 2019).To unlock this latent wealth into actionable biodiversity knowledge, structuring and interoperability are essential.The Sounds of Life initiativeLaunched in 2023, Sounds of Life (SoL) unites over a dozen French institutions bridging ecology, ecoacoustics, geography, and information sciences. Coordinated by CNRS-UMR Passages and labelised by Huma-Num, the French national infrastructure for digital humanities, SoL aims to build a shared FAIR framework (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) for environmental acoustic data. The initiative brings together research groups across France such as CEFE, ISYEB, CESCO, INRAE, Lab-STICC, and others, combining biodiversity expertise with data science and infrastructure design.At the heart of the project is a FAIR-by-design platform that operationalizes the full pipeline: ingest, enrich, annotate, and publish. Through a web-based user interface (Homo et al. 2025), users can import audio files from local or cloud sources. A CSV mapping step lets users attach a first layer of structured metadata on upload, while built-in validators check required and recommended fields for GBIF-ready publication. These imported records are shared in a library, enabling collaboration in workspaces. Vocabulary services power autocomplete and normalization. A customizable spectrogram viewer Fig. 1 enables users to annotate precise time-frequency regions, add comments and provenance. Sets of records, called datasets, can be defined with mappings to Darwin Core terms and packaged as Darwin Core Archives (DwCA) with GBIF compliance indicators. Support for persistent identifiers in publication workflows is planned for the near future. Lessons learned from the pilotBuilding SoL around the FAIR principles revealed key lessons in representing acoustic data within biodiversity standards such as Darwin Core. A first challenge concerned multi-species soundscapes, which are difficult to represent within models that assume a single occurrence per recording. While Darwin Core handles single-taxon recordings well, real soundscapes often include several species and non-biological sounds. In our GBIF/TDWG-aligned profile, each recording is modeled as an Event and each detection as an Occurrence linked to that Event, with the media held via the Simple Multimedia extension. Time-frequency annotations are stored alongside detections, and exports reference the same media record. This design remains GBIF-compatible but reveals friction when publishing dense, multi-species scenes, highlighting the need for a community pattern or lightweight extension supporting multi-label audio.Another key finding concerned vocabulary load. Beyond the about 190 Darwin Core terms, more than 60 additional fields from 10 domain vocabularies were required for taxonomy, geography, devices, and traits. To keep forms usable, we applied progressive field display strategy (required or optional), use-case presets, and GBIF-ready validation. A minimal acoustic profile (about 25 fields) complemented by an extended layer could provide a practical balance between expressiveness and usability.We also faced structural challenges with the lack of a central schema enforcing consistency between Event, Occurrence, and MeasurementOrFact cores. We added consistency rules and export checks to reduce hidden errors. Documenting such patterns in a concise TDWG guidance note would help others align acoustic workflows with existing biodiversity standards.Overall, these lessons underline that interoperability is as much about design and usability as it is about technical standards. Shared profiles, cross-field validation rules, and clear community guidance will make FAIR acoustics both achievable and sustainable at scale.Collaboration, AI-readiness, and next stepsBeyond technical design, SoL enables collaborative curation between ecologists, data specialists, and sound engineers, aligning vocabularies and improving reproducibility across studies, supporting the growing use of environmental sound as a measurable ecological signal.While the current pilot focuses on metadata management and annotation, it is intentionally AI-ready. Consistent, well-structured, and traceable data are prerequisites for automated detection, soundscape classification, and large-scale monitoring. Recent syntheses (e.g., Hoefer et al. (2023)) in passive acoustic monitoring emphasize the need for standardized, comparable datasets to enable robust cross-site analyses.Looking ahead, SoL aims to scale carefully beyond its pilot phase and contribute back to the TDWG/GBIF community through shared profiles and reference datasets. In the short term, through mid-2026, we are seeking input from TDWG and GBIF experts, ecoacoustics researchers, and data publishers toreview our Darwin Core profile for acoustic data (Event/Occurrence + Multimedia) and controlled vocabularies for sound types and scenes;test end-to-end exports (DwC-A to IPT/GBIF) using real multi-species soundscapes;contribute pilot datasets across biomes to evaluate FAIRness, traceability, and reusability; andco-design AI-ready benchmark corpora with clear licensing, balanced labels, and robust metadata.Our goal is to align these efforts with European and global infrastructures so that acoustic evidence becomes durable and comparable at scale
And the twain shall meet at the end: a phylogeny of Myrcianthes (Myrtaceae, Myrteae) with phytogeographic and morphological insights
No full textBackground and aims – Myrcianthes is a New World genus of Myrtaceae with 36 species, diverse in the Andes, and often dominant in montane forests. It is found from the Pacific to the Atlantic, from sea level to 3729 m, and its total latitudinal range is almost 62°. Its old age, combined with a wide ecological and geographic range, and the many narrow-endemic species, make it of phytogeographic and evolutionary interest. Material and methods – Altitudinal, geographic, and wood anatomy data of the genus were compiled from literature and online herbaria and curated to eliminate errors and produce a reliable dataset. ML and Bayesian phylogenetic trees based on ITS, ETS, matK, and psbA-trnH of 11 Myrcianthes species, in a matrix of 123 species, were constructed. The Bayesian tree was calibrated with three macrofossils and three secondary calibration points and used to infer biogeographic history and to estimate ancestral ranges using BioGeoBEARS. Key results – Myrcianthes has the widest combined altitudinal/latitudinal range in Myrtaceae. Narrow-endemic species are concentrated either in the high-latitude lowlands or the low-latitude highlands. Myrcianthes diverged from Eugenia in the early Oligocene but did not diversify before the mid-Miocene (later than Eugenia). Myrcianthes diversified from the south into South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Its ancestral range emerged as the Chacoan/Paraná dominions, consistent with the extinct temperate/subtropical austral forest. After splitting from M. coquimbensis, endemic to Chile, the main clade divided into a lowland clade (most diverse in eastern South America) and a highland clade (most diverse in the Andes). The clades are sympatric near the inferred root of the tree and probably meet again in Colombia and Venezuela. Myrcianthes wood anatomy appears to differ from that of Eugenia by the occurrence of helical thickenings in the vessels and absence of prismatic crystals in the axial parenchyma, but sampling is still incomplete
Pleurophragmium parvisporum (Ascomycota): One name, seven stories – a case highlighting the need for verification of strains from public culture collections
No full textPublic repositories of living fungal strains provide essential reference points and support diverse scientific outcomes. Current best practices for preserving fungal strains emphasise the generation of DNA barcodes and the management of comprehensive metadata. However, challenges arise when type material or authentic reference strains are lacking, as this prevents direct comparison of DNA barcodes and forces identifications to rely solely on morphology. This problem is particularly pronounced for strains deposited during the pre-molecular era, especially those belonging to species with simple or convergent morphologies. In this study, we re-examined seven strains deposited in a public culture collection under the name Pleurophragmium parvisporum, including synonymous designations. Our approach combined cultivation experiments, comparative morphological analyses, multi-locus phylogenetic reconstruction of six nuclear markers, and biogeographic assessments. Our analyses revealed that these strains are scattered across four distinct families or orders in three classes. Two strains belong to Thysanorea (Chaetothyriales, Eurotiomycetes): T. acropleurogena sp. nov. and a sterile strain identified as the already known T. melanica. Two other strains were resolved within Wongia (Papulosaceae incertae sedis, Sordariomycetes) and introduced as W. pallidopolaris sp. nov. and W. rhachidophora sp. nov. Finally, two strains represent novel taxa within the Tubeufiales (Dothideomycetes), described here as Zaanenomyces hilifer sp. nov. and Skoliomycella flava gen. et sp. nov. Of the seven examined strains, only one conformed to the species concept of P. parvisporum and is here regarded as its reference strain. The phylogenetic analyses resolved P. parvisporum within Neomyrmecridium (Myrmecridiales, Sordariomycetes). Consequently, Neomyrmecridium was reduced to synonymy of Pleurophragmium, leading to the proposal of 11 new combinations (P. asiaticum comb. nov., P. asymmetricum comb. nov., P. fusiforme comb. nov., P. gaoligongense comb. nov., P. guizhouense comb. nov., P. luguense comb. nov., P. naviculare comb. nov., P. pteridophytophilum comb. nov., P. septatum comb. nov., P. sichuanense comb. nov., and P. sorbicola comb. nov.), and two new names (P. fluviale nom. nov. and P. jiulongheense nom. nov.). In addition, three species formerly placed in Uncispora are transferred to Thysanorea, with new combinations proposed based on congruent morphology and multi-locus phylogenetic evidence: T. hainanensis comb. nov., T. sinensis comb. nov., and T. wuzhishanensis comb. nov. This study refines the generic limits of Pleurophragmium and morphologically similar genera and reveals several previously unrecognised lineages. It highlights how misinterpretation of subtle morphological features may lead to strains being misidentified and deposited under incorrect names in public collections, where they risk perpetuating taxonomic errors