eterna. Open Access Serials
Not a member yet
1093 research outputs found
Sort by
Women’s Rights in Northeast Syria: Enforcing Gender Equality
Full text linkThe Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration in Northeast Syria has been lauded for advancing women’s rights and fighting off the Islamic State – also with all-female military units. However, the way the Administration enforces gender equality and how its reforms affect people’s daily lives need further investigation
A large phylo-floristic study on the present and future assembly of the Wisconsin flora – An area unique in North America
Full text linkWith 1.4 million specimens the Wisconsin State Herbarium (WIS) is one of the largest in the Americas and Wisconsin offers botanists a unique opportunity to study species representing a confluence of global biomes. The state harbors >2640 species of vascular plants which have been sequenced for the two-gene plant DNA barcode to reconstruct a community phylogeny. At the same time >300’000 georeferenced specimens were used with bioclimatic and soil data to produce species distribution models for the flora, then subsequently aggregated to determine current and future patterns of species richness and phylogenetic diversity. Among the many surprising results uncovered are predictions that whereas species richness will increase as c. 850 taxa move into the state, c. 242 species will become extirpated by 2070. These most vulnerable species will not be affected at random. Furthermore, models suggest that Wisconsin’s projected climate will be unsuitable for most species to be able to retain their present distributions; only 65 % will be able to retain more than half of their current distributions. However, the state’s well known unglaciated Driftless Area may be able to serve as an Anthropocene refugium better than anywhere else in the region and should be targeted for increased land conservation
Working Paper 46: Incrementando el impacto de los Pactos de Integridad en la contratación pública: Un análisis desde la experiencia en Españad
Full text linkEste documento de trabajo analiza cuatro Pactos de Integridad en España implementados entre abril de 2017 y enero de 2019. Basándose en el análisis, ofrece recomendaciones específicas para medir y mejorar el impacto de los Pactos de Integridad, especialmente para lograr cambios a largo plazo.
***English***
Enhancing the impact of Integrity Pacts in public procurement: an analysis from Spain‘s experience
This Working Paper analyses four Integrity Pacts in Spain implemented between April 2017 and January 2019. Based on the analysis, it offers specific recommendations to measure and enhance the impact of Integrity Pacts, especially in achieving long-term change
A 150-year-old herbarium exemplifies change of a regional flora
Full text linkThe loss of biodiversity in terms of plant species in a certain region can be shown by a comparison of historical herbarium records with the present-day occurrence of species. This holds especially true for time periods before 1900, when only few floristic data are otherwise available. Such a comparison can also show whether the distribution area or the abundance of plant species have changed, which habitat types were especially affected by extinction or whether species with specific environmental requirements showed higher extinction rates than ubiquists. Corresponding results can guide conservation authorities in defining appropriate management actions
Using herbarium specimens to test for effects of climate change on the time of flowering
Full text linkTemperature change in different seasons has various impacts on phenological events. In recent times herbarium material has become more relevant in studying ecological consequences of climate change. Digitalized historical herbarium provides useful material in addition to observational data. This study is the first to use Estonian herbarium material to test the usefulness of herbarium material for studying phenological changes due to climate change
What does the „true” Boerhaave herbarium tell us about the practice of collecting plant specimens in the botanical garden Leiden?
Full text linkThe Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738) was famous for his clinical teaching, but his botanical research was also renowned. Boerhaave (Fig.1) inspired his pupils to set up botanical gardens and devise their own classification systems. His research resulted in the publication of two editions of the garden catalogue of the Leiden Hortus Botanicus, of which the latter (Boerhaave 1720), was deemed important enough to be used extensively as reference by Linnaeus (Linnaeus 1737). Devising a classification system was a major enterprise and must have required a substantial herbarium. Two herbaria were attributed to Boerhaave, but it appears unlikely – even though they have not yet been researched – that they were actually composed by him. From the collection of Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, we selected 100 specimens that were listed as collected by Boerhaave and verified 88 specimens as having been collected by Boerhaave. However, this small number raises the following questions: What happened to the rest of the herbarium that Boerhaave created? And how can we recognise a Boerhaave specimen
Network analysis of the herbarium collection of the Moravian Church from the 18th century
Full text linkThe Herbarium Dresdense (DR), Germany, houses about 500 000 specimens of worldwide origin. One of the oldest collections is the Herbarium Barbiense of the Moravian Church from the mid to the late 18th century. On their mission to spread Christianity, the Moravians settled on many continents and took the advantage of exploring culture and nature of their new home countries. Being excellent observers and documentarists, they left a barely explored corpus of objects and texts of tremendous importance for natural sciences and humanities. Since 1754 the educational centre of the community was located in Barby, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. To support the scientific training and to gather objects send home by the missionaries, a cabinet of natural curiosities was established in 1756. The collections of minerals, fossils, conchylia and plants were unique and soon attracted other European academics
SNP genotyping and environmental niche modelling using herbarium specimens of the northern dragonhead, Dracocephalum ruyschiana (Lamiaceae)
Full text linkMaintenance of genetic diversity is a central aim of species conservation, given its positive effect on species survival and adaptation in a changing environment. Data from different time points is key for understanding how populations behave under various conditions. In this regard, herbarium specimens are an invaluable source of information from the past. Still, utilizing archived biological material for studying trends of genetic diversity offers challenges such as DNA degradation and the lack of standardized, cost- and time efficient methods
Herbarium DNA degradation – Falling to pieces non-randomly
Full text linkPost-mortem damage in herbarium DNA, mostly from 18th and 19th century collections, and with specimens usually heat-treated for conservation, consists mainly of genome fragmentation (single- and double-stranded breaks) rather than miscoding lesions. With typical herbarium DNA fragment sizes encountered (20–200 6 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1220096 bp) this easily leads to insert sizes in library construction being smaller than Illumina read lengths applied (i.e. 100–250 bp). Using a previously-published series of 56 genome-skimmed herbarium DNA extracts representing 10 angiosperm families, overlapping read pairs were found to occur in roughly 80 % of all read pairs obtained. After merging such overlapping pairs, the resulting fragments and their length-distributions are considered to reflect actual DNA fragmentation. Similar to occurrence in ancient DNA, we found over-representation of purines at fragment-ends in herbarium material. Distributions of fragment lengths fit gamma rather than exponential distributions, without apparent correlation with specimen age. The observed gamma distributions would indicate higher-order degradation kinetics, implying multiple processes acting during degradation. Possibly, the genome skimming data used here, in which repetitive sequences or compartments are over-represented, has biased genomic fragment-length distributions and half-lives as compared to the non-repetitive fraction of plant genomes, but no data was available to test this hypothesis. Overall, our results imply that we cannot confirm whether a plant archival DNA half-live exists and what its rate would be