1,720,976 research outputs found
Bridging applied ecology and network theory to improve landscape management for conservation
Full text linkAgricultural intensification is widely considered a major threat to biodiversity and ecosystem services. To better protect biological communities, it is necessary to gain a more detailed understanding of the way species use habitats and move across increasingly simplified landscapes. Traditional landscape ecology approaches are mainly based on the dichotomy between focal semi-natural habitat patches and the surrounding agricultural matrix. While the advances made possible by the landscape mosaic model are undeniable, this approach fails to account for real-world complexity, as many species are known to use multiple habitat types (natural and disturbed) during their life cycle. In addition to landscape changes, many local factors (including management such as soil disturbance or pest control) can impact biodiversity, often interacting with each other. In order to inform efficient biodiversity management actions in the future, it is crucial to increase our knowledge on the way local and landscape factors can impact biodiversity at multiple spatial scales. The general aim of this thesis was to develop a novel approach to the study of species-habitat interactions, and to apply the approach to answer some pressing questions about the way landscape simplification influences important arthropod functional groups. Additionally, we studied the effects of local factors on an arthropodmediated ecosystem service (weed seed predation) in the same area. Arthropods were chosen as they are among the most abundant and ecologically relevant organisms in agroecosystems, providing a wide variety of pivotal services. The new approach, based on network theory, showed that landscape simplification reduces habitat specialization in low-mobility insect groups, and allowed us to pinpoint the most important habitat types for the facilitation of arthropod movement through the landscape mosaics. Our local-level study, on the other hand, highlighted how multiple factors can interact in a complex way in shaping ecosystem services. This study demonstrates the potential of the novel species-habitat network approach as a complementary tool for investigating landscape-biodiversity interactions, while simultaneously unveiling new information on the way landscape changes and local factors influence key arthropod groups. This enabled us to provide a series of recommendations for biodiversity management actions, varying depending on the target group. Overall, our research is a reminder of the importance of taking into account multiple potentially interacting factors at different spatial scales to correctly understand and manage biodiversity-related processes
Tillage regime shapes ground beetle distribution and their potential for weed control under drought conditions
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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