Putting a face on carbon with threatened forest primates
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Wolf C
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9282438 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Forests play a key role in the carbon cycle as they store huge quantities of organic carbon, most of which is stored in soils, with a smaller part being held in vegetation. While the carbon storage capacity of forests is influenced by forestry, the long-term impacts of forest managers' decisions on soil organic carbon (SOC) remain unclear. Using a meta-analysis approach, we showed that conventional biomass harvests preserved the SOC of forests, unlike intensive harvests where logging residues were harvested to produce fuelwood. Conventional harvests caused a decrease in carbon storage in the forest floor, but when the whole soil profile was taken into account, we found that this loss in the forest floor was compensated by an accumulation of SOC in deeper soil layers. Conversely, we found that intensive harvests led to SOC losses in all layers of forest soils. We assessed the potential impact of intensive harvests on the carbon budget, focusing on managed European forests. Estimated carbon losses from forest soils suggested that intensive biomass harvests could constitute an important source of carbon transfer from forests to the atmosphere (142-497 Tg-C), partly neutralizing the role of a carbon sink played by forest soils.
| S-EPMC4632129 | biostudies-other
Project description:Small-scale fisheries of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest Coast (BAFC) depend on fish resources for food and income. Thus, if the catch diminishes or if fish species that are a target for fishers are overexploited or impacted, this could affect fishers' livelihoods. The exclusion of threatened fish species from the catch is believed to be a threat to small-scale fisheries, which is likely to be the case along the BAFC. Many fish species are currently listed as threatened or vulnerable, whereas there is not enough biological information available to determine the status of the majority of the other species. Failure to protect the BAFC biodiversity might negatively impact fishers' income and the regional economy of local small-scale fisheries. We collected data from 1986 to 2009 through 347 interviews and 24-h food recall surveys at seven southeastern coastal sites of the Atlantic Forest. We show that important species of consumed fish are currently threatened: of the 65 species mentioned by fishers as the most consumed fishes, 33% are decreasing and 54% have an unknown status. Thus, biological and ecological data for BAFC marine species are urgently needed, along with co-management, to promote fish conservation.
| S-EPMC5639802 | biostudies-other
Project description:Tropical forests hold most of Earth's biodiversity. Their continued loss through deforestation and agriculture is the main threat to species globally, more than disease, invasive species, and climate change. However, not all tropical forests have the same ability to sustain biodiversity. Those that have been disturbed by humans, including forests previously cleared and regrown (secondary growth), have lower levels of species richness compared with undisturbed (primary) forests. The difference is even greater considering extinctions that will later emanate from the disturbance (extinction debt). Here, we find that Haiti has less than 1% of its original primary forest and is therefore among the most deforested countries. Primary forest has declined over three decades inside national parks, and 42 of the 50 highest and largest mountains have lost all primary forest. Our surveys of vertebrate diversity (especially amphibians and reptiles) on mountaintops indicates that endemic species have been lost along with the loss of forest. At the current rate, Haiti will lose essentially all of its primary forest during the next two decades and is already undergoing a mass extinction of its biodiversity because of deforestation. These findings point to the need, in general, for better reporting of forest cover data of relevance to biodiversity, instead of "total forest" as defined by the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization. Expanded detection and monitoring of primary forest globally will improve the efficiency of conservation measures, inside and outside of protected areas.
| S-EPMC6243243 | biostudies-other
Project description:BackgroundEye movement strategies employed by humans to identify conspecifics are not universal. Westerners predominantly fixate the eyes during face recognition, whereas Easterners more the nose region, yet recognition accuracy is comparable. However, natural fixations do not unequivocally represent information extraction. So the question of whether humans universally use identical facial information to recognize faces remains unresolved.Methodology/principal findingsWe monitored eye movements during face recognition of Western Caucasian (WC) and East Asian (EA) observers with a novel technique in face recognition that parametrically restricts information outside central vision. We used 'Spotlights' with Gaussian apertures of 2 degrees, 5 degrees or 8 degrees dynamically centered on observers' fixations. Strikingly, in constrained Spotlight conditions (2 degrees and 5 degrees) observers of both cultures actively fixated the same facial information: the eyes and mouth. When information from both eyes and mouth was simultaneously available when fixating the nose (8 degrees), as expected EA observers shifted their fixations towards this region.Conclusions/significanceSocial experience and cultural factors shape the strategies used to extract information from faces, but these results suggest that external forces do not modulate information use. Human beings rely on identical facial information to recognize conspecifics, a universal law that might be dictated by the evolutionary constraints of nature and not nurture.
| S-EPMC2841167 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Across the tropics, large-bodied mammals have been affected by selective logging in ways that vary with levels of timber extraction, collateral damage, species-specific traits and secondary effects of hunting, as facilitated by improved access through logging roads. In Peninsular Malaysia, 3.0 million hectares or 61 percent of its Permanent Reserved Forests is officially assigned for commercial selective logging. Understanding how wildlife adapts and uses logged forest is critical for its management and, for threatened species, their conservation. In this study, we quantify the population status of four tropical ungulate species in a large selectively logged forest reserve and an adjacent primary forest protected area. We then conduct finer scale analyses to identify the species-specific factors that determine their occurrence. A combined indirect sign-camera trapping approach with a large sampling effort (2,665 km and 27,780 trap nights surveyed) covering a wide area (560 km2) generated species-specific detection probabilities and site occupancies. Populations of wild boar were widespread across both logged and primary forests, whereas sambar and muntjac occupancy was lower in logged forest (48.4% and 19.2% respectively), with gaur showing no significant difference. Subsequent modelling revealed the importance of conserving lower elevation habitat in both habitat types, particularly <1,000 m asl, for which occupancies of sambar, muntjac and gaur were typically higher. This finding is important because 75 percent (~13,400 km2) of Peninsular Malaysia's Main Range Forest (Banjaran Titiwangsa) is under 1,000 m asl and therefore at risk of being converted to industrial timber plantations, which calls for renewed thinking around forest management planning.
| S-EPMC7735589 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Two mechanisms have been proposed to account for the difficulty in recognizing faces of other racial groups (the other-race effect; ORE): perceptual expertise and social cognitive factors. Focusing on the social cognitive factors alone, we manipulated in-group and out-group memberships based on two social categories (nationality and university affiliation), and controlled for perceptual expertise by testing Caucasian participants with Caucasian faces only. Using event-related potentials (ERPs) and focusing on the N170, a brain electrical component sensitive to faces, we provide for the first time strong support for the social cognitive influence on face processing within 200 ms. After participants learned the social categories, the N170 latency differentiated between double in-group and double out-group faces, taking longer to process the latter. In comparison, without group memberships, there was no difference in N170 latency among the faces. These results are consistent with recent findings of behavioral and imaging research, providing further support for the social cognitive model and its potential for understanding ORE.
| S-EPMC4090958 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Estuaries--one of the most vulnerable ecosystems globally--face anthropogenic threats, including biodiversity loss and the collapse of sustainable fisheries. Determining the factors contributing to the maintenance of estuarine biodiversity, especially that of fish, is vital for promoting estuarine conservation and sustainability. We used environmental DNA metabarcoding analysis to determine fish species composition in 22 estuaries around Japan and measured watershed-scale land-use factors (e.g., population size, urban area percentage, and forest area percentage). We sought to test the hypothesis that the richness of the most vulnerable estuarine fish species (i.e., registered by the Japanese Ministry of the Environment in the national species red-list) is determined by watershed-scale land-use factors. The richness of such species was greater, where forest cover was highest; thus, forest cover contributes to their conservation. The proportion of agriculture cover was associated with low species richness of red-listed fishes (redundancy analysis, adjusted R2 = 43.9% of total variance, df = 5, F = 5.3843, p = 0.0001). The number of red-listed species increased from 3 to 11 along a watershed land-use gradient ranging from a high proportion of agriculture cover to a large proportion of forest cover. Furthermore, the results showed that throughout Japan all the examined watersheds that were covered by >74.8% forest had more than the average (6.7 species per site) richness of red-listed fish species. This result can be attributed to the already high average forest cover in Japan of 67.2%. Our results demonstrate how the land use of watersheds can affect the coastal sea environment and its biodiversity and suggest that proper forest management in conjunction with land-use management may be of prime importance for threatened fish species and coastal ecosystems in general.
| S-EPMC9299902 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Nanomedicine rests at the nexus of medicine, bioengineering, and biology with great potential for improving health through innovation and development of new drugs and devices. Carbon nanotubes are an example of a fibrillar nanomaterial poised to translate into medical practice. The leading candidate material in this class is ammonium-functionalized carbon nanotubes (fCNT) that exhibits unexpected pharmacological behavior in vivo with important biotechnology applications. Here, we provide a multi-organ evaluation of the distribution, uptake and processing of fCNT in nonhuman primates using quantitative whole body positron emission tomography (PET), compartmental modeling of pharmacokinetic data, serum biomarkers and ex vivo pathology investigation. Kidney and liver are the two major organ systems that accumulate and excrete [86Y]fCNT in nonhuman primates and accumulation is cell specific as described by compartmental modeling analyses of the quantitative PET data. A serial two-compartment model explains renal processing of tracer-labeled fCNT; hepatic data fits a parallel two-compartment model. These modeling data also reveal significant elimination of the injected activity (>99.8%) from the primate within 3 days (t1/2 = 11.9 hours). These favorable results in nonhuman primates provide important insight to the fate of fCNT in vivo and pave the way to further engineering design considerations for sophisticated nanomedicines to aid late stage development and clinical use in man.
| S-EPMC5573305 | biostudies-other
Project description:Habitat loss and attendant fragmentation threaten the existence of many species. Conserving these species requires a straightforward and objective method that quantifies how these factors affect their survival. Therefore, we compared a variety of metrics that assess habitat fragmentation in bird ranges, using the geographical ranges of 127 forest endemic passerine birds inhabiting the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. A common, non-biological metric - cumulative area of size-ranked fragments within a species range - was misleading, as the least threatened species had the most habitat fragmentation. Instead, we recommend a modified version of metapopulation capacity. The metric links detailed spatial information on fragment sizes and spatial configuration to the birds' abilities to occupy and disperse across large areas (100,000+ km(2)). In the Atlantic Forest, metapopulation capacities were largely bimodal, in that most species' ranges had either low capacity (high risk of extinction) or high capacity (very small risk of extinction). This pattern persisted within taxonomically and ecologically homogenous groups, indicating that it is driven by fragmentation patterns and not differences in species ecology. Worryingly, we found IUCN considers some 28 of 58 species in the low metapopulation capacity cluster to not be threatened. We propose that assessing the effect of fragmentation will separate species more clearly into distinct risk categories than does a simple assessment of remaining habitat.
| S-EPMC3667042 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Soil warming has the potential to alter both soil and plant processes that affect carbon storage in forest ecosystems. We have quantified these effects in a large, long-term (7-y) soil-warming study in a deciduous forest in New England. Soil warming has resulted in carbon losses from the soil and stimulated carbon gains in the woody tissue of trees. The warming-enhanced decay of soil organic matter also released enough additional inorganic nitrogen into the soil solution to support the observed increases in plant carbon storage. Although soil warming has resulted in a cumulative net loss of carbon from a New England forest relative to a control area over the 7-y study, the annual net losses generally decreased over time as plant carbon storage increased. In the seventh year, warming-induced soil carbon losses were almost totally compensated for by plant carbon gains in response to warming. We attribute the plant gains primarily to warming-induced increases in nitrogen availability. This study underscores the importance of incorporating carbon-nitrogen interactions in atmosphere-ocean-land earth system models to accurately simulate land feedbacks to the climate system.
| S-EPMC3111267 | biostudies-other