Putting a face on carbon with threatened forest primates
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Wolf C
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9282438 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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