EcologiesPub Date : 2022-05-20DOI: 10.3390/ecologies3020010
Fernanda de Paula, Natália Vama Vieira, G. F. da Silva, T. Delforno, I. C. Duarte
{"title":"A Comparison of Microbial Communities of Mango and Orange Residues for Bioprospecting of Biosurfactant Producers","authors":"Fernanda de Paula, Natália Vama Vieira, G. F. da Silva, T. Delforno, I. C. Duarte","doi":"10.3390/ecologies3020010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/ecologies3020010","url":null,"abstract":"Plants and their derivatives, such as fruits, can be inhabited by different bacteria. However, this microbiota is still poorly studied. Among the wide variety of metabolites that bacteria produce, biosurfactants have been identified as potential molecules in the development of bioprocesses for various industrial sectors. In this work, we analyzed and compared the microbiota of fruit residues (mango and orange), in order to compare two possible sources of bioprospecting. For this, a bioinformatics approach was used to perform the taxonomic analysis and the prediction of the functional profile of the microbiota present in the samples. The results showed that the microbiota present in both fruit residues have the potential in biotechnological applications to produce biosurfactants, as these microbiota have genes related to the biosynthesis of these compounds. The common core of the microbiota present in the samples—Stenotrophomonas, Klebsiella, Serratia and Citrobacter—proved, according to the literature, to be composed of biosurfactant producers, showing the biosurfactant potential of the bacteria isolated from orange and mango residues.","PeriodicalId":72866,"journal":{"name":"Ecologies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42886969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologiesPub Date : 2022-05-13DOI: 10.3390/ecologies3020009
T. Novoselova, S. Barinova, A. Protasov
{"title":"Phytoplankton Indicators in the Assessment of the Ecological Status of Two Reservoirs with Different Purposes in Southern Ukraine","authors":"T. Novoselova, S. Barinova, A. Protasov","doi":"10.3390/ecologies3020009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/ecologies3020009","url":null,"abstract":"A comparison of two closely located reservoirs on the Southern Bug River and its tributary in the southern region of Ukraine is carried out. One of them (Tashlyk reservoir on a small river, tributary of the Southern Bug River) is a cooling reservoir (pond) for the nuclear power plant, the other (Alexandrovskoye reservoir, on the Southern Bug River) is used for agricultural purposes, for the production of electricity at a hydroelectric power plant, and as a lower reservoir for a pumped storage power plant. Comparison of the main indicators of phytoplankton in the reservoirs was carried out together with its spatial distribution. It was found that the distribution of coenotic groups of plankton in the cooling reservoir corresponds to thermal conditions. In the Alexandrovskoye reservoir, separate communities of plankton are formed along its length. The description of indicator species of algae in two reservoirs is given. The important role of the catchment basin was demonstrated with statistical maps. It was shown that a significant increase in temperature in the cooling pond did not lead to the depletion of phytoplankton.","PeriodicalId":72866,"journal":{"name":"Ecologies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49465880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologiesPub Date : 2022-05-05DOI: 10.3390/ecologies3020008
Sandra Hudina, I. Maguire, Paula Dragičević, N. Galic
{"title":"Evaluating the Efficacy of Approaches to Control Invasive Populations: A Conceptual Model Development for the Signal Crayfish","authors":"Sandra Hudina, I. Maguire, Paula Dragičević, N. Galic","doi":"10.3390/ecologies3020008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/ecologies3020008","url":null,"abstract":"Invasive crayfish are among the major threats to freshwater ecosystems, with the signal crayfish, Pacifastacus leniusculus, being one of the most successful crayfish invaders in Europe. Approaches to invasive crayfish control range from manual and physical to biological and biocidal control methods. However, all of these approaches have their drawbacks and have limited efficacy. Among traditional approaches with minimal impacts on environment and non-target species, manual control via trapping is the most frequently applied. More innovative approaches comprise, among others, usage of sterile male release technique, whose efficacy in the field is yet to be fully tested, especially how it combines with more traditional approaches. A good alternative to costly and logistically challenging field comparisons of these approaches and their combinations is population modeling. Population models can integrate all relevant species-specific biological and ecological information and can be applied to identify management scenarios of highest impact on invasive crayfish abundances. In this study, we developed a conceptual population model of the invasive P. leniusculus following the Pop-GUIDE framework. In addition, we expanded on the framework to increase its applicability to other fields beyond environmental risk assessment. Finally, we discuss potential application of the model and its future use as a management tool.","PeriodicalId":72866,"journal":{"name":"Ecologies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42128950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologiesPub Date : 2022-03-31DOI: 10.3390/ecologies3020006
A. Ferrarini, M. Gustin
{"title":"First Record of the Red-Footed Falcon’s Nocturnal Flight Activity during the Nestling Period Using GPS Data","authors":"A. Ferrarini, M. Gustin","doi":"10.3390/ecologies3020006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/ecologies3020006","url":null,"abstract":"The red-footed falcon (Falco vespertinus) is a species that is of great interest to conservation. Because of this, understanding the red-footed falcon’s flight behavior is important for the conservation of this species. In this context, by using accurate GPS data-loggers, in 2019 and 2020, we analyzed its flight activity at the two largest colonies in Italy, and we collected 5840 GPS points. At night, all of the surveyed individuals were active during all of the hourly intervals, and they were in flight for about 10% of the time (40% in the daytime). The nocturnal flight activity showed a dual pattern: frequent and long-distance flights before sunrise (22.22% of time in flight; maximum distance from nest > 3 km) and after sundown (32.14% of time in flight; maximum distance from nest > 12 km), and limited and short-distance flights late at night (10 p.m.–5 a.m.; <5% of time in flight; maximum distance from nest < 100 m). Our study suggests that an increase in alfalfa crops and fallow land (in place of maize and soy crops) in the surroundings (i.e., 50–100 m) of the nests would considerably help this species to avoid, or at least to minimize, nocturnal flight activity, with expected improvements in its reproductive success. Our results are a step forward in advancing the knowledge of this important red-footed falcon population, which has been largely unknown so far. We provide here the first evidence ever of the red-footed falcon’s regular nocturnal flight activity during the nestling period (June–July).","PeriodicalId":72866,"journal":{"name":"Ecologies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47471497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologiesPub Date : 2022-03-29DOI: 10.3390/ecologies3020005
Lamiaa F. Shalabi, Fedah S. Otaif
{"title":"Commiphora Jacq (Burseraceae) in Saudi Arabia, Botanical, Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Notes","authors":"Lamiaa F. Shalabi, Fedah S. Otaif","doi":"10.3390/ecologies3020005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/ecologies3020005","url":null,"abstract":"Commiphora species are of high medicinal importance. They are distributed in Saudi Arabia, mainly in rocky habitats and regions under mountains, including the east of Tihama, forming a distinct element of Saudi flora. The present study focuses on the botanical characterization of five species of Commiphora, i.e., C. erythraea, C. gileadensis, C. kataf, C. myrrha, and C. quadricincta. The morphological characters for each species were recorded comparatively, and their taxonomic relationships were examined using gross morphology by generating a UPGMA dendrogram, which separated the Commiphora species into two distinct groups. A dichotomous key was generated to facilitate the identification process of the plant, even by naked eye, by obvious characteristics. Because of the similarities in anatomical structure of the stem and petiole of most studied species, only the quantitative variations are illustrated comparatively. Seed macro- and micro-morphological characteristics were recorded comparatively to be used in the identification of a species in the case of leaf absence. The phytochemical study included measurements of total phenolic and flavonoid contents. The phytochemical results were correlated with the ethno-botanic survey. The traditional uses for all species were recorded using the questionnaire and open interviews method for data collecting. The results revealed that the most common Commiphora species that are traditionally used are C. myrrha and C. gileadensis. The study recommends more research on Commiphora species using more advanced techniques and tries to increase public awareness on the importance of these plants.","PeriodicalId":72866,"journal":{"name":"Ecologies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47091625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologiesPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.3390/ecologies3010004
Yanling Peng, Jie Ying Gao, Xing Zhang
{"title":"Plant Diversity Is More Important than Climate Factors in Driving Insect Richness Pattern along a Latitudinal Gradient","authors":"Yanling Peng, Jie Ying Gao, Xing Zhang","doi":"10.3390/ecologies3010004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/ecologies3010004","url":null,"abstract":"The insect data of 93 national nature reserves in China was used to identify the underlying drivers’ potential for species richness along geographical gradients. We assessed the correlations between predictors (climate and soil) and response variables (insect richness). We found that the following: insect diversity decreased significantly at higher latitudes. The latitudinal variation in insect richness seems to be driven by climate and soil variations and also the diversity of other biota. Among all the tested predictors, plant diversity explained the most latitudinal patterns of insect richness (R2 = 0.498). Insect richness showed a positive correlation with the diversity of other biota and climate factors (mean annual temperature and mean annual precipitation) and was negatively associated with soil pH. Overall, the interspecific relationship between organisms was the main driver of insect diversity’s latitudinal pattern. However, the effects of climate and soil factors cannot be ignored.","PeriodicalId":72866,"journal":{"name":"Ecologies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43190662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologiesPub Date : 2022-02-15DOI: 10.3390/ecologies3010003
L. Koutika
{"title":"Boosting C Sequestration and Land Restoration through Forest Management in Tropical Ecosystems: A Mini-Review","authors":"L. Koutika","doi":"10.3390/ecologies3010003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/ecologies3010003","url":null,"abstract":"Soil has a major role in sequestering atmospheric CO2. This has further benefits and potential to improve soil fertility and food production, mitigate climate change, restore land degradation, and conserve ecosystem biodiversity. However, its health is increasingly being threatened by the growing population, land degradation and climate change effects. Despite its importance, soil organic carbon (SOC) is understudied in the tropics. This paper reviews how managing forests in tropical ecosystems can benefit SOC sequestration and land restoration. Sequestered SOC has the potential to improve soil fertility, as well as to reduce both land degradation and atmospheric CO2 emissions. It further improves soil structure, aggregation and water infiltration, enhances soil faunal activity and boosts nutrient cycling (C, N, P and S). Managing forest ecosystems is crucial to boost C sequestration, mitigate climate change and restore degraded lands, besides other ecosystem services they provide. Apart from managing natural forests and planted forests, afforesting, reforesting marginal or degraded lands especially when associated with specific practices (organic residue management, introducing nitrogen-fixing species) boost C storage (in both soil and biomass) and foster co-benefits as soil health improvement, food production, land restoration and mitigation of climate change. Improved soil health as a result of sequestered C is confirmed by enhanced physical, biological and chemical soil fertility (e.g., sequestered C stability through its link to N and P cycling driven by soil biota) which foster and sustain soil health.","PeriodicalId":72866,"journal":{"name":"Ecologies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44272249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologiesPub Date : 2022-01-26DOI: 10.3390/ecologies3010002
{"title":"Acknowledgment to Reviewers of Ecologies in 2021","authors":"","doi":"10.3390/ecologies3010002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/ecologies3010002","url":null,"abstract":"Rigorous peer-reviews are the basis of high-quality academic publishing [...]","PeriodicalId":72866,"journal":{"name":"Ecologies","volume":"60 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41247139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologiesPub Date : 2022-01-19DOI: 10.3390/ecologies3010001
Meredith K. Steck, Emilie C. Snell‐Rood
{"title":"No Effect of Early Adult Experience on the Development of Individual Specialization in Host-Searching Cabbage White Butterflies","authors":"Meredith K. Steck, Emilie C. Snell‐Rood","doi":"10.3390/ecologies3010001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/ecologies3010001","url":null,"abstract":"Individuals in a population often use unique subsets of locally available resources, but we do not entirely understand how environmental context shapes the development of these specializations. In this study, we used ovipositing cabbage white butterflies (Pieris rapae) searching for host plants to test the hypothesis that early experience with an abundant resource can lead to later individual specialization. We first exposed naïve butterflies to one of three environments with different relative abundances of host plants of comparable nutritional quality, cabbage and radish. The next day, we observed butterflies from all treatments searching for hosts in a common environment where cabbage and radish were equally abundant. We predicted that the butterflies would preferentially visit the host plant that had been abundant during their previous experience, but instead found that butterflies from all experience treatments visited cabbage, a likely more visually salient host, more often than radish. In this experiment, behavioral plasticity in current conditions outweighed developmental experience in shaping individual resource use. We argue that these butterflies potentially respond to particularly salient search cues and that the discriminability of a resource may lead to specialization bias independent of early life experiences with abundant resources.","PeriodicalId":72866,"journal":{"name":"Ecologies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43364811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologiesPub Date : 2021-12-04DOI: 10.3390/ecologies2040021
Ruchira Gangahagedara, S. Subasinghe, M. Lankathilake, W. Athukorala, Isurun Gamage
{"title":"Ecosystem Services Research Trends: A Bibliometric Analysis from 2000–2020","authors":"Ruchira Gangahagedara, S. Subasinghe, M. Lankathilake, W. Athukorala, Isurun Gamage","doi":"10.3390/ecologies2040021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/ecologies2040021","url":null,"abstract":"The study of ecosystem services (ES) is becoming increasingly popular, as it plays an important role in human wellbeing, economic growth, and livelihoods. The primary goal of this research is to investigate the global trend in ES research using a rigorous systematic review of highly cited articles. The articles for this study were extracted from Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E), Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) databases of Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) covering the period from 2000 to 2020. This study was limited to SCI-E, ESCI, and SSCI databases of the Web of Science. The term “ecosystem service/s” has been used as a research term to filter the study sample and eliminate other databases from the analysis. A citation level equal to or greater than 200 was used to further filtration of articles. This query could restrict to 128 articles that are highly cited in the selected period. Bibliometric analysis results show that, according to the author’s keywords, the “ecosystem service/s” keyword is highly connected to the “biodiversity”, “valuation”, “marine spatial planning”, and “conservation planning”. The U.S.A., Canada, China, France, and Australia are the leading countries in the cumulative number of highly cited articles and networks of co-authors. The U.S.A. is a strong contributor to ES research with China, Canada, and France. The most productive universities linked to the United States were the University of Minnesota, the University of California-Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara), and the Chinese Academy of Science. The most significant and compelling author is Halpern S Benjamin, who represents UC Santa Barbara. He has earned international recognition for a model he developed to analyze global data sets of anthropogenic drivers of ecological change in marine environments. The most accessed and studied fields in the ES are terrestrial, urban, and marine environments.","PeriodicalId":72866,"journal":{"name":"Ecologies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44546905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}