Biodiversity Assessment - Science topic

I have six ecosystems in two substrate categories (Triplicates essentially). I have determined shannon wiener index values for each ecosystem and also for the two categories separately. I have done this for two separate sets of data that were sampled in two separate years. Is it possible to statistically compare the development of the biodiversity between each of the categories i.e., the development of biodiveristy in ecosystem 1 between the two years, using the shannon wiener values somehow? Are there any other tests that could work? I am aware of the hutcheson t test however, some of my data is not normally distributed.

I would really appreciate some help!

Is it very literally subbing in shannon wiener index values instead of species abundances?

I have three field margin types (grassy/shrubby/tree) and each type have 5 sites. I need to calculate Shannon index for insect counts from each field margin type....

Q1. In my case how should I calculate Shannon index? Should I calculate first for each sites and giving their mean in my table(refer attachment) or neglecting the sites and taking the total count among each field margin types to calculate Shannon index.. Which one will be the perfect?

Q2. And also I need to test the statistical significance of Shannon index between various field margin types.. which test will be best to compare Shannon indices?

Please refer my attached table to get idea of what I need exactly.

Thank you very much

We have recently chosen a flagship species for a protected area in Iran. Before introducing the flagship species to the local people, we want to measure the impact of the introduction on the local people's attitude towards wildlife. What is the best way to do this? Is there a specific questionnaire for measuring this issue, or is there another method that we can use?

I am working with the diversity of flora and beneficial insects in the field margins. I have 15 sites with different composition of the plants from grassy, herbs, shrubby and tree rich field margins. I am calculation effective number of species based on Shannon index. which statistical test is appropriate for assessing the statistical significance of differences in the effective number of species (plants/insects) among 15 sites?

The majority of established survey protocols do not specifically require the recording of survey routes. Instead, they primarily focus on documenting animal sightings or occurrences. However, I firmly believe that survey routes hold significant importance as they serve as a measure of the actual survey effort. Even a route without any recorded animal encounters is valuable since it provides evidence of true absences.

Presently, capturing survey routes has become quite effortless, with more than a dozen freely available smartphone applications capable of efficiently logging both waypoints and track points in various formats such as .GPX, .kml, .txt, or .csv files. Consequently, I propose an update to the existing field survey protocols to incorporate this aspect of data collection.

I am eager to hear your thoughts and feedback on this suggestion. Any comments are highly welcomed and appreciated.

Hi! I have a dataset with a list of species of sponges (Porifera) and the number of specimens found for each specie in three different sites. I add here a sample from my dataset. Which test should I use to compare the three sites showing both which species where found in each site and their abundance? I was also thinking of a visual representation showing just the difference between sites in terms of diversity of species (and not abundance), so that is possible to see which species were just in one sites and which ones were in both sites. For this last purpose I thought about doing an MDS but I am not sure if it is the right test to do neither how to do it in R and how to set the dataset, can you help me finding a script which also show the shape of the dataset? any advice in general would be great! thank you!

Is there any indices which can help calculate endemicity of flora and fauna in an area?

Hello everybody, I'm a master degree student. I'm working with 16S data on some environmental samples. After all the cleaning, denoising ecc... now I have an object that stores my sequences, their taxonomic classification, and a table of counts of ASV per sample linked to their taxonomic classification.

The question is, what should I do with the counts for assessing Diversity metrics? Should I transform them prior to the calculation of indexes, or i should transform them according to the index/distance i want to assess? Where can I find some resources linked to these problems and related other for study that out?

I know that these questions may be very simple ones, but I'm lost.

As far as I know there is no consensus on the statistical operation of transforming the data, but i cannot leave raw because of the compositionality of the datum.

Please help

Flag/Indicator species are known to be representative indicator in large-scale biodiversity conservation. But in a regional or micro-scale urban area, should we still take flagship species as a crucial surrogate/representative index?

If so, what is the proper way to select flagship species in urban area?

If not, how should we assess the biodiversity conservation outcomes in urban area?

Thank you.

On 16.11.2022 at the UN Climate Summit COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, debates and speakers address, among other things, the issue of the loss of biodiversity of the planet's natural ecosystems caused by the increasingly rapid process of global warming caused by anthropogenic factors, i.e., primarily by civilization's greenhouse gas emissions. Due to the accelerating deforestation of forests, the burning and clearing of rainforests to create more areas to grow crops for export, the planet's biodiversity is rapidly declining. In addition, also due to the increasing scale of land and sea pollution, oceanic pollution and the accelerating process of global warming, the level of biodiversity of the planet's natural ecosystems is rapidly declining. Due to the predatory management of burning and clearing of the Amazon rainforest, the area of these natural boreal forests described as the natural lungs of the planet has been declining rapidly in recent years. In addition, due to the greenhouse effect, ocean water temperatures are also rising and coral reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef in Oceania, are dying. The decline in biodiversity noted in recent years correlates with the rapid mass die-off of many species of flora and fauna. In view of the above, it is necessary to urgently stop forest deforestation, including the burning and clearing of tropical rainforests and also other forest formations and natural ecosystems located in all climate zones. It is necessary to increase the scale of implementation of afforestation programs for civilization-degraded areas, post-mining heaps, wastelands, and the creation of additional urban parks in urban agglomerations. Besides, it is necessary to urgently carry out a full green transformation of the economy, including a pro-climate transformation of the energy sector by replacing the dirty energy of burning fossil fuels with clean energy based on renewable and emission-free energy sources. With the rapid development of ICT information technology, Industry 4.0, satellite analytics, 5G big data transfer, etc. as important elements of the current fourth technological revolution, it is possible to improve techniques and systems for monitoring the state of biodiversity of natural ecosystems.

In view of the above, I address the following question to the esteemed community of researchers and scientists:

What is your opinion on this issue?

Please answer with reasons,

I invite everyone to join the discussion,

Thank you very much,

Warm regards,

Particularly relevant issues concerning the problems of natural, social, economic and other negative consequences of the ongoing process of global warming, the negative effects of this process and, therefore, the need to increase the scale and accelerate the implementation of the process of green transformation of the economy, protection of the climate, biosphere and biodiversity of the planet, I described in the following article:

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY DEVELOPMENT AS A KEY ELEMENT OF THE PRO-ECOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE ECONOMY TOWARDS GREEN ECONOMY AND CIRCULAR ECONOMY

I invite you to join me in scientific cooperation,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

What kind of scientific research dominate in the field of The importance of biodiversity, the environment, environmental protection?

Please reply. I invite you to the discussion

We are currently doing an undergrad thesis and we are planning to assess the presence or absence of species in each elevation (our variable for community) during a certain month. We were able to find ideas like the coefficient of community but this only allows us to assess two communities.

Foresters usualy use a clinometer to calculate the tree height. These can be quite expensive to buy, but I don't know if using smartphone apps is accurate enough for measure canopy height. Do you recommends using automatic clinometer apps for field research ?

How should the systems of nature protection and biodiversity of natural ecosystems be dispersed in order to increase the effectiveness of these systems and reduce the scale of degradation of the natural environment?

What do you think should be improved in nature conservation systems and biodiversity of natural ecosystems in addition to just increasing financial outlays on nature conservation policies conducted by government agencies and ministries of the environment?

A significant part of financial expenditures of nature conservation and biodiversity policy is devoted to the promotion of nature protection and natural environment protection issues. However, the effectiveness of this type of promotional campaigns is low, because without applying legal restrictions, enterprises do not change their technologies to be more ecological if they do not see in this business realized in a short time. Even the occasional UN climate summits in which government representatives from the majority of countries take part do not cause significant real changes in the policy of nature protection and biodiversity? Usually, the largest industrial economies in the world do not sign the obligations of rapid reduction of greenhouse gases and the issue of increasing spending on environmental innovation in the energy sector. Why, despite the growing scale of public awareness, there is no significant improvement in the implementation of nature conservation and biodiversity policy, there are no real measures that would result in a significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the slowing of the global warming process?

Please reply

I invite you to the discussion

Thank you very much

Best wishes

The current technological revolution, known as Industry 4.0, is determined by the development of the following technologies of advanced information processing: Big Data database technologies, cloud computing, machine learning, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, Business Intelligence and other advanced data mining technologies.

In view of the above, what kind of information technologies from the Industry 4.0 range and how will they help to protect the natural environment and biodiversity?

Please reply

Best wishes

Due to the current civilization progress in recent decades, acceleration of the development of industry, automotive, urban agglomerations, intensification of agricultural production, etc. and related greenhouse gas emissions, global warming, ozone layer depletion in the atecologicalecologicalmosphere, increase of environmental pollution, growing problem of smog in urban agglomerations, the increase in pollution of the seas and oceans to which unsorted waste is thrown away is cut out as part of the predatory economy of tropical forests in the Amazon and other largest natural forest ecosystems.

In addition, the secondary effect of global warming of the Earth's climate is the increasing, more frequent weather anomalies, including drought, leading to steppe and desertification of areas that were previously natural forest ecosystems or areas exploited by agriculture.

As a result of the above-mentioned processes, every year many species of flora and fauna disappear forever.

As a result, natural biodiversity diminishes, which for millions of years evolved evolutionally on Earth.

In this way the natural resources of the planet Earth are irretrievably in decline.

In view of the above, the issue of environmental protection and biodiversity is one of the most important challenges of humanity in the 21st century.

Classical economics must change towards a green economy based on the strategy of sustainable pro-ecological development.

Therefore, I am asking you for the following query:

How can environmental protection and biodiversity be improved by using current ecological technologies?

Please, answer, comments.

I invite you to the discussion.

I pointed out the high level of relevance of the issue taken up in the above question in the article:

Please respond with what do you think about the issues described in this article?

Best wishes

Dariusz Prokopowicz

What kind of scientific research dominate in the field of Protection of the natural environment, natural biological ecosystems and biodiversity?

Please, provide your suggestions for a question, problem or research thesis in the issues: Protection of the natural environment, natural biological ecosystems and biodiversity.

Please reply. I invite you to the discussion

Best wishes

Hello,

I am wondering if anyone can conduct an ESIA study or does it have to be a person with specific credentials. Does it also have to be certified. If yes, what certifications are available.

Thanks a lot!

I am analysing diatom biodiversity of marine lake. Samples have been taken from high wave energy, low wave energy and moderate wave energy locations of the marine lake. I am using the Hill Series to graphically represent my data. For each of the three communities, I have calculated species richness, S (q=0), effective number of common species, eH' (q=1), and effective number of highly abundant species, 1/D (q=2). My data looks like this:

Community. Low Wave Energy. Moderate Wave Energy High Wave Energy

S 10 19 11

eH' 1,69124292 6,49758264 2,10265956

1/D 1,30682481 4,72615576 1,47050205

However, I need to do statistical analysis to determine if there is significantly higher diatom diversity in the moderate wave energy community compared to the other two communities. I have found online resources explaining how to calculate, i.e. using hutchersons t-test, the differences in diversity using shannon and simpson index, but I cannot find any relating to the effective versions of these indices (i.e. eH' and 1/D).

Does anybody have any advice. Should I just say the differences in shannon diversity and simpsons diversity are significant, or should I find a way to analyse the differences of effective shannon diversity and effective simpsons diversity. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Protection of the environment, natural ecosystems and biodiversity should be an integral part of the concept of sustainable pro-ecological economic development?

In the context of growing and increasing environmental pollution and declining areas of natural ecosystems, the importance and need to improve environmental protection systems, natural ecosystems and biodiversity is increasing. Biodiversity is one of the most important issues of natural ecosystems and life on Earth. Maintaining high biodiversity on Earth should be a challenge and one of the main goals of human functioning on the Earth in the 21st century and in subsequent centuries.

In connection with the above, protection of the environment, natural ecosystems and biodiversity should be an integral part of the concept of sustainable ecological development. In some countries, the concept of sustainable pro-ecological economic development is implemented successively, primarily in the field of renewable energy sources, improvement of waste segregation techniques and recycling development. However, in many countries these issues are still insufficiently developed.

Still too small financial resources are allocated in many countries for the development of renewable energy sources, improvement of waste segregation and recycling techniques. In addition to the private sector, besides enterprises implementing ecological innovations, it is necessary to increase expenditures and develop strategic pro-ecological reform projects, including restructuring of the mining industry of minerals supplying classic energy sources and development of energy based on renewable energy sources. This development should be supported and coordinated by environmentally friendly state intervention, and due to the high investment costs of construction of power plants producing electricity from renewable energy sources should be co-financed from the state public finance funds.

In this way, it will be possible to slow down the ongoing global warming process in the 21st century and thus slow down the process of devastating the natural environment, draining green areas characterized by high biodiversity. Biodiversity is a very important issue in the context of the analysis of ecology, sustainable development and the protection of the natural environment, including, in particular, the natural positions of biologically complex ecosystems, i.e. those that are characterized by high biodiversity. Maintaining biodiversity of natural ecosystems is one of the most important problems and tasks for people in the 21st century.

Do you agree with my opinion on this matter?

In the context of the above considerations, the following question is still valid:

Please reply

I am conducting research on this issue. I have included the conclusions of my research in the following articles:

Key aspects of the negative effects of the progressive process of global warming and the associated necessary acceleration of the processes of green transformation of the economy in order to decarbonize the economy, slow down the process of global warming, protect the climate, biosphere and biodiversity of natural ecosystems of the planet I described in the article:

In the following article, I included the results of the research conducted on the connection of the issue of sustainable development, the genesis and meaning of the Sustainable Development Goals, the essence of sustainable development in the context of social, normative, economic, environmental, climate aspects, as well as human rights, etc. The research also addressed the issue of key determinants of human existential security as an element of the concept of sustainable development.

I invite everyone to join the discussion,

I would like to invite you to join me in scientific cooperation,

Thank you very much,

Best wishes,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Biodiversity is diverse in virtually unlimited degree, which results from the essence of processes of evolution of species, filet lines and entire ecosystems. It is thanks to the millions of years of evolutionary processes on Earth that there are so many different natural and highly diverse ecosystems in which different species of flora, fauna, fungi and microorganisms adapt to life in different and very diverse geographical and climatic environments.

The largest biodiversity of ecosystems and species functions in natural environmental environments in which ecosystems have evolved without human impact through millions of years of climatic and geographical conditions enabling the development of various life forms. These types of high biodiversity sites can be found in unpolluted rainforest ecosystems in tropical forests, in temperate climates and in coral reefs.

Unfortunately, human civilization activity contributes to the successive and accelerating process of biodiversity reduction by dying out species of living organisms. The areas of natural natural ecosystems are decreasing, including those in which the greatest biodiversity is diagnosed, such as the rainforests of the Amazon. The protection of naturalistic ecosystems and thus the protection of the planet's biodiversity is the most important challenge for mankind in the 21st century.

Do you agree with my opinion on this matter?

In view of the above, I am asking you the following question:

Please reply

I invite you to the discussion

Thank you very much

Best wishes

Dear RG Colleagues,

I hope you're doing well.

In my region, I noticed that an area contains a very rich flora and fauna biodiversity. I am trying with a team to establish a complete inventory within a year.

My question is what are the main steps to create a new protected area, whether at the scientific or administrative level.

Creating Protected Areas solution aims to increase the amount of conserved land by establishing new government protected areas, indigenous managed territories and private protected areas.

Best regards

Abdenour

What kind of scientific research dominate in the field of Protection of biodiversity and natural ecosystems?

Please, provide your suggestions for a question, problem or research thesis in the issues: Protection of biodiversity and natural ecosystems.

Please reply.

I invite you to the discussion

Thank you very much

Best wishes

What disciplines, areas of contemporary economic systems, industries, etc. will in the 21st century develop the model of sustainable pro-ecological economic development according to the concept of green economy?

In connection with the progressing global warming and the increase in the risk and frequency of climate disasters, it is necessary to implement pro-ecological reforms as soon as possible into economic processes. First of all, renewable energy sources should be developed, replacing the classic energy based on the burning of minerals. In addition, it is necessary to improve the technology of automation and robotization in the processes of waste segregation, recycling and re-use of various types of raw materials. Also, electromobility, ecological agriculture, zero-energy construction, etc. should be developed.

In recent years ecological innovations have been created mainly in the field of renewable energy sources, improvement of waste segregation techniques, recycling, treatment of polluted water, reclamation of a devastated natural environment, energy-efficient construction, electromobility etc. However, more and more eco-innovations, new technological solutions, technical improvements which is part of sustainable ecological development, is also created in many other fields of science.

In view of the above, are examples of pro-ecological undertakings, technological improvements compatible with sustainable ecological development or ecological innovations that are also created in one of the following or other related fields of science, for example: Molecular Biology, Biotechnology, Anthropology Theory, Medicine, Electrical Engineering , Artificial Intelligence, Genetics, Business Administration, Risk Management, Big Data, Business Intelligence, Automation & Robotics, Climatology, Agriculture, Biophysics, Biochemistry, Medical Intelligence, Artificial Neural Networks, Ecosystem Analysis, Power Engineering, Construction, Food production, Forest ecology, Biology, Geoscience, Government Programs, Behavioral Sciences, Biodiversity Assessment, Green Architecture, Greenhouse, Waste, Household Products, Information Society, Innovation Management, International Entrepreneurship, Internet Technologies, Knowledge Creation, Bioelectric Energy gy Sources, Business Model Innovation, Cataclysmic Variables, Chromatography, Clean Energy, Cleantech, Climate Prediction, Collaborative Innovation, Commercialization, Computational Intelligence, Computer Science and Engineering, Conservation Biology, Consumer Behavior, Corporate Governance, Creative Economy, Crisis Communication, Cyber Security, Data Analysis, Database Administration, Development Cooperation, Digital Ecosystems, Economic Ecoindicators, Ecosystem Ecology, Energy Industry, Ecological Modeling Ecological Economics, Ecological Indicators, Discovery, Earth Sciences, Earthquake Forecasting and Geocataclysm, Econometric Analysis, Economic Integration, Economics of Innovation, Ecosystem Engineering, Electricity, Electronic Systems, Energetic Materials, Energy Technologies, Environment, Environmental Biodegradation, Flora, Food Consumption Life Sciences, Logistics Management, Materials for Sustainable Energy, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Nanomaterials, New Media Technology, Recycling, Physics of Global Warming, Plant Protection, Predicive Analytics, Production Planning, Project Development, Public Economics, Public Policy, Public Policy, Sociobiology, Space Science, Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Development Strategies, Technology Forecasting, Transport Economics, Water Resources, Weather Forecasting, Wildlife Conservation, World Economy, ...?

In view of the above, the current question is: What areas of knowledge will be involved in shaping sustainable pro-ecological economic development in the 21st century?

Please, answer, comments.

I invite you to the discussion.

Best wishes

Hello,

is it possible to use the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) to determine which of the analyzed variables best separates the different groups (which are already known)?

For example, I want to understand how 3 different croplands are different in terms of ecosystem services provisioning. So, I decide to measure 4 variables for each ecosystem (Soil Carbon, Dry matter, Biodiversity, and GHG) and then I run an LDA analysis (on PAST 3.4 here)

I get this result (see the attached picture). Here clearly the Grassland seems to be more different than the other two croplands (because it is more displaced than the other two croplands on the X-axis).

Would it be correct to conclude that this grassland differs most from the other 2 crops and this seems to be determined by its level of biodiversity?

Thanks (and of course, these data are not real. That's just an example)

Estimating abundance of black bear using sign surveys.

Dear entomologist colleagues, just wanted to find out if any of you have ever conducted and published on insect bioinventories without collecting insects? Is it defensible to do catch, ID and release type studies? Or photographic type observational studies? Or would you say that there is absolute no substitute to collecting?

How do I predict biodiversity changes under different climatic scenarios? What kind of models are applicable in southern Africa? Where can I get them? 

I am looking for potential collaborators for a project that seeks to assess the ecological importance of specific tree species of Borneo. I invite interested specialists to message me. 

I am trying to ID fairy shrimp but am unable to find any lists or keys to use.

Catastrophic reports and publications about the rapid loss of species numbers are becoming increasingly frequent. Furthermore, the biomass of common animal species, such as insects or birds, is also being hotly debated.

In contrast, the loss of plant species and their biomass is much less frequently reported. Does anyone know of well-documented reports or publications on massive local or global plant losses and/or massive plant biomass losses?

A (wide accepted) view is that, when we try to address on the biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships, the multifunctionality index should be calculated by a set of activity indicators, rather than static measures. Is it constant for various kinds of ecosystems or for different trophic levels of organisms? Or this is just a blind simplification.

I have been working on a project to collate species occurrence data inherent from unpublished student theses in an integrated database (currently published in GBIF) and still working on a systematic protocol of data validation. Expert review is really subjective and I got many findings that said "expert" estimation were not always more consistent than amateurs, student, or even public enthusiasts (feel free to message me for the papers I collected regarding this), thus my team was still struggling to find a way. Our current method is just independently evaluate the scientific names through taxonomic checklists and the geographic distribution were validated through available published literature mentioning the geographic distribution of each species. We occasionally ask experts but as we are working on many understudied taxa and geographical area, there was not many around.

The Amazon forest is on fire and the whole world will suffer the climatic consequences. The main cause of forest fires in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil and Bolivia are the deforestation policies promoted by the anti-environmental presidents Jair Bolsonaro and Evo Morales. We need to do something to stop this. In the long run, these policies will destroy even large-scale rainforests in the region. We are coming closer to the point where there is not enough rainforest left to produce the rain that sustains those forests. The vast Amazon basin will tip into a drought state, which would be devastating for wildlife, the indigenous people, the global climate, and agriculture in the region. Is there something we could do to stop this ecological disaster before is too late ? What is your opinion about this important subject ?

Please reply

Thank you very much

Hi,

I would like to build a species accumulation curve using specaccum function in R vegan package.

The entry table should be a classic community table species by sites. However, instead of sites, I would use subsequent surveys in a given study area (conducted with the same methodology) and incident data (presence/absence). Is this supported? And, more relevant, do you think this has a theoretical support? References welcome.

Trying to answer this question, I came across iNEXT package that allows incident data. I have still the same doubt about sites/surveys.

What is the most flexible and performing of the two functions?

I am not sure about how to interpret different values of the Simpson's index of diversity. For example: if I have two communities where

1-D (community 1) = 0.92

1-D (community 2) = 0.89

the first community is about 3% more diverse than the second one. Does this mean that the two communities are very similar or that they substantially differ?

I am pretty confused about the use of taxonomic diversity and taxonomic distinctness.

Taxonomic diversity can be defined as the average taxonomic path between randomly chosen individuals. It takes into consideration taxonomic differences and heterogeneity (species richness and evenness). Why should we not just decide to use taxonomic diversity instead of Simpson’s index/Shannon index when we know the taxonomy of each species? Moreover, isn’t calculating the taxonomic diversity across different areas more appropriate than other beta diversity indices such as Jaccard Similarity?

Taxonomic distinctness can be defined as the average taxonomic path between two individuals from different species. I don’t understand the point of this index. It doesn’t give us information about the heterogeneity (which taxonomic diversity does), but at the same time it is not an index of the how the different species are related taxonomically (which is delta+). Which information gives us? When is the use of taxonomic distinctness more appropriate than the one of taxonomic diversity? 

Thank you for anyone who will help, I really appreciate it!

In recent years ecological innovations have been created mainly in the field of renewable energy sources, improvement of waste segregation techniques, recycling, treatment of polluted water, reclamation of a devastated natural environment, energy-efficient construction, electromobility etc. However, more and more eco-innovations, new technological solutions, technical improvements which is part of sustainable ecological development, is also created in many other fields of science.

In view of the above, are examples of pro-ecological undertakings, technological improvements compatible with sustainable ecological development or ecological innovations that are also created in one of the following or other related fields of science, for example: Molecular Biology, Biotechnology, Anthropology Theory, Medicine, Electrical Engineering , Artificial Intelligence, Genetics, Business Administration, Risk Management, Big Data, Business Intelligence, Automation & Robotics, Climatology, Agriculture, Biophysics, Biochemistry, Medical Intelligence, Artificial Neural Networks, Ecosystem Analysis, Power Engineering, Construction, Food production, Forest ecology, Biology, Geoscience, Government Programs, Behavioral Sciences, Biodiversity Assessment, Green Architecture, Greenhouse, Waste, Household Products, Information Society, Innovation Management, International Entrepreneurship, Internet Technologies, Knowledge Creation, Bioelectric Energy gy Sources, Business Model Innovation, Cataclysmic Variables, Chromatography, Clean Energy, Cleantech, Climate Prediction, Collaborative Innovation, Commercialization, Computational Intelligence, Computer Science and Engineering, Conservation Biology, Consumer Behavior, Corporate Governance, Creative Economy, Crisis Communication, Cyber ​​Security, Data Analysis, Database Administration, Development Cooperation, Digital Ecosystems, Economic Ecoindicators, Ecosystem Ecology, Energy Industry, Ecological Modeling Ecological Economics, Ecological Indicators, Discovery, Earth Sciences, Earthquake Forecasting and Geocataclysm, Econometric Analysis, Economic Integration, Economics of Innovation, Ecosystem Engineering, Electricity, Electronic Systems, Energetic Materials, Energy Technologies, Environment, Environmental Biodegradation, Flora, Food Consumption Life Sciences, Logistics Management, Materials for Sustainable Energy, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Nanomaterials, New Media Technology, Recycling, Physics of Global Warming, Plant Protection, Predicive Analytics, Production Planning, Project Development, Public Economics, Public Policy, Public Policy, Sociobiology, Space Science, Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Development Strategies, Technology Forecasting, Transport Economics, Water Resources, Weather Forecasting, Wildlife Conservation, World Economy, ...?

In view of the above, the current question is: What areas of knowledge will be involved in shaping sustainable pro-ecological economic development in the 21st century?

Please, answer, comments. I invite you to the discussion.

I would like to conduct a vegetation survey using the Braun-blanquet cover-abundance scale to get an insight into the composition of plants as a supplementary data to my research.

As my study area will include large coniferous forests and alpine forests, a transect will be too time-consuming and unfeasible to carry out.

My current sampling design is to divide my study areas into grid cells of 1km by 1km and do plots at the intersections. I'll have one central point at the intersection point of the grid and from there, do four plots of 20m radius each, in each compass direction.

Given that I have no priori information as to the landscape of my study area, will my sampling design work? Is there another more efficient way of surveying large forests?

What is the best method to estimate the species richness of birds if we have multiple bird surveys from a single site?  Same method  (line transect) is employed, with same effort in each survey.

Is species accumulation curve useful in this case, considering each survey as an effort?

And should we use the same curve for migratory species (which are only at that site for few months) and resident species, or we should use different curves for both?

 

From January 2014 to December 2016, I conducted monthly field trips in three different areas of Dhaka city, Bangladesh to investigate how butterflies survive in an inner-city habitat. I have found that the species richness (I did not count the species abundance) is declining with time.

Presently, I have:

* monthly species-specific data of three continuous years (36 continuous months) of the three different areas

* Four environmental variables (temperature, rainfall, humidity and sunshine hours)

* Pollution level

* IUCN Red List status

* Land-use analysis of these three different areas

Now, I am really confused considering the proper way to link these pieces of information! Could anyone of you please share some ideas?

Hello researchers!

I'm currently undertaking a project that seeks to asses the distribution of a minute gall midge, Arthrocnodax fraxinellus, and its associated parasitoids (Aphanogmus spp.) in Europe.

I'm asking for material of ash cauliflower galls (Aceria fraxinivora) on ash (Fraxinus spp) as the gall midge feeds on the mite in the larval stage.

Material from the following countries are of interest:

Austria

Belarus

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bulgaria

Estonia

Finland

Greece

Iran

Kosovo

Latvia

Lithuania

Macedonia

Moldova

Montenegro

Russia

Serbia

Slovakia

Slovenia

Spain

Turkey

Ukraine

I have attached a PDF with details about the project - please have a look.

Thanks in advance!

Simon Haarder

I am currently working on a paper describing a new technique to add to IUCN methods of species conservation assessment and need references to countries that use the IUCN methods to produce their national red lists. So, please, if you can provide references for countries that use this method, they will be highly welcomed.

I am trying to find the right collar for a study on spatiotemporal habitat use in an urban habitat so I compare different options and I am interested in reports of people who currently do apply them or have already applied them in the field.

I am finding the solution for decide the status of plants species in a particular area that is locally engendered or abundant or rare by help of remote sensing and geoinformatics. is there any method for that ?

Species diversity can be calculated through available indices after going through precise data collection however , we do not have any universally accepted index which could be used to compute biodiversity in any system.

I'm currently working on the alkaloid composition of the skin secretions of salamanders and am trying to test whether this composition differs between different populations.

In line with previous research on alkaloid profiles in poison frogs, I tested for differences among populations using an ANOSIM. Since I work with relative concentrations (a.k.a. proportions), I thought it was more appropriate to construct an Aitchison dissimilarity matrix for this analysis.

I was further interested in seeing which exact compounds were responsible for differences between the populations. A SIMPER, often associated with an ANOSIM, seemed perfect ... but SIMPER in R uses Bray-Curtis dissimilarities.

I was wondering if there is an alternative for SIMPER that uses other indices of dissimilarity? Could a PCA do the same?

A group of colleagues and I are looking for a full list of the diversity indexes that have been published in order to carry a review and analysis about its redundancy. However, the references he have found (Moreno, 2003; Villareal et al. 2004; Magurran & MGill, 2011; Morris et al. 2014 for example) only provide only a list of the commonest. May anyone suggest me a sort of references I could use to enrich the list of indexes we could use to carry our analysis?

Thanks in advance,

Carlos A. Ordóñez-Parra

Plant species found on different phytogeography lead to speciation and sometimes endemism also.But some morphological similarity will exist even though they were different species from the same genera. Then how geneflow occur in western ghats, eastern ghats, north and north eastern part of indian phytogeographical zones eventhough they consist of barriers like  geographical gaps, plateaus and mountains ? is they have some other factors for speciation and endemism ?

due to the each taxonomic level is important in the distinctness indices I need to take the best decision and I have few organisms in my database.  

I have been working on samples of Ostracoda from Great Britain caves. I have this specimen identified according to Meisch (2000) key as F. latens. But the size is only 0.5 mm, all other characteristics fits with species description.

Could I be wrong?Thanks

May you please assist with revised genus and species names and functional groups for beetles that were previously described in Zimbabwe. The list is attached hereto?

Any methods to rank the conservation status of any plant species, other than diversity indices and Important value Index?

Thanks in advance.

Diversity index usually involve calculations of number of species and number of individuals of that species. Are there any indexes that involve using percent cover (for plants) instead of number of individuals?

I am going to Gran Canaria and planning to collect some invertebrates. Do I need permission for that and what should I do for getting the permission? I will collect for natural history museum of Estonia.

If there are any method to estimate  the number of species for a island or archipelago based on sampling surveys. 

I've found one reference (McCafferty 1997) that reported the earliest fossil evidence of the mayfly family Baetidae, dating from the Lower Cretaceous ca. 120-135 mya. They could not id the source material to Baetis sp. though. I've so far been unable to locate any follow up to this estimate, or a specific estimate for the genus Baetis.

I have read already dozens of book chapters and papers on the notation of Anne Chao et al. on how they define abundance based diversity data and incidence based diversity data. Abundance based means that for an ("plotless"?) area there is a complete (?) count of, let´s say all tree species and their respective number. Incidence based data refers to the case when I have sampling units spread across an area and list the species in these sampling units. Then, the information on the species is reduced to presence/absence and I count in how many plots a species occured in order to have some kind of information on the species frequency.

However, what do I do if I have counted all tree indivduals of trees in let´s say 30 plots? That was done for three different regions (which I want to compare), I counted about 5000 individual trees, in total and now one tells me that I have to reduce the count to 0/1? Or is it allowed to pool the data (see Gotelli and Colwell 2001) and sum up all individuals for one region? Is this then still a "true" abundance data set? Am I corrupting any rules then?

I hope that someone has a good explanation :)

Cheers

Gotelli, N. J., & Colwell, R. K. (2001). Quantifying biodiversity: procedures and pitfalls in the measurement and comparison of species richness. Ecology letters, 4(4), 379-391.

To maintain the equal sampling area in each 100m elevation band, I performed rarefaction and extrapolation of species richness data using iNext package. However, the 95% confidence intervals of the 15 rarefaction curves are overlapped and it is difficult to determine via diagram if the extrapolation gives some real picture of extrapolated species richness in each 100m elevation band. So, is it possible to remove the confidence intervals from the rarefaction and extrapolation curves? Or, is there any other easier package (preferably in R) for the rarefaction of the species richness data?

Any suggestion would be of great help!

It is well-known that different aspects on the same mountain may possess quite different enviromental traits or even species pools (e.g. in the northern hemisphere, the southern slope of a mountain is generally warmer and often drier than the northern slope of the same mountain). It is thus reasonable to infer that there may be different elevational patterns of species richness along different slope aspects on a mountain. However, such an effect seems to be ignored and most studies on elevational richness patterns generally survey one aspect on a given mountain. Could anyone recommend some related publications or does anyone have related studying experience in this field?

I am comparing tree species diversity between two land-use types. Is it enough to just use shannon and simpson index?

I have read about pielou and sorenden index and it looks like it could add some additional information about the community, but I am not sure.

Should I just use the first two indices or add the last two for some additional insights into the tree community. The study is from tropical Africa.

My focus is to establish the  extent ( in measurement; meters) of riparian zone significant width  for managing amphibian populations in protected and managed forests.

I want to study about new species exploration, identification from ecological hot spot of western ghats. Can you anyone help me? Thank you very much for reading my question. 

From January 2014 to June 2016, through the continuous field trips, I have listed all those butterflies which were spotted. Now, I have analysed the land area management of Dhaka city which contains over 17 million inhabitants. The total species number is 136 and a good number of them are Endangered and Vulnerable according to regional IUCN Red List 2016. How can I synchronize these data? Is it possible to make a conservation management plan with the help of this research? Please help..