Tropical Ecology - Science topic

Thomas Fungenzi i guess the attached document might be of your help

I use indicator silica gel inside small plastic containers that can be sealed (for katydids, abdomen content replaced by cotton and enwrapped in toilet paper). The silica gel (blue when dry, pinkish with accumulated moisture) can easily be dried in a small saucepan on a stove or open fire. I keep using the same silica gel for many years.

Hello Joe; In the 1960s through the mid -1970s studies in temp regulation in reptiles and amphibians were rapidly developing. Bayard Brattstrom, Ken Nagy and others published a number of papers. Some of the data was referred to as "beer can" data. They would put a thermistor in a water-filled beer can (readily available at the field sites) and watch the rates of temp change in various, biologically realistic situations. Nagy made accurate models of animals and followed similar protocols. If you aren't familiar with that ancient stuff, you might enjoy looking it up. You can contact Bayard at bayard@hughes.net Enjoy!! Jim Des Lauriers

check this out.

Eduardo Chávez-Sahagún, thanks for getting back. Your situation amuses me. The reason there are so many referencing systems in the world is that individual people, little groups of people, specific journals, and institutions, etc. etc. set up what they think is best.

This is, I'm sure, why EndNote, Zotero, and Mendeley each offer more than 6,000 referencing systems (including other styles than Harvard) - though, depending on which software versions you have access to, you mightn't see the full suite.

You might need to do things manually to keep your institution happy. And just between you and me, yes, I think your institution might need to change things. I don't like the chances of that happening, however.

Incidentally, about 4 years ago I was so fascinated by how difficult academics seem to find referencing that I encouraged a colleague to write an article with me about exactly that. I have put an author copy on RG. It has had absolutely no citations (why would it?), but it has remained among the 10 most-read articles in its journal, so I'm glad I decided to write it.

Battle on! And every good wish as you do so.

GBIF provides data worldwide https://www.gbif.org/

Look also to previous analogous question's answers

Besides Indian sub-continent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan), neem trees have been reported from Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Barbados, Benin, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, French Guiana, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Madagascar, Malaysia,. Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Rwanda, Sao Tome et Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, South Africa, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Sudan, Surinam, Swaziland, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, US, Venezuela, Virgin Islands (US), Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The indigenous grasses of Eastern Africa have been exported to Australia. Especially the c.ciliaris( fox taii) and guinea grass (panicum). The Tropical Savannah Project of Australia should give best advice as Java is close ecologicaly to Australia.

I found this to be quite informative.

Is it this reference? – M. Bunyan, S. Jose and R. Fletcher, "Edge Effects in Small Forest Fragments: Why More Is Better?," American Journal of Plant Sciences, Vol. 3 No. 7, 2012, pp. 869-878. doi: 10.4236/ajps.2012.37104.

They include multiple edges in their model. You could always write to them.

In contrast, my fruiting model used toroidal wrap, which meant there were no edges! The birds reappeared in the forest arena if they flew past the edge. This seemed more realistic. We used toroidal distances to account for this instead of euclidean distances. You could consider doing this?

It is a weed called  duckweed [lemna minor] which is more suitable for the tropical country .because it is doubling quickly within  3 days.

One option is to build a ensemble model, but even with this you will need some pseudo-absences in some of the models. As far as I know the only one that do not need any kind of absences is the BIOCLIM.

Here's the paper of a project I participated on that deals with this question: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1439179111000466. Best, - i

Perhaps you must check extructural niche explotation. The capacity or avalability to fly in diferent complexity of habitat must be a factor. Predator detection in open areas is other factor.

Perhaps this reference could help.

Callaway, E. 2016. When chickens go wild. Nature 529: 270-273.

Invertebrates are dominant species in primary tropical rainforests, where their abundance and diversity contributes to the functioning and resilience of these globally important ecosystems. However, more than one-third of tropical forests have been logged, with dramatic impacts on rainforest biodiversity that may disrupt key ecosystem processes. the contribution of invertebrates to three ecosystem processes operating at three trophic levels (litter decomposition, seed predation and removal, and invertebrate predation) is reduced by up to one-half following logging.

These changes are associated with decreased abundance of key functional groups of termites, ants, beetles and earthworms, and an increase in the abundance of small mammals, amphibians and insectivorous birds in logged relative to primary forest. results suggest that ecosystem processes themselves have considerable resilience to logging, but the consistent decline of invertebrate functional importance is indicative of a human-induced shift in how these ecological processes operate in tropical rainforest.

Diversity of Soil Fauna and Ecosystem Function :http://www.colby.edu/biology/BI131/Lab/Lavelle%201996.pdf

The Tropical Rain Forest:http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/rainforest/rainforest.html

Thank you dear Marzia for the interest you gave to my question.

Kind reguards.

Hi Kishore, 

For lecture notes I suggest starting on this site:

Chapter 11, which discusses wave drag and Eliassen-Palm flux, is probably what your looking for and at the end of the document there is a list of ten or so references, which are probably of interest. The link to the Chapter 11 pdf is below:

The site appears to be owned by Aarnout van Delden from Utrecht University, Netherlands. 

In terms of plotting EP flux vectors I'd suggest start by looking here:

which points to the links below for further advice on calculating and plotting EP flux divergence. 

There is also a reference to: 

Edmon, H.J., B.J. Hoskins, and M.E. McIntyre,1980:

Eliassen-Palm cross sections for the troposphere.

J. Atmos. Sci., 37:2600-2616

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(1980)037<2600:EPCSFT>2.0.CO;2

Hope that's of some help, 

Andrew

Thank you Sunit, Fanz and Marco for your contributions, you´ve been very nice!

The photos were taken in Santo Domingo (Ecuador), in a tropical botanic garden.

Thanks Marco for the Naturalist page, I´ve already register so I´m looking forward i can identify some more plants this way.

Francisco.

Although not particularly listed as one of your areas of interest, a large research focus now in Central (and South) America is regarding habitat use by Neotropical migratory birds that breed further north in the US and Canada.  This is of particular interest regarding migrants whose populations continue to decline such as the Golden-cheeked Warbler, Golden-winged Warbler, and Canada Warbler.  However, in general, there is a definite paucity of information regarding what habitat(s) that migrants use during the wintering period.  For some examples, see links below.  

Hi Jose Alesandro,

I may be biased, but bats certainly represent an excellent answer to your question as they play active roles in seed dispersal, pollination and insect control, and the functional traits linked to such functions are well studied. Difficult to recommend specific papers - there is a wealth of information available - so the following are just a few suggestions but you may have a lot more from further literature search. 

I hope this helps, best

Danilo

This is another case of a new species of plant in Brazil discoverd by a scientis in Facebook :

Yes, indeed, apomixis has been seen as evolutionary non-promising, to say the least.

It was Darlington, far back in1939, who stated this for the first time (as far as I know). He was of the opinion that apomixis is...‘‘...an escape from sterility, but it is an escape in a blind alley of evolution.’’

See: Darlington CD. 1939. The evolution of genetic systems. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Among other authors, also Stebbins, in his classical contribution to biosystematics of plants was still of this opinion, see:  Stebbins (1950) Variation and evolution in plants. New York: Columbia Univ Press.

^{* Regulators of pH (acidity and alkalinity), including buffers, respiration, and kidney function}.

Felix -

Interesting study - I have done similar work that is closely related, and may change how you think about the problem (see attached).  Make sure you think through sampling and replication issues thoroughly in addition to traits: you need to have more than N=1 replicate of each forest type.

On your question, there is perhaps no "correct" list of traits, but certain traits are more closely linked to conservative vs. acquisitive growth strategies than others.  Your list includes some but not all of the Leaf Economics Spectrum traits (i.e., you have leaf N, leaf P, SLA, and leaf lifespan, but are missing photosynthetic capacity and leaf dark respiration).  I would argue that some measure of whole-plant light compensation point is the best direct measure of shade tolerance (and thus of conservative vs. acquisitive growth strategies), but this is also difficult to measure.  Along these lines crown-level leaf area index is very difficult to measure, and there are in fact very few data published on this in the literature.  It is much more feasible to measure canopy gap fraction, but even that is laborious (see second paper attached).

Vielen glück!

Indeed this issue deserves to be redrafted. Everything depends on the species according to whether nanophanérophyte, microphanérophytes, mesophanérophytes or megaphanérophyte.

There a lots of different ways to randomly distribute traps (also depending on trap size) for this purpose, which mostly work well. One important point to look at is which ecosystem you are working in. This should help to define trap size.

The plot size does not necessarily have to be the same. However, the number of traps you set in each plot should be equivalent to the surface area, i.e. you should have the same number of traps/surface area in all plots.

Hi Kevin,

Please see my review paper below on the topic and some other similar research papers that I published. Those contain some literature on the controlling factors of flowering (both intrinsic and extrinsic), their interactions, and empirical research findings (see those in my list of publications).

Kind regards,

Tuan

 I'm semi-retired so have the luxury of ignoring impact factors, but my younger colleagues don't have that choice because university administrators and other gatekeepers have become obsessed with supposedly "objective" indicators of "quality." It's perverse, unfair, and stupid, but it's reality.

I would strongly recommend a "quasi-wild" environment. Make an exclusion where you can know for sure you have the snakes, and yea, try to give them prey so you can record it or at least observe it. In the wild as they have already told you is really rewarding but it is also really difficult, especially with shy snakes such as corals. You can learn a lot from predation keeping snakes in captivity, and I guess you can watch them hunt as in the wild if your "terrarium" or exclusion is big enough and natural enough. I would suggest an enclosure (by fence) like an arena with natural vegetation and that you release the snake...(maybe after keeping it a little) and watch her do her thing... Good luck with that!

Thank you Tomasz,

A big help. Now to data mining.

Dan

I have this paper, however it is only a speculation on the sustainability of the commercial trade of pythons and not a direct measure of sustainability of wildlife harvest nor did it use any or some kind of harvest or production model to assess sustainability of wildlife harvests. I am interested in studies that have actually used harvest or production models to assess sustainability of wildlife harvest (hunting).

The patterns of diversity depends on what your focus is in the study of diversity. There are various levels of diversity study: habitat diversity, species diversity and genetic diversity. The determinants depend on what level you want to focus. If in a forest as an ecosystem, I guess you wanted to see the patterns of a community which generally use the index of diversity, index of dominance, index of evenness and the species distribution as measures of how diverse the ecosystem is. If so, you still need to look at habitat fragmentation, habitat quality and habitat preference of the key species in the forest. 

thank you very much for your suggestion

I'm not aware of much work directly quantifying the proportion of plants pollinated by bats versus other organisms (so a good question!). However, there is some work on how specialized Caribbean pollinators are, which might point towards which plants are more pollinated by bats versus birds.

The first step is DNA extraction , then  universal primers could be selected for fungi identification, according to different manuscript written in the field. then you can narrow your research and go ahead.

Regards

Dr. Abdigoudarzi

There are publications:

But you need to check what the antioxidant level is in this species

ITS LIFECYCLE IS OF 38 TO 42 DAYS...

I've come across this question a few times. It is challenging to measure such plants well when there are many stems of irregular sections fused together (we need to do this in tree growth studies, sometimes people will drill behind stems to allow a tape to pass, but that risks damaging the stems, many of us give up and accept a visual estimate).

For fruit you want to know about canopy dimensions (area). When stem diameter is harder to measure than the canopy, you should measure the canopy directly.

Canopy area is typically a near linear function of stem basal area (i.e. diameter squared, or sum of such diameters squared when there are multiple stems). There are various ways to measure canopy area (depending on need for precision and accuracy) but measuring canopy width is often relatively simple (can do it at multiple orientations, use optical devices etc. and assume an ellipse or more complex geometries). For some ideas look for Dawkins. Crown diameters: their relation to bole diameter in tropical forest trees Commonwealth Forestry Review, 42, 4 318-333 on Google Scholar and see who has cited it etc. and follow forward and you'll get some ideas.

If you can gather both stem diameter and canopy measures for at least some larger and smaller stems you can calibrate the relationship (i.e. allows you to estimate the diameter of the equivalent single stem for a given canopy ...). That allows you to check the shape of the relationship and potentially to combine mixed data (some canopy some diameter) so you can take whichever measurement is more practical in each case.

Hope that helps

I think the answer to the question depends partly on your objectives.

A 'flagship' species is one which we decide to nominate for attention because it will appeal to the public in a conservation campaign. Dipterocarps are often magnificant trees and have appeal for this reason. Nevertheless, conservation campaigns are more often built around mammals, which tend to have more public appeal than other taxa.

An 'umbrella' species is one which, if protected, will result in the protection of many other species too. Since dipterocarps provide the foundation for some tropical forest ecosystems, if we choose to protect one particular species, then it could have a more general effect, but if we select a species that is rare then the effect is quite limited because trees are immobile. Mammals and birds tend to be more effective as umbrellas because they can be rare, wide-ranging and dependent on a large area of habitat even when rare.

A 'keystone' species is one which has a much larger effect on the ecosystem in which it is found than its numbers or biomass would indicate. Trees are rarely 'keystone' simply because they are so massive and their ecological significance is generally due to their abundance.  For this reason, it is better to use the term 'foundation species' (rather than 'keystone species') for trees like dipterocarps, because they commonly form the base upon which tropical forest ecosystems are built.

In light of this, I think you could build an international conservation campaign around a rare dipterocarp species as a 'flagship', and make use of the argument that the species has the capacity to build the foundation of entire ecosystems which will be lost if the species itself is lost. In a sense, large trees are always umbrellas because they always have many other species associated with them due to the long periods of time over which they have been present in the places where they reside.  For these reasons, I think you could build a conservation campaign around the idea that ancient dipterocarps provide the irreplaceable foundation for unique ecosystems which are of global significance.

I remember seeing an old dipterocarp on a small Indonesian island. It was the only big tree on the island and was valued by the local community as a shade tree and for its inherent value due to its age. There were some young ones too, but I don't know whether the community had selected any for retention as a future replacement.

Hi Koushir,

As Nishith pointed out, a simple estimation of IVI could solve your problem since it involves abundance and also biomass, so, at the end you will rank the tree species according to their "volume" in your forest. Then, several options could work to make this more complex, depending on what do you want (or what do people in your location take care about this particular forest). the first thing i think are native (endemic) species, the most rare and also the most used; you seek for keystone species, but kestone species are, in certain way, circumpstantial, and could be justified from very different contexts

As source of fruits and flowers, some trees are the main support of nutritional resources for several species (particularly in summer), as well, structurally complex trees (taller and sinuous trunks for example), would provide microhabitats and support for more species (epifitic plants) A count of inter-specific interactions could help here, also the "volume of resource" in terms of flowers, nectar, fruitsetc...). this is particurarly important if there are animals (in some IUCN risk-category) that only fed certain tree resource.

Functional traits are also a way to characterize the variability of niches that are included in thelocal  tree-community, the idea is to conserve species from all the identifyed functional groups (nitrogen-fixers, pollinator refugee, gap-pioneers, ec...)

Finally, species with local antropogenic uses are important just for that, and they have the unique value that people already knows them and are prone to help in their conservation. A popular "good-feeling" with some tree species of the forest could be exploited "politically" for the managment and conservation of that ecosystem.

At the end, good keystone species are those that allows you to negotiate economic resources for conservation and management actions, in most cases the ecological value of the species talk by itself, but not always.

Manuel,

You may also want to look at the Manual of Fish Sclerochronology edited by Panfili et al. and published by Ifremer-IRD. While not specific only to microincrements, there is a wealth of information on aging fish in general using various hard parts. For more specifics on microstructure analysis, Secor et al.'s Otolith Removal and Preparation

for Microstructural Examination: A Users Manual (link below) and Stevenson and Campana's Otolith Microstructure Examination and Analysis (at the website suggested by Daniel) are great references. For my dissertation work I looked at both larval and juvenile otoliths of red snapper and utilized both methods mentioned by Ernst above. I will add one more caution to his comment about not preserving in formalin. If you are working with larval otoliths, make sure that the larvae are preserved in ethanol in concentrations of 80% or above. Ethanol below this concentration will also dissolve otoliths over time, as it is too acidic (Butler, 1992; in the Stevenson and Campana volume).

Functional diversity is a major component of ecosystem functioning (Hooper et al., 2005). All the functional characteristics or biological traits, therefore appear as an alternative approach to conventional descriptive analysis in ecology (Garcia, 2010). Functional traits are those that influence the properties of the ecosystem or species responses to environmental conditions (Hooper et al., 2005). The method of analysis through biological traits used to integrate the analysis of information on the distribution of species and their biological characteristics. Ultimately, this allows to assess the relationship between environmental variability and functional traits of benthic macrofauna.

A number of indices have been developed to evaluate in order to have a measure of functional diversity of habitats. All are based on the identification and consideration of biological traits. The number of indices proposed in the literature is already quite large: Functional Group Richness, Functional Attribute Diversity (Walker et al. 1999) Functional diversity (Petchey and Gaston 2002) Functional richness, functional evenness and functional divergence (Mason et al . 2005) Functional Regularity (Mouillot et al. 2005) ...

Petchey and Gaston (2002, 2006) proposed to calculate an index on an ultra-metric tree obtained from functional distances matrix functional traits between species. The index of functional diversity (FD) measures the dispersion of functional traits of communities. This is a transposition of phylogenetic diversity (as quadratic index Rao).

Thanks Dr. Bhattacharyyajee & Dr. Duttajee.

Salvador, we have had some success with infrared cameras to count deer and sandhill cranes. For the cranes, we used aerial photography and we think it was very accurate. For the deer, we took pictures from roadways which would have been less accurate, but still produced usable estimates of population densities.

Dear Sir,

Please ask IMTECH , Chandigad, India for maximum cultures of fungi.

All the best.

Possible techniques are the use of proteins such as rabbit immunoglobulin G which you can add to the food and detect later with ELISAs.

Hagler published a lot about this for parasitoids (also a review):

Another technique is the use of fluorescent dyes which was used e.g. for Tachinidae or here sandflies:

For the proteins digestion time is surely an issue you have to try out before, and for such dye powders the effect on the insects (and for all techniques surely the recapture rate but that's surely well known).

i think is a Stemadenia but the pic is not the best

Hi Azubuike, a most striking example is the introduction of Red Swamp Crayfish Procambarus clarkii to Lake Naivasha and other places in East Africa, first introduced to provide forage for introduced large-mouth bass, with devastating consequences for the aquatic vegetation and Tilapia fisheries, and subsequent collapse of the crayfish. The developing situation has been described in by David Harper et al. 2003 and by John Foster & David Harper 2007 in Francesca Gherardi's edited 'Biological Invaders in Inland Waters'. David Harper has written other papers about the situation. The latest crayfish problem has been the introduction of parthenogenetic Marbled Crayfish Procambarus fallax f. virginalis to Madagascar where they are expanding rapidly. References in my 2012 book 'Management of freshwater biodiversity - crayfish as bioindicators'. With the amazing biodiversity of West Africa, including indigenous river prawns, it's worth trying to keep Nigeria crayfish-free. Cheers, Julian

This one is a very deadly pest, it can kill the plants in days

Check related articles in International Journal of Phytoremediation

Hi Sonia, just some elaboration on what Madelon said, who made some very good points. Usually we measure what we call "soft" traits, i.e. some more or less easily measurable properties of the plants, that are thought to represent physiological responses to the environment. Given that the whole approach is based on the existence of niches, it seems to make sense to make a distinction between alpha and beta niche, where the beta niche is defined by environmental conditions that make up the habitat in which different species can coexist (i.e. environmental filtering) and the alpha niche is defined by the small scale variation in resource availability (like light and soil nutrients; i.e. limiting similarity).

However, given traits could be a response to either of the two opposing mechanisms, in which case it becomes really important what spatial scale (grain size) is being considered, as already mentioned by Madelon. So in response to your question, I would say that yes, it is possible that both mechanisms simultaneously act on a species even if the same trait is considered.

Another important thing to consider is how you are defining your species pool. If you just pool the species of your samples it is possible to detect trait convergence even if the process is competition.

A possible solution to this is to define your regional species pool not by pooling samples but by considering also species that can potentially live in the habitat but are not present in the samples (i.e. the dark diversity)

Hope this makes sense and is helpful.

I attached a chapter from the book mentioned above. It addresses post-dispersal seed fate but not so much your original question of fruiting trees as seed predation magnets. I can't think of any papers that address that directly but many papers relating to the Janzen-Connell model will be useful. Also, look for papers on 'contagious dispersal' by Kwit etal and Schupp et al.

TRIX is more popular and his highly recommended. Find attached publication on application of TRIX for coastal ecosystems.

Dear pandian,

First of all you have selected three types of reptiles such as lizard, skink and snake. All the three species differ in their micro-habitat preference. Thus there is no common method to assess the population. Thus you need to use combination of one or two methods. For the skink and lizard you can do the visual encounter survey during day time. You have to grid the entire area and select (500 sqm if possible or depend on your area size) random blocks, you have mentioned that your habitat is thorn forest, make sure that you will cover all the microhabitats.

In addition to that you can also use the pit fall trap for the lizard and skink. This will give you the comparitive estimate with previous method.

For the snake ( you need to do survey during day and night, as some of the snakes are active during night). For the survey you can cover the same area which you have selected for the day time survey.

Do not over sample a specific microhabitat which may over estimate your density.

In addition to that for each sighting of the species, record its microhabitat and define your each plot microhabitat this will give the occupancy of different species.

Best wishes for your survey.

Ashok

Good discussion. I think it is clearly evident that there are many factors contributing to differences in these patterns. Not only that, but the patterns themselves are not consistent between tropical and temperate streams - obviously resulting from these underlying influences. A well structured piece of research assessing this, whilst minimising confounding variables, would certainly be something of high interest. In fact, I am picturing a longitudinal study here in China encompassing many different climates and sub-climates. Food for thought anyway...

In the case of mosquitoes, carbon dioxide would be an essential ingredient in any trap method for nocturnal species while diurnal culicine species rely on visual queues. Anophelines are more likely to be attracted by UV sources than culicines, especially in conjunction with updraft suction traps but CO2 should improve your catch significantly. One possibility for the low yields you've experienced, apart from the excellent suggestions of others, is that forest mosquito species may be restricted to the tree canopy - this is certainly the case in Africa. However, you should still be able to trap some specimens at ground level. Otherwise, i would try near water courses where the tree canopy is low or in forest clearings. Forest species tend to be "container breeders", utilizing tree-holes, fruit husks and leaf axils. Perhaps you should try looking for larvae and pupae in such micro-habitats, in addition to trapping adults.

In general, culturable bacteria in soils can range between 1.00E+7 to 1.00E+9 cfu/g soil or even more. Culturable bacteria can be isolated using the ten fold serial dilution and spread plate method and a number of microbiological media (such as full stenght TSA (tryotic soy agar) or 1:10 diluted TSA or R2A agar). Actinomycets can be isolated using the same method as above and actinomycetes isolation agar (supplied by different brands). In my experience actinomycetes are usually 1 or two fold less abundant than total culturable bacteria. Isolation/counting methods for total culturable bacteria and actinomycetes can be found in:

Garau et al., Long term influence of red mud on As mobility and soil physico-chemical and microbial parameters in a polluted sub-acidic soil. Journal of Hazardous Materials 185: 1241-1248.

Pinna et al., Sorption behaviour of sulfamethazine on unamended and manure-amended soils and short-term impact on soil microbial community. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety 84: 234-242.