Landscape Ecology - Anthropogenic disturbance alters animal movements. Large mammals require vast areas to meet their needs, and they encounter anthropogenic disturbances frequently during daily... 相似文献
Landscape Ecology - Landscape archaeology has a lot to offer to landscape ecology, being an interdisciplinary approach that emphasizes the study of long-term human–environment dynamics. We... 相似文献
Landscape Ecology - Landscape ecology early on developed the awareness that central objects of investigation are not stable over time and therefore the historical dimension must be included, or at... 相似文献
Conservation for the Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis), a federally endangered species in the United States of America, is typically focused on local maternity sites; however, the species is a regional migrant, interacting with the environment at multiple spatial scales. Hierarchical levels of management may be necessary, but we have limited knowledge of landscape-level ecology, distribution, and connectivity of suitable areas in complex landscapes.
Objectives
We sought to (1) identify factors influencing M. sodalis maternity colony distribution in a mosaic landscape, (2) map suitable maternity habitat, and (3) quantify connectivity importance of patches to direct conservation action.
Methods
Using 3 decades of occurrence data, we tested a priori, hypothesis-driven habitat suitability models. We mapped suitable areas and quantified connectivity importance of habitat patches with probabilistic habitat availability metrics.
Results
Factors improving landscape-scale suitability included limited agriculture, more forest cover, forest edge, proximity to medium-sized water bodies, lower elevations, and limited urban development. Areas closer to hibernacula and rivers were suitable. Binary maps showed that 30% of the study area was suitable for M. sodalis and 29% was important for connectivity. Most suitable patches were important for intra-patch connectivity and far fewer contributed to inter-patch connectivity.
Conclusions
While simple models may be effective for small, homogenous landscapes, complex models are needed to explain habitat suitability in large, mixed landscapes. Suitability modeling identified factors that made sites attractive as maternity areas. Connectivity analysis improved our understanding of important areas for bats and prioritized areas to target for restoration.
A 4-y-old, female mixed-breed dog was presented to the Ontario Veterinary College for further evaluation of multiple pulmonary and hepatic masses, intrathoracic lymphadenitis, and recent development of a pyogranulomatous pleural effusion. Along with other comprehensive tests, a thoracic lymph node biopsy was performed, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex infection was confirmed by real-time PCR. The dog’s condition declined post-operatively, and euthanasia was elected. Postmortem examination confirmed severe granulomatous pneumonia, hepatitis, intrathoracic and intraabdominal lymphadenitis, omentitis, and nephritis. Line-probe assays performed on samples collected postmortem confirmed the species as M. tuberculosis. 24-loci MIRU-VNTR genotyping, spoligotyping, and whole-genome sequencing revealed relations to known human isolates, but no epidemiologic link to these cases was investigated. Given the concern for potential human exposure during this animal’s disease course, a public health investigation was initiated; 45 individuals were tested for M. tuberculosis exposure, and no subsequent human infections related to this animal were identified. Our case highlights the need for more readily available, minimally invasive testing for the diagnosis of canine mycobacteriosis, and highlights the ability of canid species to act as potential contributors to the epidemiology of M. tuberculosis infections. 相似文献
Drought is the most important factor limiting rice yields in the rainfed areas of Asia. To overcome the problem, we developed a new strategy 'designed QTL pyramiding' to more efficiently develop drought tolerant (DT) rice cultivars. In the first phase of this strategy, we developed large numbers of introgression lines (ILs) in elite backgrounds using backcross (BC) breeding, each of which carries multiple genomic segments for improved DT from a known donor. Then, we genotyped all ILs with SSR markers to track the genomewide pattern of introgression in the DT ILs of 16 BC populations derived from crosses between 2 recipients (IR64 and Teqing) and four different donors. X^2 tests and linkage disequilibrium analyses of introgression in the DT ILs revealed significant frequency shifts at many loci across the genome and non-random associations at the multilocus level as a result of selection for DT in the ILs, which led us to the discovery of putative genetic networks underlying DT in the ILs. The networks each containing all DT loci detected in ILs from a BC population showed some interesting features. 相似文献
The modem crop scientist has a large amount of available nucleotide sequence information to identify genes of potential agronomic importance. Using reverse genetic approaches, specific genes can be disrupted, and hypotheses regarding gene function directly tested in vivo. Although a number of reverse genetic methods have been introduced, many are limited in application because they are organism-specific, expensive, transgenic, or only transiently disrupt gene function. However, traditional mutagenesis using chemical mutagens has been widely used as a forward genetics strategy to create many new crop plant varieties at relatively low cost. Mutagens such as ethyl methanesulphonate (EMS) cause stable point mutations and thus produce an allelic series of truncation and missense changes that can provide a range of phenotypes (Greene et al., 2003). TILLING (targeting induced local lesions IN genomes) is a high-throughput reverse genetic strategy that combines traditional mutagenesis and SNP discovery methods (Colbert et al., 2001; McCallum et al., 2000). To identify mutations, target regions of-l.5 kb are amplified with fluorescently labeled gene specific primers. Heteroduplexes are then formed between wild-type and mutant strands, mismatches are cleaved by incubation with a single-strand specific nuclease, 相似文献
Among the most important Mediterranean annual crops, durum wheat is widely grown in drought-prone areas. Therefore, improving water-use efficiency (WUE) of durum wheat represents a major breeding goal. IDu-WUE (Improving Durum wheat for Water Use Efficiency and yield stability through physiological and molecular approaches) is a collaborative project among public and private research centres in Italy, Spain and WANA (West Asia and North Africa) countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Syria and Lebanon) funded by the European Union aimed at investigating the genetic variation for WUE and yield stability in durum wheat grown in Mediterranean droughtprone areas. During the first year of the project, a number of morpho-physiological traits (e.g. early vigour, flowering time, leaf rolling, number of fertile tillers, etc.), WUE, WUE-related traits (e.g. carbon isotope discrimination, canopy temperature, chlorophyll fluorescence, etc.), yield and its components have been investigated in a RIL population (249 lines) and a collection of ca. 190 durum wheat accessions characterized by a high level of linkage disequilibrium (Maccaferri et al., 2005), 相似文献
Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is one of the most economically important diseases affecting the swine industry. The main objective of this study was to assess whether sow farm distance to slaughterhouses and meteorological variables were associated with PRRS outbreaks. This case-control study paired 104 sow farms with or without a reported PRRS outbreak (N = 208) during the same period. Data on the distance to the closest slaughterhouse, swine density, presence of an air filtration system, or a neighboring farm, and weather conditions were collected, and a multivariable conditional logistic regression model was created to investigate the association between variables of interest and the occurrence of a PRRS outbreak.Swine density, presence of an air filtration system, presence of a neighboring farm, and PRRS herd-level status before the outbreak were associated with the occurrence of PRRS outbreaks. Farms in areas with higher swine density and nearby swine farms had increased odds of reporting an outbreak compared to farms in low swine density areas and farms having no neighbors. Under the conditions of this study, none of the meteorological variables or the distance to the closest slaughterhouse were associated with occurrence of PRRS outbreaks. 相似文献