scholarly journals Globally distributed occurrences utilised in 200 spider species conservation profiles (Arachnida, Araneae)

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Cardoso ◽  
Vaughn Shirey ◽  
Sini Seppälä ◽  
Sergio Henriques ◽  
Michael Draney ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Species Conservation ◽  
Data Reporting ◽  
Spider Species ◽  
Threat Status ◽  
Global Threat ◽  
Online Sources ◽  
Globally Distributed ◽  
Coordinate Data ◽  
Occurrence Records

Data on 200 species of spiders were collected to assess the global threat status of the group worldwide. To supplement existing digital occurrence records from GBIF, a dataset of new occurrence records was compiled for all species using published literature or online sources, from which geographic coordinates were extracted or interpreted from locality description data. A total of 5,104 occurrence records were obtained, of which 2,378 were from literature or online sources other than GBIF. Of these, 2,308 had coordinate data. Reporting years ranged from 1834 to 2017. Most records were from North America and Europe, with Brazil, China, India and Australia also well represented.

scholarly journals The Fourth International Symposium on Ranaviruses: Summary of North American Herpetological Content and Points of Interest

2020 ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Lauren Ash ◽  
Rachel Marschang ◽  
Jolianne Rijks ◽  
Amanda Duffus
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
International Symposium ◽  
North American ◽  
Fourth International Symposium ◽  
Dna Viruses ◽  
The North ◽  
Double Stranded Dna ◽  
Points Of Interest ◽  
The Family ◽  
Globally Distributed

Ranaviruses are large double stranded DNA viruses from the family Iridoviridae. They are globally distributed and are currently known to affect fish, reptiles and amphibians. In North America, ranaviruses are also widely distributed, and cause frequent morbidity and mortality events in both wild and cultured populations. This is a synopsys of the North American content of the 4th International Symposium on Ranaviruses held in May 2017 in Budapest, Hungary.

Rubus zielinskii (Rosaceae), a new species from Poland

Phytotaxa ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 273 (3) ◽  
pp. 183 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATEUSZ MARIAN WOLANIN ◽  
MAGDALENA NATALIA WOLANIN ◽  
KRYSTYNA MUSIAŁ ◽  
IWONA KANIA ◽  
KRZYSZTOF OKLEJEWICZ
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Species Conservation ◽  
Forest Edges ◽  
Conservation Assessment ◽  
Forest Roads ◽  
Threat Status ◽  
A New Species

Rubus zielinskii M. M. Wolanin & M. N. Wolanin, a new species from south-east Poland is described and illustrated. Rubus zielinskii is a tetraploid (2n=28) belonging to the series Sprengeliani based on morphology. It is most similar to Rubus sprengelii from which it differs in the inflorescence, being leafy to the apex, the larger flowers, paler colour of the vegetative stem and straighter prickles. The species occurs mostly along forest roads, ditches and forest edges. A species conservation assessment for Rubus zielinskii determines its threat status to be Least Concern.

METALTELLA SIMONI (KEYSERLING, 1878) (AMAUROBIIDAE) NEW TO CANADA, AND RECORDS FOR TEGENARIA GIGANTEA CHAMBERLIN AND IVIE, 1935, (AGELENIDAE) IN ALBERTA AND BRITISH COLUMBIA (ARACHNIDA: ARANEIDA)

1992 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 419-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Leech ◽  
Marilyn Steiner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
British Columbia ◽  
North America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Southern Brazil ◽  
Coastal Regions ◽  
Spider Species ◽  
Apparent Distribution

Metaltella simoni (Keyserling, 1878), an amaurobiid spider species precinctive to Argentina and Uruguay, and probably southern Brazil, is well established in the southeastern coastal regions of the United States (Leech 1972: 107). It was brought to North America by commercial and trade activities, hence the apparent distribution disjunction. The first Nearctic record is 23–30 July 1944, from Harahan, Louisiana (Leech 1972: 107).

scholarly journals The effects of using different species conservation priority lists on the evaluation of habitat importance within Hungarian grasslands

2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
PÉTER BATÁRY ◽  
ANDRÁS BÁLDI ◽  
SAROLTA ERDŐS
Keyword(s):  
Conservation Status ◽  
Species Conservation ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Great Plain ◽  
Conservation Priority ◽  
Threat Status ◽  
Bern Convention ◽  
Conservation Values ◽  
Declining Species ◽  
Eastern European Countries

Many bird species of conservation importance inhabit the grasslands of the Hungarian Great Plain. Although extensive grazing management usually supports more bird species than intensive management, the conservation priority is to protect rare or declining species. Therefore, the conservation status of species must also be included in assessments of the value of different habitats. We used territory mapping to count birds in 21 extensively and intensively grazed field pairs on the Hungarian Great Plain, and subsequently adjusted site scores depending on which species appeared on various lists of priority taxa. We investigated differences in conservation scores of two global conservation lists (the Bonn Convention and another based on values of eight biological characteristics), two West Europe based lists (Bird Directive and CORINE), three continental lists (European Threat Status, SPEC and Bern Convention) and two Hungarian lists (protected species of Hungary and an alternative based on the specifics of Hungarian populations). Extensively managed fields had higher conservation values under seven of the nine priority lists: only the two West Europe based lists showed opposite trends in more than half the study areas. Since both West Europe based lists cover many central and eastern European countries, there is an urgent need to revise these lists, especially the Bird Directive list that gives serious legal responsibilities to countries.

scholarly journals Evidence-based guidelines for developing automated conservation assessment methods

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barnaby E. Walker ◽  
Tarciso C.C. Leão ◽  
Steven P. Bachman ◽  
Eve Lucas ◽  
Eimear Nic Lughadha
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Data Cleaning ◽  
Training Sample ◽  
Assessment Methods ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Automated Assessment ◽  
Threat Status ◽  
Taxonomic Groups ◽  
Evidence Based Guidelines ◽  
Occurrence Records

Assessing species’ risk of extinction is a vital first step in setting conservation priorities. However, assessment endeavours like the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species still have significant gaps in their coverage of some taxonomic groups. Automated assessment (AA) methods are gaining popularity to rapidly fill these gaps, taking advantage of improvements in computing and digitally available information. However, implicit choices made when developing and reporting automated assessment methods could prevent their successful adoption or, even worse, their predictions could lead to poor allocation of conservation resources.We systematically explored how the choice of data cleaning, taxonomic group, training sample, and automation method affected predicted threat status. We used occurrence records from GBIF to generate assessments for three distinct taxonomic groups using four different automated assessment methods. We measured each method’s performance and coverage after applying increasingly stringent cleaning to the input occurrence data. We used these results to build evidence-based guidelines for developing and reporting automated assessments.Automatically cleaned data from GBIF resulted in comparable performance to occurrence records cleaned manually by an expert. However, all types of data cleaning removed species and limited the coverage of automated assessments. This limitation was more severe for some groups of species than others. Overall, machine learning-based methods performed well on all taxonomic groups, even with minimal data cleaning.We recommend using a machine learning-based method on minimally cleaned data to get the best compromise between performance and species coverage. However, our results demonstrate that the optimal data cleaning, training sample, and automation method depends on the focal group of species. Therefore, we recommend evaluating new AA methods across multiple groups and providing additional context with extinction risk predictions for users to make informed decisions.

scholarly journals Exploring snake occurrence records: Spatial biases and marginal gains from accessible social media

PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e8059 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin M. Marshall ◽  
Colin T. Strine
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
North America ◽  
South America ◽  
Species Distribution ◽  
Species Distribution Models ◽  
Conservation Status ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Distribution Models ◽  
Occurrence Data ◽  
Occurrence Records

A species’ distribution provides fundamental information on: climatic niche, biogeography, and conservation status. Species distribution models often use occurrence records from biodiversity databases, subject to spatial and taxonomic biases. Deficiencies in occurrence data can lead to incomplete species distribution estimates. We can incorporate other data sources to supplement occurrence datasets. The general public is creating (via GPS-enabled cameras to photograph wildlife) incidental occurrence records that may present an opportunity to improve species distribution models. We investigated (1) occurrence data of a cryptic group of animals: non-marine snakes, in a biodiversity database (Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)) and determined (2) whether incidental occurrence records extracted from geo-tagged social media images (Flickr) could improve distribution models for 18 tropical snake species. We provide R code to search for and extract data from images using Flickr’s API. We show the biodiversity database’s 302,386 records disproportionately originate from North America, Europe and Oceania (250,063, 82.7%), with substantial gaps in tropical areas that host the highest snake diversity. North America, Europe and Oceania averaged several hundred records per species; whereas Asia, Africa and South America averaged less than 35 per species. Occurrence density showed similar patterns; Asia, Africa and South America have roughly ten-fold fewer records per 100 km2than other regions. Social media provided 44,687 potential records. However, including them in distribution models only marginally impacted niche estimations; niche overlap indices were consistently over 0.9. Similarly, we show negligible differences in Maxent model performance between models trained using GBIF-only and Flickr-supplemented datasets. Model performance appeared dependent on species, rather than number of occurrences or training dataset. We suggest that for tropical snakes, accessible social media currently fails to deliver appreciable benefits for estimating species distributions; but due to the variation between species and the rapid growth in social media data, may still be worth considering in future contexts.

A new wolf spider species in the genus Alopecosa Simon, 1885 (Araneae: Lycosidae) from Eastern Europe

Zootaxa ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 3484 (1) ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
ANTON A. NADOLNY ◽  
ALEXANDR V. PONOMAREV ◽  
KONSTANTIN V. DVADNENKO
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
North America ◽  
Type Species ◽  
Wolf Spider ◽  
Taxonomic Structure ◽  
Palaearctic Species ◽  
Spider Species ◽  
Western Kazakhstan ◽  
Species Groups ◽  
Year 2000

The wolf spider genus Alopecosa Simon, 1885, contains 160 named species (Platnick 2012) and the type species of the genus is A. fabrilis (Clerck, 1757), which is a Palaearctic species like most species in the genus (Platnick 2012). The taxonomic structure of the genus has been studied in two revisions; Lugetti & Tongiorgi (1969) divided 24 species of European Alopecosa into five species groups and Dondale & Redner (1979) divided seven species from North America into three groups. Many species currently in Alopecosa do not appear to be related to the type species; hence the genus is polyphyletic and should be divided into several genera (Marusik & Kovblyuk 2011). Faunistic revisions of Alopecosa have been produced for Italy (Lugetti & Tongiorgi 1969), Romania (Fuhn & Niculescu-Burlacu 1971), North America (Dondale & Redner 1979), China (Song et al. 1999) and Sweden (Almquist 2005). In the Ukraine and European Russia, 18 and 22 species have been reported, respectively (Mikhailov 1997, 2000). Twenty species of Alopecosa have been described since the year 2000 (Platnick 2012), including one from Central Europe (Czech Republic and Slovakia) (Buchar 2001), one from Greece (Buchar 2001), one from Southwestern Russia and six species from Western Kazakhstan (Ponomarev 2007, 2008, 2009).

scholarly journals Phyllostomid bats distribution and richness gradient in a subtropical Brazilian state

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. e20216160
Author(s):  
Carlos Henrique Russi ◽  
Fernando Carvalho ◽  
Sérgio Luiz Althoff
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
New World ◽  
Species Conservation ◽  
Santa Catarina ◽  
Serra Do Mar ◽  
Brazilian State ◽  
Bioclimatic Variables ◽  
Associated Species ◽  
Occurrence Records

Phyllostomid bats (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae) are key elements for the maintenance of New World forests, but little information on their distribution is available in some regions of Brazil. Here we use occurrence records and bioclimatic variables to model the distribution of phyllostomid bats in Santa Catarina, a subtropical Brazilian state. Estimates of geographic variation in species richness were then obtained by stacking the generated maps. Lastly, we tested how associated species richness is to ecoregions and Protected Areas. Our results suggest that the phyllostomid bats species richness is closely linked to the region’s climate gradient. Most species are restricted to the Serra do Mar ecoregion, where the temperature is high and varies less throughout the year. In contrast, the colder areas seem to house extremely simple communities, composed of a subset of the species present in the warmer areas. We found significant evidence that Protected Areas in Santa Catarina play an important role in the conservation of species, although there are still several places where species richness is high, but no Protected Area is available. The creation of new Protected Areas in these places can boost the species conservation, and, consequently, the ecological services provided by phyllostomid bats.

scholarly journals Species conservation profiles of spiders (Araneae) endemic to mainland Portugal

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasco Branco ◽  
Sergio Henriques ◽  
Carla Rego ◽  
Pedro Cardoso
Keyword(s):  
Threatened Species ◽  
Endemic Species ◽  
Sand Dunes ◽  
Species Conservation ◽  
Natura 2000 ◽  
Iucn Red List ◽  
Considerable Proportion ◽  
Confined Space ◽  
High Count ◽  
Spider Species

The Iberian Peninsula is a diverse region that contains several different bioclimatic areas within one confined space, leading to high biodiversity. Portugal distinguishes itself in this regard by having a high count of spider species (829) and a remarkable number of endemic spider species (42) for its size (approximately 88,890 km2). However, only one non-endemic species (Macrothele calpeiana) is currently protected by the Natura 2000 network and no endemic spider species (aside from Anapistula ataecina) has been assessed according to the IUCN Red List criteria. The objective of this paper is to assess all non-assessed endemic species (41) as well as M. calpeiana. The 43 assessed species belong to 15 families, the richest being Zodariidae, Dysderidae, Linyphiidae and Gnaphosidae. In general and despite the lack of information on more than half the species, general patterns and trends could be found. Only 18 species (including M. calpeiana and A. ataecina) had enough data to allow their EOO (extent of occurrence) and AOO (area of occurrence) to be quantified. Of these, we modelled the distribution of 14 epigean species, eight of which were found to be widespread. The remaining six fulfilled at least one of the criteria for threatened species. Four species are troglobiont, all of which meet the EOO and AOO thresholds for threatened species. The remaining 25 Portuguese endemics had no reliable information on their range. Only nine species out of the 43 are estimated to be in decline and 11 are stable, with the majority of species having no information on trends (23 species). Forest areas, sand dunes, shrublands and caves host the majority of species. As such, the threats to Portuguese endemics reflect the diversity of habitats they occupy. Urbanisation and climate change seem to be the most important threats to these species, although other factors are also important and represented across the data. A considerable proportion of the currently known Portuguese endemic species can be found in national protected areas, with higher prominence to the Serras de Aire e Candeeiros, Douro Internacional, Vale do Guadiana, Sudoeste Alentejano e Costa Vicentina and Arrábida Natural Parks. These correspond mostly to areas that have been particularly well sampled during the last two decades.

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