Several social mammals, including elephants and some primates, whales and bats, live in multilevel societies that form temporary subgroups. Despite these fission–fusion dynamics, group members often maintain long-term bonds. However, it is unclear whether such individual links and the resulting stable social subunits continue to exist after a complete reorganisation of a society, e.g. following a population crash. Here, we employed a weighted network analysis on 7,109 individual roosting records collected over 4 years in a wild Bechstein’s bat colony. We show that, in response to a strong population decline, the colony’s two stable social subunits fused into a non-modular social network. Nevertheless, in the first year after the crash, long-term bonds were still detectable, suggesting that the bats remembered previous individual relationships. Our findings are important for understanding the flexibility of animal societies in the face of dramatic changes and for the conservation of social mammals with declining populations.
Characterization of the evolving yield loci and forming limit diagrams for sheet materials under biaxial loading is necessary for the development of accurate sheet metal forming process simulations. Biaxial tension testing has been shown to have significant advantages over the current computational and experimental methods for such material characterization; however, the few commercially available loading frames are far too large and expensive to be practical for most metal forming research laboratories. In this paper, the design of a practical servohydraulic biaxial loading frame is presented. The design, control, and operation of the loading frame are discussed in detail, and experimental data is provided to validate the effectiveness of the control system with respect to specimen center shifting. 相似文献
The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that shellfish can be used to detect enteric viruses in marine waters where they
are present at very low concentrations. Aqua-cultured mussels were placed in the sea just off the mouth of a drainage channel
affected by human and animal faecal contamination. Samples were taken from the channel, the sea and the mussels at intervals
over two 4-week periods. The samples were tested to verify the presence of both rotaviruses and E. coli. Rotaviruses were detected by Real Time-PCR, typed by multiplex PCR and subsequently sequenced. E. coli was enumerated in water matrices by a filtering method and in mussels by the MPN method. The presence of E. coli in the examined matrices demonstrates contamination of faecal origin throughout the studied environments. Rotaviruses were
recorded in channel waters, but not in sea water. In both experiments, rotaviruses were detected in mussels 21 and 28 days
after being placed in the sea water off the channel mouth. The use of mussels thus enabled the detection of rotaviruses in
waters where the high dilution rendered direct investigation impossible. This study indicates that mussels can be used in
marine virological surveillance programs. 相似文献
We assessed the economic suitability of 4 greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation options and one GHG offset option for an improvement
of the GHG balance of a representative Swiss suckler cow farm housing 35 Livestock units and cultivating 25 ha grassland.
GHG emissions per kilogram meat in the economic optimum differ between the production systems and range from 18 to 21.9 kg
CO2-eq./kg meat. Only GHG offset by agroforestry systems showed the potential to significantly reduce these emissions. Depending
on the production system agroforestry systems could reduce net GHG emissions by 66% to 7.3 kg CO2-eq./kg meat in the most intensive system and by 100% in the most extensive system. In this calculation a carbon sequestration
rate of 8 t CO2/ha/year was assumed. The potential of a combination of the addition of lipids to the diet, a cover of the slurry tank and
the application of nitrification inhibitors only had the potential to reduce GHG emissions by 12% thereby marginal abatement
costs are increasing much faster than for agroforestry systems. A reduction of the GHG emissions to 7.5 kg CO2-eq./kg meat—possible with agroforestry only—raised costs between 0.03 CHF/kg meat and 0.38 CHF/kg meat depending on the production
system and the state of the system before the reduction. If GHG emissions were reduced maximally average costs ranged between
0.37 CHF/kg meat, if agroforestry had the potential to reduce net GHG emissions to 0 kg CO2-eq., to 1.17 CHF/kg meat if also other options had to be applied. 相似文献
A new modeling effort exploring the opportunities, constraints, and interactions between mitigation and adaptation at regional scale is utilizing stakeholder engagement in an innovative approach to guide model development and demonstration, including uncertainty characterization, to effectively inform regional decision making. This project, the integrated Regional Earth System Model (iRESM), employs structured stakeholder interactions and literature reviews to identify the most relevant adaptation and mitigation alternatives and decision criteria for each regional application of the framework. The information is used to identify important model capabilities and to provide a focus for numerical experiments. This paper presents the stakeholder research results from the first iRESM pilot region. The pilot region includes the Great Lakes Basin in the Midwest portion of the United States as well as other contiguous states. This geographic area (14 states in total) permits cohesive modeling of hydrologic systems while also providing strong gradients in climate, demography, land cover/land use, and energy supply and demand. The results from the stakeholder research indicate that, for this region, iRESM should prioritize addressing adaptation alternatives in the water resources, urban infrastructure, and agriculture sectors, including water conservation, expanded water quality monitoring, altered reservoir releases, lowered water intakes, urban infrastructure upgrades, increased electric power reserves in urban areas, and land use management/crop selection changes. For mitigation in this region, the stakeholder research implies that iRESM should focus on policies affecting the penetration of renewable energy technologies, and the costs and effectiveness of energy efficiency, bioenergy production, wind energy, and carbon capture and sequestration. 相似文献
Time series analysis has been used to evaluate the mechanisms regulating population dynamics of mammals and insects, but has
been rarely applied to amphibian populations. In this study, the influence of endogenous (density-dependent) and exogenous
(density-independent) factors regulating population dynamics of the terrestrial plethodontid salamander Speleomantes strinatii was analysed by means of time series and multiple regression analyses. During the period 1993–2005, S. strinatii population abundance, estimated by a standardised temporary removal method, displayed relatively low fluctuations, and the
autocorrelation function (ACF) analysis showed that the time series had a noncyclic structure. The partial rate correlation
function (PRCF) indicated that a strong first-order negative feedback dominated the endogenous dynamics. Stepwise multiple
regression analysis showed that the only climatic factor influencing population growth rate was the minimum winter temperature.
Thus, at least during the study period, endogenous, density-dependent negative feedback was the main factor affecting the
growth rate of the salamander population, whereas stochastic environmental variables, such as temperature and rainfall, seemed
to play a minor role in regulation. These results stress the importance of considering both exogenous and endogenous factors
when analysing amphibian long-term population dynamics. 相似文献
The chronology, sedimentary history, and paleoecology of the Tarija Basin (Bolivia), one of the richest Pleistocene mammalian
sites in South America, are revised here based on a multidisciplinary study, including stratigraphy, sedimentology, geomorphology,
paleontology, isotope geochemistry, and 14C geochronology. Previous studies have indicated a Middle Pleistocene age for this classic locality. We have been able to
obtain a series of 14C dates encompassing all the fossil-bearing sequences previously studied in the Tarija Basin. The dated layers range in age
from about 44,000 to 21,000 radiocarbon years before present (BP), indicating that the Tarija fauna is much younger than previously
thought. Glacial advances correlated to marine isotopic stages (MIS) 4 and 2 (ca. 62 and 20 ka BP, respectively) are also
documented at the base and at the very top of the Tarija–Padcaya succession, respectively, indicating that the Bolivian Altiplano
was not dry but sustained an ice cap during the Last Glacial Maximum. The results of this multidisciplinary study enable us
to redefine the chronological limits of the Tarija sequence and of its faunal assemblage and to shift this paleontological,
paleoclimatological, and paleoecological framework to the time interval from MIS 4 to MIS 2. 相似文献