Good relationships at work: The effects of Leader–Member Exchange and Team–Member Exchange on psychological empowerment,emotional exhaustion,and depression

Emotional exhaustion and depression pose a threat to employees' psychological health. Social relationships at work are important potential buffers against these threats, but the corresponding psychological processes are still unclear. We propose that the subjective experience of high‐quality relationships with supervisors (i.e., Leader–Member Exchange [LMX]) is one of the protective factors against psychological health issues at work and that this effect is mediated by psychological empowerment. We tested these assumptions with two studies (one cross‐sectional and one time lagged) on diverse samples of employees from different organizations. The first study employed emotional exhaustion as the outcome measure; the second used depression. Results from both studies support the proposed process by showing that LMX positively affects empowerment, which negatively affects emotional exhaustion (Study 1) and depression (Study 2). Additionally, Study 2 also showed that Team–Member Exchange is as important as LMX for preventing psychological health issues among employees. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public perception of river fish biodiversity in four European countries

Public support for biodiversity conservation is shaped by people's values and their knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes toward the environment. We conducted the first multinational representative survey of the general public's perceptions of river fish biodiversity in France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. For the online survey, 1000 respondents per country were randomly selected from large panels following country-specific quotas set on age, gender, and educational level. Questions covered people's level of knowledge, beliefs, values, and attitudes toward river fish, environmental threats, and conservation measures. We found that the public had limited knowledge of freshwater fishes. Two non-native species, rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), were widely perceived as native, whereas native Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) was mostly classified as native in Scandinavia and largely as non-native in central Europe. These results suggest an extinction of experience paralleling the extirpation or decline of salmon stocks in countries such as Germany and France. Respondents thought pollution was the dominant threat to riverine fish biodiversity. In reality, habitat loss, dams, and the spread of non-native fishes are equally important. Despite limited biological knowledge, respondents from all countries held an overwhelmingly proecological worldview, supported conservation stocking, and appreciated native fishes, although only a minority interacted with them directly. Differences among the 4 countries related to several conservation issues. For example, threats to biodiversity stemming from aquaculture were perceived as more prevalent in Norway compared with the other 3 countries. Promoting fish conservation based on charismatic species and use values of fishes may work well in countries with a strong economic and cultural link to the freshwater environment, such as Norway. In countries where people rather abstractly care for nature, focusing conservation messaging on broader ecosystem traits and non-use values of fishes is likely to win more support.     

Stability of Hepatitis E Virus After Drying on Different Surfaces

Food and Environmental Virology - The hepatitis E virus (HEV) causes acute and chronic hepatitis in humans. The zoonotic HEV genotype 3 is mainly transmitted by consumption of contaminated food...     

Need for multiscale planning for conservation of urban bats

For over a century there have been continual efforts to incorporate nature into urban planning. These efforts (i.e., urban reconciliation) aim to manage and create habitats that support biodiversity within cities. Given that species select habitat at different spatial scales, understanding the scale at which urban species respond to their environment is critical to the success of urban reconciliation efforts. We assessed species–habitat relationships for common bat species at 50‐m, 500‐m, and 1 km spatial scales in the Chicago (U.S.A.) metropolitan area and predicted bat activity across the greater Chicago region. Habitat characteristics across all measured scales were important predictors of silver‐haired bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans) and eastern red bat (Lasiurus borealis) activity, and big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus) activity was significantly lower at urban sites relative to rural sites. Open vegetation had a negative effect on silver‐haired bat activity at the 50‐m scale but a positive effect at the 500‐m scale, indicating potential shifts in the relative importance of some habitat characteristics at different scales. These results demonstrate that localized effects may be constrained by broader spatial patterns. Our findings highlight the importance of considering scale in urban reconciliation efforts and our landscape predictions provide information that can help prioritize urban conservation work.     

Erratum to: Addressing future trade-offs between biodiversity and cropland expansion to improve food security

Potential trade-offs between providing sufficient food for a growing human population in the future and sustaining ecosystems and their services are driven by various biophysical and socio-economic parameters at different scales. In this study, we investigate these trade-offs by using a three-step interdisciplinary approach. We examine (1) how the expected global cropland expansion might affect food security in terms of agricultural production and prices, (2) where natural conditions are suitable for cropland expansion under changing climate conditions, and (3) whether this potential conversion to cropland would affect areas of high biodiversity value or conservation importance. Our results show that on the one hand, allowing the expansion of cropland generally results in an improved food security not only in regions where crop production rises, but also in net importing countries such as India and China. On the other hand, the estimated cropland expansion could take place in many highly biodiverse regions, pointing out the need for spatially detailed and context-specific assessments to understand the possible outcomes of different food security strategies. Our multidisciplinary approach is relevant with respect to the Sustainable Development Goals for implementing and enforcing sustainable pathways for increasing agricultural production, and ensuring food security while conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services.

     

Vocal masculinity is a robust dominance signal in men

Dominance assessment is important in mating competition across a variety of species, but little is known about how individuals’ own quality affects their assessment of potential rivals. We conducted two studies to test whether men’s own dominance affects their attentiveness to a putative dominance signal, vocal masculinity, when assessing competitors. Study I examined dominance ratings made by men in relation to their self-rated physical dominance. Study II examined dominance ratings made by men in relation to objective measures of their physical dominance, including size, strength, testosterone, and physical aggressiveness. Vocal masculinity strongly affected dominance ratings, but a man’s own dominance did not alter his attention to vocal masculinity when assessing dominance. However, men who rated themselves high on physical dominance rated the voices of other men lower on dominance and reported more sex partners (study I). Men with intermediate testosterone concentrations rated the voices of other men lower on dominance (study II). These results confirm the effect of vocal masculinity on dominance perceptions, provide further evidence that dominance is relevant to mating success, and shed new light on how men assess the dominance of rivals and potential allies. Our results suggest that attention to dominance signals may depend less on the observer’s own dominance in species with coalitional aggression, where individuals must assess others not only in relation to themselves but also in relation to each other. Among men, the effect of a deep, masculine voice on perceptions of dominance appears to be robust and unmediated by the formidability of the listener.     

Active pelagic migrations of the bivalve Macoma balthica are dangerous

The bivalve Macoma balthica migrates twice during the benthic part of its life cycle. During the spring migration (May-June), the newly settled spat (0-group) migrates to the nurseries in the high intertidal. Seven to nine months later, the bivalves migrate back to the low tidal flats and the subtidal (winter migration, 1-group). Both 0- and 1-group M. balthica use byssus threads for active pelagic migrations. As many M. balthica disappear during these migrations, we examined experimentally the importance of predation on 0- and 1-group M. balthica. Laboratory experiments using a circular aquarium determined predation rates on buried (no current) and drifting (current) 0- and 1-group M. balthica by several fish species (plaice, flounder, goby and whiting) and the shore crab. Under illuminated conditions, more M. balthica were consumed when migrating than when buried, whereas there was no difference between experiments in conditions of darkness. For the 0-group, predation rates on migrating and buried M. balthica in the dark were lower than in the light. The stomachs of pelagic fish in the Wadden Sea and Oosterschelde estuary did not contain M. balthica during winter migration. In the Wadden Sea, 1-group M. balthica primarily migrated at night. In conclusion, enhanced predation on drifting, as compared to buried, M. balthica may be the mechanism that explains enhanced mortality during migration in light, and may explain why M. balthica mainly migrates at night in the field. As we found no M. balthica in stomachs of pelagic fish, we do not know whether predation on byssus drifting M. balthica exists in the field. There are, however, some indications for fish predation on infaunal polychaetes during pelagic migrations.