Are nest characters of importance when choosing a male in the fifteen-spined stickleback (Spinachia spinachia)?

Male fifteen-spined sticklebacks (Spinachia spinachia) build their nests by wrapping epiphytic algae around macroalgae and securing them with secretional threads. In this study, I show that female fifteen-spined stickleback prefer males which have built their nests above the surrounding vegetation. High-located nests are safer, because they are less likely to attract egg-predators such as shore crabs (Carcinus maenas). Thus, I found that shore crabs more rapidly find eggs in nests built close to the bottom than in nests well above the it. Moreover, male-male competition could be an additional explanation as to why males build nests high up. Thus, my field results suggest that the closer the males were to a neighbour, the higher they built. Larger males were also found to have larger territories but male size did not correlate with the height of the nest above the surrounding vegetation. Females showed no preference for nest size, regardless of the presence of egg-predators. However, they tended to choose nests that had no egg-predators in the vicinity over nests with egg-predators close by. Female choosiness for certain nest characters may provide one explanation for the evolution of male care in this species. Received: 29 December / 1999 Revised: 18 April 2000 / Accepted: 28 May 2000     

Comparative Analysis of Management Regimes and Medicinal Plant Trade Monitoring Mechanisms for American Ginseng and Goldenseal

Abstract: Two popular and profitable native North American medicinal plants, American ginseng (    Panax quinquefolius ) and goldenseal (   Hydrastis canadensis ), both of which are listed in Appendix 2 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), are monitored under disparate domestic strategies that are designed to satisfy CITES requirements. The P. quinquefolius program has benefited the species by encouraging U.S. states to enact laws to protect wild populations and regulate collection, and by establishing a transparent system under which harvest, commerce, and export can be monitored, evaluated, and controlled routinely. But certain programmatic constraints, such as insufficient funding and gaps in biological monitoring, undermine its effectiveness as a management strategy for the species. The joint industry and government H. canadensis initiative is intended to give commercial traders more responsibility in monitoring plant trade and the federal government access to information that may otherwise be difficult to obtain without the help of traders. I examined the structure, successes, and deficiencies of the P. quinquefolius program, promising features of the evolving H. canadensis program, Turkey's management of geophytes, and other sources of information from federal agencies that might contribute to more effective management of medicinal plants in the United States. Although the main goal of domestic monitoring programs for P. quinquefolius and H. canadensis is to implement their CITES listings, it is conceivable that similar programs could be established for non–CITES medicinal plants, thereby minimizing or replacing the need for CITES protection.     

Training Captive-Bred or Translocated Animals to Avoid Predators

Abstract: Animal reintroductions and translocations are potentially important interventions to save species from extinction, but most are unsuccessful. Mortality due to predation is a principal cause of failure. Animals that have been isolated from predators, either throughout their lifetime or over evolutionary time, may no longer express appropriate antipredator behavior. For this reason, conservation biologists are beginning to include antipredator training in pre-release preparation procedures. We describe the evolutionary and ontogenetic circumstances under which antipredator behavior may degenerate or be lost, and we use principles from learning theory to predict which elements can be enhanced or recovered by training. The empirical literature demonstrates that training can improve antipredator skills, but the effectiveness of such interventions is influenced by a number of constraints. We predict that it will be easier to teach animals to cope with predators if they have experienced ontogenetic isolation than if they have undergone evolutionary isolation. Similarly, animals should learn more easily if they have been evolutionarily isolated from some rather than all predators. Training to a novel predator may be more successful if a species has effective responses to similar predators. In contrast, it may be difficult to teach proper avoidance behavior, or to introduce specialized predator-specific responses, if appropriate motor patterns are not already present. We conclude that pre-release training has the potential to enhance the expression of preexisting antipredator behavior. Potential training techniques involve classical conditioning procedures in which animals learn that model predators are predictors of aversive events. However, wildlife managers should be aware that problems, such as the emergence of inappropriate responses, may arise during such training.     

Heavy Extinctions of Forest Avifauna in Singapore: Lessons for Biodiversity Conservation in Southeast Asia

Abstract: The consequences of rapid rainforest clearance on native avifauna are poorly understood. In Southeast Asia, Singapore, a newly developing country, has had 95% of its native lowland rainforest cleared. Most of the rainforest was lost in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. We compared avifauna checklists from 1923, 1949, and 1998 to determine the extent of extinctions between 1923 and 1998 in Singapore. Of 203 diurnal bird species, 65 were extirpated in Singapore in the past 75 years. Four of these species were nonforest- dependent species, whereas 61 (94%) were forest bird species dependent on the primary or old secondary forest to survive. Twenty-six forest bird species became extinct between 1923 and 1949, whereas 35 forest species disappeared after 1949. We compared the body lengths, feeding guilds, and vertical feeding zones between extinct and extant forest bird species to determine whether extinction patterns were dependent on these characteristics. Larger forest bird species went extinct between 1923 and 1949. Body sizes, however, did not affect the loss of forest bird species between 1949 and 1998. We observed high losses of insectivorous birds; the insectivore-carnivore and insectivore-granivore guilds lost> 80% of the species present in 1923. The highest losses were among birds that fed in the canopy. None of the forest bird species are currently common (>100 individuals/species) within Singapore. Our study shows that more than half the forest avifauna became locally extinct after extensive deforestation. Based on this fact, the countries within Southeast Asia should reconsider their heavy deforestation practices.     

Utility of North Atlantic Right Whale Museum Specimens for Assessing Changes in Genetic Diversity

Abstract: We examined six historical specimens of the endangered North Atlantic right whale ( Eubalaena glacialis ) using DNA isolated from documented baleen plates from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sequences from the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region from these samples were compared with those from a near-exhaustive survey (269 of approximately 320 individuals) of the remaining right whales in the western North Atlantic Ocean. Our results suggest that there has been only relatively modest change in maternal lineage diversity over the past century in the North Atlantic right whale population. Any significant reduction in genetic variation in the species most likely occurred prior to the late nineteenth century. One historical specimen was from the last documented female capable of propagating one of the maternal lineages in the population today; no females in the existing population have been found to carry this mtDNA haplotype. Analysis of the only specimens from the eastern North Atlantic right whale population ever to be examined revealed that eastern and western North Atlantic right whales may not have been genetically differentiated populations. Loss of gene diversity experienced by North Atlantic right whales over the last century has been modest, and the six decades of protection have been successful in maintaining much of the maternal lineage diversity that was present in the late nineteenth century.     

Conservation Genetics at the Species Boundary

Abstract: Conservation genetics has expanded its purview such that molecular techniques are now used routinely to prioritize populations for listing and protection and infer their historical relationships in addition to addressing more traditional questions of heterozygosity and inbreeding depression. Failure to specify whether molecular data are being used for diagnosis-related questions or for population viability questions, however, can lead either to misinterpretation of character data as adaptive information or to misinterpretation of frequency or distance data as diagnostic or historical information. Each of these misinterpretations will confound conservation programs. The character-based approach to delimiting phylogenetic species is both operationally and logically superior to "diagnostic" methods that involve distance- or frequency-based routines, which are unstable over time. Tree-based criteria for the diagnosis of conservation "units" are also inappropriate because they can depend on patterns inferred without reference to diagnostic characters. Intraspecific studies, conservation-related or otherwise, that adopt terminology and methods designed to infer nested hierarchic relationships confuse diagnosis with historical inferences by treating diagnoses as outcomes rather than as precursors to phylogeny reconstruction. A character-based diagnostic approach recognizes the analytical dichotomy between species hierarchies and population statistics and provides a framework for the understanding of each. No species concept, however, should be viewed as an absolute criterion for protecting populations, but as part of a framework from within which identification of protection and management goals can be achieved effectively and defensibly.     

Uncertainty in integrated coastal zone management

Uncertainty plays a major role in Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM). A large part of this uncertainty is connected to our lack of knowledge of the integrated functioning of the coastal system and to the increasing need to act in a pro-active way. Increasingly, coastal managers are forced to take decisions based on information which is surrounded by uncertainties. Different types of uncertainty can be identified and the role of uncertainty in decision making, scientific uncertainty and model uncertainty in ICZM is discussed. The issue of spatial variability, which is believed to be extremely important in ICZM and represents a primary source of complexity and uncertainty, is also briefly introduced. Some principles for complex model building are described as an approach to handle, in a balanced way, the available data, information, knowledge and experience. The practical method of sensitivity analysis is then introduced as a method for a posterior evaluation of uncertainty in simulation models. We conclude by emphasising the need for the definition of an analysis plan in order to handle model uncertainty in a balanced way during the decision making process.