Coastal setbacks for the Mediterranean: a challenge for ICZM

Coastal development along the Mediterranean coast needs to be tackled with an integrated approach, in order to safeguard people and properties from extreme events, maintain environmental flows and ecosystems functions, protect coastal landscapes and ensure public accessibility to the shore. The complexity of the Mediterranean countries legal and administrative framework and its morphological heterogeneity make the implementation of new the Protocol on ICZM provisions on coastal setbacks,—claiming for a 100 m wide buffer zone where construction is not allowed— a challenge for the success of the initiative. European countries and the European Commission are party to the protocol but the European legal framework lacks of specific provisions addressing the definition of coastal setbacks. Moreover, climate change, in terms of sea level rise and maritime climate, could play a major role in the future position of setback lines. While arbitrary setbacks should be put in place to halt short-term unwise coastal development, science can improve the identification of coastal setbacks by providing integrated methodologies to be implemented at the local level. The objective of this paper is to review concepts and practices in the use of coastal setbacks, in the context of the provisions of the ICZM protocol and taking into account new challenges posed by climate change. A stepwise route map is proposed as a base to identify coastal setbacks, applicable to the Mediterranean region and elsewhere, to be used as a base to improve arbitrary setback approaches.     

Coastal setbacks for the Mediterranean: a challenge for ICZM

Coastal development along the Mediterranean coast needs to be tackled with an integrated approach, in order to safeguard people and properties from extreme events, maintain environmental flows and ecosystems functions, protect coastal landscapes and ensure public accessibility to the shore. The complexity of the Mediterranean countries legal and administrative framework and its morphological heterogeneity make the implementation of new the Protocol on ICZM provisions on coastal setbacks,—claiming for a 100 m wide buffer zone where construction is not allowed— a challenge for the success of the initiative. European countries and the European Commission are party to the protocol but the European legal framework lacks of specific provisions addressing the definition of coastal setbacks. Moreover, climate change, in terms of sea level rise and maritime climate, could play a major role in the future position of setback lines. While arbitrary setbacks should be put in place to halt short-term unwise coastal development, science can improve the identification of coastal setbacks by providing integrated methodologies to be implemented at the local level. The objective of this paper is to review concepts and practices in the use of coastal setbacks, in the context of the provisions of the ICZM protocol and taking into account new challenges posed by climate change. A stepwise route map is proposed as a base to identify coastal setbacks, applicable to the Mediterranean region and elsewhere, to be used as a base to improve arbitrary setback approaches.     

Recognition of caste and mating status maintains monogyny in the ant Aphaenogaster senilis

In ants dispersing through colony fission, queens mate near their natal nest and found a new society with the help of workers. This allows potential future queens to challenge the mother queen’s reproductive monopoly. Conflicts might be resolved if the mated queen signals her presence and the workers control the developmental fate of the diploid larvae (whether they develop to worker or queen). In this study we sought to determine whether, in the fission-performing ant Aphaenogaster senilis, conflicts between queens for control of the colony are resolved by the resident queen signalling her mating status. Virgin queens were less effective than newly mated queens in inhibiting queen rearing. Moreover, potential challenger queens were recognized and heavily aggressed independent of mating status. Chemical analyses showed that mating status was associated with changes in cuticular hydrocarbon and poison gland composition, but not in Dufour’s gland composition. Cuticular dimethylalkanes were identified as potential constituents that signal both caste (present in queens only) and mating status (mated queens have higher amounts). We hypothesised that pheromone emission by virgin queens did not reach the threshold needed to fully inhibit larval development into queens but was sufficiently high to stimulate overt aggression by mated queens. These findings provide evidence for the complexity of chemical communication in social insects, in which a small number of signals may have a variety of effects, depending on the context.     

Metal accumulation in sediment,water, and freshwater fish in a Dam Lake

Metal concentrations were determined in water, sediment, and freshwater fish samples (Squalus cephalus, Barbus esocinus, and Barbus xanthopterus) collected from Karakaya Dam Lake, Turkey, to estimate the risk of human consumption and pollution. Metal concentrations differed between the species (p??Zn?=?Cu in water and Fe?>?Zn?>?Mn?>?Ni?>?Cu in sediment. In general, the accumulation order of elements in the tissues all of the species sampled were found as Fe?>?Zn?>?Se?>?Mn?>?Cu?>?Ni?>?Cd in muscle, Zn?>?Fe?>?Mn?>?Se?>?Cu?>?Ni?>?Cd in gills, Fe?>?Zn?>?Se?>?Mn?>?Cu?>?Ni?>?Cd in liver and gonad, and Zn?>?Fe?>?Cu?>?Mn?>?Se?>?Ni?>?Cd in kidney. It was concluded that the fish from the dam lake are not heavily burdened with metals, but they should be controlled periodically to avoid excessive intake of trace metals by humans, and to monitoring the pollution of aquatic environment.     

Natural resource use,income and dependence among San and Mier communities bordering Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park,southern Kalahari,South Africa

Contemporary strategies for natural resource management espouse the need to integrate local people and their livelihood needs into biodiversity conservation projects to achieve sustainable ‘development and ecological integrity’. Valuation of natural resource use provides empirical evidence and conceptual arguments of local people's dependence on these resources, which could be factored into biodiversity conservation planning. Based on household surveys and key informant interviews, this study looked at the contribution of dryland natural resources to the livelihoods of two culturally different but neighbouring communities, the San and Mier, bordering Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, South Africa. Overall, natural resources represented an important livelihood source for the San, contributing on an average 32% of total annual income, compared to 9% for the Mier. Fuelwood was the predominant contributor to natural resource incomes in both cases. Income quintile analysis showed that dependence on natural resources decreased moving to higher income groups for Mier households, but increased with income for San households. Well-off households still derived higher total income from natural resources; often from the more lucrative sources of such income, notably from fuelwood sales. Contextual factors such as culture and social institutions, among others, influenced access to, and consequently the use of, particular resources and the value of these to households. Sustainable natural resource management interventions should consider these disparities in patterns of natural resource dependence among different income groups.     

The archaeology of deforestation in south coastal Turkey

The Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project investigates landscape transformation as a component to its regional survey of ancient Rough Cilicia (south coastal Turkey opposite Cyprus). Rough Cilicia was celebrated during antiquity for pristine cedar forests that stood between 1500 and 1800 m in altitude along the slopes of the Taurus Mountains. Today along the front range of the Taurus Mountains this forest is completely denuded or otherwise replanted with recent growth in the past 80 years. We employ paleoenvironmental analysis of relic cedar forests in the Taurus Mountains to construct a timeline of anthropogenic disturbances associated with population growth over time and thereby assess the sustainability of ancient forestry practices. To obtain these data, the team recovers pollen and carbon samples from geomorphologic trenches excavated in the cedar zone, tree ring data from dendrochronological survey of the existing forest, and archaeological data from remains of ancient highland settlements. Preliminary results indicate that current perspectives about the timing of deforestation in this region are flawed and that the initial deforestation coincided with regional site abandonment and population decline at the end of antiquity.     

Fighting behaviour as a correlate of male mating success in black grouse Tetrao tetrix

Fighting is a fundamental determinant of male fitness in species where females prefer socially dominant males as mates or where dominants can prevent subordinates from mating. This in turn can lead to the evolution of honest inter- and intra-sexual cues of male dominance. Fighting as a behaviour comprises both fighting rate (number of fights per unit of time) and fighting performance (success in winning fights), but it is not always clear which of these components are important for female choice and how they link to signals of male quality. To quantify the relative importance of fighting as a cue for females, we recorded detailed behavioural data from male black grouse Tetrao tetrix at leks. We explored the relationship between phenotypic traits (body mass, eye comb size, tail (lyre) length and blue chroma colouration) and fighting performance and rates and how these were related to male mating success. In older males' pairwise fights, winners had lower blue chroma than losers, but there were no differences in other morphological traits. In yearlings, no morphological trait predicted success in pairwise contests. Both fighting rate and performance were positively related to the number of copulations acquired by a male; however, when controlled for lek centrality, fighting performance and not fighting rate was significantly related to mating success. Our results indicate that females may be using components of fighting behaviour as cues for mate choice.     

Incorporating temporally dynamic baselines in isotopic mixing models

Stable isotopes (particularly C and N) are widely used to make inferences regarding food web structure and the phenology of consumer diet shifts, applications that require accurate isotopic characterization of trophic resources to avoid biased inferences of feeding relationships. For example, most isotope mixing models require that endmembers be adequately represented by a single probability distribution; yet, there is mounting evidence that the isotopic composition of aquatic organisms often used as mixing model endmembers can change over periods of weeks to months. A review of the literature indicated that the delta13C values of five aquatic primary consumer taxa, commonly used as proxies of carbon production sources (i.e., trophic baselines), express seasonally dynamic cycles characterized by an oscillation between summer maxima and winter minima. Based on these results, we built a dynamic baseline mixing model that allows a growing consumer to track temporal gradients in the isotopic baselines of a food web. Simulations showed that the ability of a consumer to maintain or approach isotopic equilibrium with its diet over a realistic growth season was strongly affected by both the rate of change of the isotopic baseline and equilibration rate of the consumer. In an empirical application, mixing models of varying complexity were used to estimate the relative contribution of benthic vs. pelagic carbon sources to nine species of juvenile fish in a fluvial lake of the St. Lawrence River system (Québec, Canada). Estimates of p (proportion of carbon derived from benthic sources) derived from a static mixing model indicated broad interspecific variation in trophic niche, ranging from complete benthivory to > 95% reliance on pelagic food webs. Output from the more realistic dynamic baseline mixing model increased estimated benthivory by an average of 36% among species. Taken together, our results demonstrate that failing to identify dynamic baselines when present, and (or) matching consumers with baseline taxa that possess substantially different equilibration rates can seriously bias interpretation of stable isotope data. Additionally, by providing a formalized framework that allows both resources and consumers to shift their isotopic value through time, our model demonstrates a feasible approach for incorporating temporally dynamic isotope conditions in trophic studies of higher consumers.