Interdisciplinary Guidelines for Developing Effective Koala Conservation Policy

Abstract: Adequacy of the ongoing koala policy process and whether it can conserve koalas is currently in dispute. To address this issue, interdisciplinary guidelines are available to improve koala policy and management and to find consensus. These guidelines focus attention on five policy elements. The first three are rational, political, and moral perspectives on koala policy; the fourth the standpoint of a participant, and the fifth is knowledge integration for practical action. We discuss and illustrate these elements with koala case material. Rationality in policy is addressed through problem orientation, which requires participants to clarify goals, identify problems, and create alternatives in an iterative way. We examined the political dynamics—value clashes—in decision processes. A decision process ideally clarifies and secures common interests. We provide standards for each decision function, such as reliability, comprehensiveness, timeliness. Morality rests on basic premises that are used to justify policy positions. Clarification of the participant's standpoint addresses differing personalities, epistemologies, disciplines, and organizational and parochial biases. Integrating knowledge for practical policy action requires a conceptual framework that is up to the demands of the task. Together the five policy elements make up a logically comprehensive set of interrelated concepts for koala policy development, implementation, and appraisal. Many opportunities exist to use these guidelines skillfully in on-the-ground koala conservation efforts to improve koala policy outcomes.     

Spring phenological responses of marine and freshwater plankton to changing temperature and light conditions

Shifts in the timing and magnitude of the spring plankton bloom in response to climate change have been observed across a wide range of aquatic systems. We used meta-analysis to investigate phenological responses of marine and freshwater plankton communities in mesocosms subjected to experimental manipulations of temperature and light intensity. Systems differed with respect to the dominant mesozooplankton (copepods in seawater and daphnids in freshwater). Higher water temperatures advanced the bloom timing of most functional plankton groups in both marine and freshwater systems. In contrast to timing, responses of bloom magnitudes were more variable among taxa and systems and were influenced by light intensity and trophic interactions. Increased light levels increased the magnitude of the spring peaks of most phytoplankton taxa and of total phytoplankton biomass. Intensified size-selective grazing of copepods in warming scenarios affected phytoplankton size structure and lowered intermediate (20–200?μm)-sized phytoplankton in marine systems. In contrast, plankton peak magnitudes in freshwater systems were unaffected by temperature, but decreased at lower light intensities, suggesting that filter feeding daphnids are sensitive to changes in algal carrying capacity as mediated by light supply. Our analysis confirms the general shift toward earlier blooms at increased temperature in both marine and freshwater systems and supports predictions that effects of climate change on plankton production will vary among sites, depending on resource limitation and species composition.     

Mollusc communities in Bulgarian fens: predictive power of the environment,vegetation, and spatial structure in an isolated habitat

Mollusc communities of previously unexplored Bulgarian fens were studied in order to determine and generalise the patterns of species richness and composition along the mineral richness gradient. The aim was also to compare predictive values of the environment, vegetation and spatial structure. Altogether, 44 mollusc species were recorded at 40 treeless fen sites. Species richness varied from 0 to 18 species per site, and it was positively associated with the mineral gradient and negatively with altitude. However, the best predictor was obtained using plant species composition. All explanatory variables had higher effect on land snails than on the entire mollusc assemblage (including aquatic species). Species richness and abundance were significantly and positively correlated with the species composition turnover; the communities were highly nested, with poor sites having subsets of the fauna found in the richest. The main direction of mollusc species turnover was highly associated with that observed for vegetation, and the main gradient of plant species composition was able to explain nearly 20% of total variation in mollusc data. We found that spatial structure explained by far the highest proportion of independent variation, which reflected the high level of geographical isolation of Bulgarian fens and regional differences independent of any environmental variation. Our results demonstrate (1) the general role of mineral richness gradient for structuring mollusc communities in fens, (2) the pivotal indicator role of plant species composition in predicting species composition of mollusc communities, despite being trophically independent and (3) the effect of isolation and origins of the habitat on species composition: most species have wide geographical distributions within the habitat type, and geographical patterns within Bulgaria may have a stochastic element.     

Impact of windage on ocean surface Lagrangian coherent structures

Windage, the additional direct, wind-induced drift of material floating at the free surface of the ocean, plays a crucial role in the surface transport of biological and contaminant material. Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS) uncover the hidden organizing structures that underlie material transport by fluid flows. Despite numerous studies in which LCS ideas have been applied to ocean surface transport scenarios, such as oil spills, debris fields and biological material, there has been no consideration of the influence of windage on LCS. Here we investigate and demonstrate the impact of windage on ocean surface LCS via a case study of the ocean surrounding the UNESCO World Heritage Ningaloo coral reef coast in Western Australia. We demonstrate that the inclusion of windage is necessary when applying LCS to the study of surface transport of any floating material in the ocean.     

A survey of DNA methylation across social insect species, life stages, and castes reveals abundant and caste-associated methylation in a primitively social wasp

DNA methylation plays an important role in the epigenetic control of developmental and behavioral plasticity, with connections to the generation of striking phenotypic differences between castes (larger, reproductive queens and smaller, non-reproductive workers) in honeybees and ants. Here, we provide the first comparative investigation of caste- and life stage-associated DNA methylation in several species of bees and vespid wasps displaying different levels of social organization. Our results reveal moderate levels of DNA methylation in most bees and wasps, with no clear relationship to the level of sociality. Strikingly, primitively social Polistes dominula paper wasps show unusually high overall DNA methylation and caste-related differences in site-specific methylation. These results suggest DNA methylation may play a role in the regulation of behavioral and physiological differences in primitively social species with more flexible caste differences.     

Interactions of warming and altered nutrient load timing on the phenology of oxygen dynamics in Chesapeake Bay

The effects of nutrient loading on estuaries are well studied, given the multitude of negative water quality and ecosystem effects that have been attributed to excess nitrogen and phosphorus. A current gap in this knowledge involves the sensitivity of seasonal cycles of estuarine biogeochemical processes to direct (warming) and indirect influences (nutrient load timing) of climate change. We used a coupled hydrologic–biogeochemical model to investigate changes in the phenology of hypoxia and related biogeochemical processes in Chesapeake Bay under three different hydrologic regimes. Shifts to earlier nutrient load timing during idealized simulations reduced the overall annual hypoxic volume, resulting from discernable, but relatively small reductions in phytoplankton biomass and both sediment and water-column respiration. Simulated increases in water temperature caused an increase in spring/early summer hypoxic volume associated with elevated respiration rates, but an associated exhaustion of organic matter in the early summer caused a decrease in late summer/fall hypoxic volume due to lowered respiration. Warming effects on hypoxia were larger than nutrient timing effects in scenarios where warming was restricted to spring and when it was applied to all months of the year. These idealized simulations begin the process of understanding the potential impacts of future climatic changes in the seasonal timing of key biogeochemical processes associated with eutrophication.