Application of the Red List Index for conservation assessment of Spanish vascular plants

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List Index (RLI) is used to measure trends in extinction risk of species over time. The development of 2 red lists for Spanish vascular flora during the past decade allowed us to apply the IUCN RLI to vascular plants in an area belonging to a global biodiversity hotspot. We used the Spanish Red Lists from 2000 and 2010 to assess changes in level of threat at a national scale and at the subnational scales of Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, and peninsular Spain. We assigned retrospective IUCN categories of threat to 98 species included in the Spanish Red List of 2010 but absent in the Spanish Red List of 2000. In addition, we tested the effect of different random and taxonomic and spatial Spanish samples on the overall RLI value. From 2000 to 2010, the IUCN categories of 768 species changed (10% of Spanish flora), mainly due to improved knowledge (63%), modifications in IUCN criteria (14%), and changes in threat status (12%). All measured national and subnational RLI values decreased during this period, indicating a general decline in the conservation status of the Spanish vascular flora. The Canarian RLI value (0.84) was the lowest, although the fastest deterioration in conservation status occurred on peninsular Spain (from 0.93 in 2000 to 0.92 in 2010). The RLI values based on subsamples of the Spanish Red List were not representative of RLI values for the entire country, which would discourage the use of small areas or small taxonomic samples to assess general trends in the endangerment of national biotas. The role of the RLI in monitoring of changes in biodiversity at the global and regional scales needs further reassessment because additional areas and taxa are necessary to determine whether the index is sufficiently sensitive for use in assessing temporal changes in species’ risk of extinction.     

The role of agri‐environment schemes in conservation and environmental management

Over half of the European landscape is under agricultural management and has been for millennia. Many species and ecosystems of conservation concern in Europe depend on agricultural management and are showing ongoing declines. Agri‐environment schemes (AES) are designed partly to address this. They are a major source of nature conservation funding within the European Union (EU) and the highest conservation expenditure in Europe. We reviewed the structure of current AES across Europe. Since a 2003 review questioned the overall effectiveness of AES for biodiversity, there has been a plethora of case studies and meta‐analyses examining their effectiveness. Most syntheses demonstrate general increases in farmland biodiversity in response to AES, with the size of the effect depending on the structure and management of the surrounding landscape. This is important in the light of successive EU enlargement and ongoing reforms of AES. We examined the change in effect size over time by merging the data sets of 3 recent meta‐analyses and found that schemes implemented after revision of the EU's agri‐environmental programs in 2007 were not more effective than schemes implemented before revision. Furthermore, schemes aimed at areas out of production (such as field margins and hedgerows) are more effective at enhancing species richness than those aimed at productive areas (such as arable crops or grasslands). Outstanding research questions include whether AES enhance ecosystem services, whether they are more effective in agriculturally marginal areas than in intensively farmed areas, whether they are more or less cost‐effective for farmland biodiversity than protected areas, and how much their effectiveness is influenced by farmer training and advice? The general lesson from the European experience is that AES can be effective for conserving wildlife on farmland, but they are expensive and need to be carefully designed and targeted.     

Use of genetic,climatic, and microbiological data to inform reintroduction of a regionally extinct butterfly

Species reintroductions are increasingly used as means of mitigating biodiversity loss. Besides habitat quality at the site targeted for reintroduction, the choice of source population can be critical for success. The butterfly Melanargia russiae (Esper´s marbled white) was extirpated from Hungary over 100 years ago, and a reintroduction program has recently been approved. We used museum specimens of this butterfly, mitochondrial DNA data (mtDNA), endosymbiont screening, and climatic‐similarity analyses to determine which extant populations should be used for its reintroduction. The species displayed 2 main mtDNA lineages across its range: 1 restricted to Iberia and southern France (Iberian lineage) and another found throughout the rest of its range (Eurasian lineage). These 2 lineages possessed highly divergent wsp alleles of the bacterial endosymbiont Wolbachia. The century‐old Hungarian specimens represented an endemic haplotype belonging to the Eurasian lineage, differing by one mutation from the Balkan and eastern European populations. The Hungarian populations of M. russiae occurred in areas with a colder and drier climate relative to most sites with extant known populations. Our results suggest the populations used for reintroduction to Hungary should belong to the Eurasian lineage, preferably from eastern Ukraine (genetically close and living in areas with the highest climatic similarity). Materials stored in museum collections can provide unique opportunities to document historical genetic diversity and help direct conservation.     

Expert system application for prioritizing preventive actions for shift work: shift expert

Introduction. Shift patterns, work hours, work arrangements and worker motivations have increasingly become key factors for job performance. The main objective of this article is to design an expert system that identifies the negative effects of shift work and prioritizes mitigation efforts according to their importance in preventing these negative effects. The proposed expert system will be referred to as the shift expert. Methods. A thorough literature review is conducted to determine the effects of shift work on workers. Our work indicates that shift work is linked to demographic variables, sleepiness and fatigue, health and well-being, and social and domestic conditions. These parameters constitute the sections of a questionnaire designed to focus on 26 important issues related to shift work. The shift expert is then constructed to provide prevention advice at the individual and organizational levels, and it prioritizes this advice using a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process model, which considers comparison matrices provided by users during the prioritization process. An empirical study of 61 workers working on three rotating shifts is performed. After administering the questionnaires, the collected data are analyzed statistically, and then the shift expert produces individual and organizational recommendations for these workers.     

Analysis of bicycle crashes in Sweden involving injuries with high risk of health loss

Objective: The objectives of the present article were to (a) describe the main characteristics of bicycle crashes with regard to the road environment, crash opponent, cyclist, and crash dynamics; (b) compare individuals who describe their health after the crash as declined with those who describe their health as not affected; and (c) compare the number of injured cyclists who describe their health as declined after the crash with the predicted number of permanent medical impairments within the same population.

Methods: A sample of individuals with specific injury diagnoses was drawn from the Swedish Traffic Accident Data Acquisition (STRADA) database (n?=?2,678). A survey form was used to collect additional information about the crash and the health-related outcomes. The predicted number of impaired individuals was calculated by accumulating the risk for all individuals to sustain at least a 1% permanent medical impairment, based on the injured body region and injury severity.

Results: Nine hundred forty-seven individuals (36%) responded, of whom 44% reported declined health after the crash. The majority (68%) were injured in single bicycle crashes, 17% in collisions with motor vehicles, and 11% in collisions with another cyclist or pedestrian. Most single bicycle crashes related to loss of control (46%), mainly due to skidding on winter surface conditions (14%), followed by loss of control during braking (6%). There was no significant difference in crash distribution comparing all crashes with crashes among people with declined health. The predicted number of impaired individuals (n?=?427) corresponded well with the number of individuals self-reporting declined health (n?=?421).

Conclusions: The types of crashes leading to health loss do not substantially differ from those that do not result in health loss. Two thirds of injuries leading to health loss occur in single bicycle crashes. In addition to separating cyclists from motorized traffic, other preventive strategies are needed.