Nucella lapillus L. imposex levels after legislation prohibiting TBT antifoulants: temporal trends from 2003 to 2008 along the Portuguese coast

Nucella lapillus (dog whelk) imposex levels were assessed along the mainland Portuguese coast in 2006 and 2008 and were compared with available data from 2003 for the same area. Given that specimen size has been described as a factor inducing variation in some of the imposex assessment indices, and thus resulting in less reliable results, new monitoring and data analysis procedures are described and applied to study change of imposex levels from 2003 to 2008. A significant decline in imposex intensity was observed in the study area during the study period, and the Portuguese coast ecological status (under the terms defined by the OSPAR Commission) notably improved after 2003, confirming the effectiveness of the Regulation (EC) No. 782/2003 in reducing TBT pollution. Nevertheless, N. lapillus populations are still extensively affected by imposex, and fresh TBT inputs were detected in seawater throughout the coast in 2006. These recent inputs are attributed to vessels still carrying TBT antifoulants applied before 2003, as their presence in vessels was only forbidden in 2008. Considering that Regulation (EC) No. 782/2003 is an anticipation of the IMO global ban entered into force in September 2008, a worldwide-scale decrease in TBT pollution can be expected in the near future.     

Development of a Specific Anti-capsid Antibody- and Magnetic Bead-Based Immunoassay to Detect Human Norovirus Particles in Stool Samples and Spiked Mussels via Flow Cytometry

Food and Environmental Virology - Human noroviruses impose a considerable health burden globally. Here, a flow cytometry approach designed for their detection in biological waste and food samples...     

Active Biodegradable Film Based on Chitosan and Cenostigma Nordestinum' Extracts for Use in the Food Industry

Journal of Polymers and the Environment - Bioactive biodegradable films are emerging biomaterials in the food packaging field. This study aims to investigate the effect of different Cenostigma...     

Assessing the extinction risk of insular,understudied marine species

Hydrothermal vents are rare deep-sea oases that house faunal assemblages with a similar density of life as coral reefs. Only approximately 600 of these hotspots are known worldwide, most only one-third of a football field in size. With advancing development of the deep-sea mining industry, there is an urgent need to protect these unique, insular ecosystems and their specialist endemic faunas. We applied the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) Red List criteria to assess the extinction risk of vent-endemic molluscs with varying exposure to potential deep-sea mining. We assessed 31 species from three key areas under different regulatory frameworks in the Indian, West Pacific, and Southern Oceans. Three vent mollusc species were also examined as case studies of different threat contexts (protected or not from potential mining) to explore the interaction of local regulatory frameworks and IUCN Red List category assignment. We found that these assessments were robust even when there was some uncertainty in the total range of individual species, allowing assessment of species that have only recently been named and described. For vent-endemic species, regulatory changes to area-based management can have a greater impact on IUCN Red List assessment outcomes than incorporating additional data about species distributions. Our approach revealed the most useful IUCN Red List criteria for vent-endemic species: criteria B and D2. This approach, combining regulatory framework and distribution, has the potential to rapidly gauge assessment outcomes for species in insular systems worldwide.     

Climate adaptation of biodiversity conservation in managed forest landscapes

Conservation of biodiversity in managed forest landscapes needs to be complemented with new approaches given the threat from rapid climate change. Most frameworks for adaptation of biodiversity conservation to climate change include two major strategies. The first is the resistance strategy, which focuses on actions to increase the capacity of species and communities to resist change. The second is the transformation strategy and includes actions that ease the transformation of communities to a set of species that are well adapted to the novel environmental conditions. We suggest a number of concrete actions policy makers and managers can take. Under the resistance strategy, five tools are introduced, including: identifying and protecting forest climate refugia with cold-favored species; reducing the effects of drought by protecting the hydrological network; and actively removing competitors when they threaten cold-favored species. Under the transformation strategy, we suggest three tools, including: enhancing conditions for forest species favored by the new climate, but currently disfavored by forest management, by planting them at suitable sites outside their main range; and increasing connectivity across the landscape to enhance the expansion of warm-favored species to sites that have become suitable. Finally, we suggest applying a landscape perspective and simultaneously managing for both retreating and expanding species. The two different strategies (resistance and transformation) should be seen as complementary ways to maintain a rich biodiversity in future forest ecosystems.     

Pesticide toxicity towards microalgae increases with environmental mixture complexity

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Effect-directed analysis (EDA) aims at identifying the compound(s) responsible for toxicity in a complex environmental sample where several dozens of...     

Synthesis and application of graphene oxide as a nanoadsorbent to remove Cd (II) and Pb (II) from water: adsorption equilibrium,kinetics, and regeneration

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - In this work, graphene oxide (GO) was synthesized by the modified Hummers method. The nanomaterial was characterized by FTIR and Raman spectroscopy,...     

Energy-ecological efficiency of dual-fuel series plug-in hybrid electric vehicle considering WTW emissions

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - This paper discussed the possibility of replacing the internal combustion engine of the series plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) powered by...     

Molecular dating and biogeography of the neritic krill Nyctiphanes

The genus Nyctiphanes (Malacostraca, Euphausiacea) comprises four neritic species that display antitropical geographic distribution in the Pacific (N. simplex and N. australis) and Atlantic (N. couchii and N. capensis) Oceans. We studied the origin of this distribution applying methods for phylogenetic reconstruction and molecular dating of nodes using a Bayesian MCMC analysis and the DNA sequence information contained in mtDNA 16S rDNA and cytochrome oxidase (COI). We tested hypotheses of vicariance by contrasting the time estimates of cladogenesis with the onset of the major barriers to ocean circulation. It was estimated that Nyctiphanes originated in the Pacific Ocean during the Miocene, with a lower limit of 18 miilion years ago (Mya). An Atlantic–Pacific cladogenic event (95% HPD 3.2–9.6) took place after the closure of the Tethyan Sea, suggesting that dispersal occurred from the Indo-Pacific, most likely via southern Africa. Similarly, the antitropical distribution pattern observed in the eastern Atlantic Ocean likely resulted from recent Pliocene–Pleistocene (95% HPD 1.0–4.97) northward dispersal from the southern hemisphere. Our results imply that dispersal appears to have had a significant role to play in the evolution of this group. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.