Higher soybean production using honeybee and wild pollinators, a sustainable alternative to pesticides and autopollination

This is the first report showing that using honeybee (Apis mellifera) and wild pollinators complementary pollination can enhance soybean productivity (Glycine max). Current industrial production of soybean involves autopollination and high loads of pesticides. Therefore, growers have neglected possible biotic pollination despite suggestions that soybean benefit from insect pollinators. Reports advocating possible biotic pollination are based on experiments where bees are caged with flowering plants and the absence of pesticides, thus not in field conditions. Therefore, here we compared in field conditions soybean yield produced (1) independently of biotic pollinators, (2) with wild pollinators and (3) with honeybee colonies. Results showed an increase of +6.34 % of soybean yield in areas where wild pollinators had free access to flowers. The introduction of honeybee colonies further raised the yield of +18.09 %. Our findings therefore show that, though soybean is autogamous, allowing pollination by wild pollinators leads to higher yields. Moreover, adding honeybee mitigates pollination deficits and improves yield compared to current practices.     

Natal dispersal in two mice species with contrasting social systems

We compared the natal dispersal behaviour of two mice species under laboratory conditions. Natal dispersal is a movement of an animal from its birthplace to its breeding area. This behaviour is known to be influenced by the mating system. In polygamous species, males are more likely to disperse, while in most of the monogamous species, both sexes disperse. Our subjects, the house mouse (Mus musculus) and the mound-building mouse (Mus spicilegus) are two sympatric species of the genus Mus. Both are native in Hungary, but they differ in their habitat type mating system and overwintering strategy. The house mouse is a polygynous species and adapted to human environment, known for mature and reproduce early. On the contrary, the mound-building mice are monogamous, and they inhabit extensively used agricultural fields, where they spend the unfavourable winter period in nest chambers under mounds, which they construct from soil and plant material. Successful overwintering for this species demands delayed maturity and reduced dispersion during the winter. Our results showed that the natal dispersal of these two species differ; both sexes of the mound-building mice dispersed later than the house mice, where a difference between sexes also occurs; house mice males dispersed earlier than females. The mound-building mice showed no sexual dimorphism in this behaviour.     

Worker drift and egg dumping by queens in wild Bombus terrestris colonies

Wild bumblebee colonies are hard to find and often inaccessible, so there have been few studies of the genetic structure of bumblebees within natural colonies, and hence, it is not clear how frequently events such as worker reproduction, worker drift and queen usurpation take place. This study aimed to quantify the occurrence of natal-worker reproduction, worker drift and drifter reproduction within 14 wild colonies of Bombus terrestris in Central Scotland. Four unlinked microsatellites were used to identify patterns of relatedness of the colonies’ adults and broods. In colonies with queens (queenright colonies), worker reproduction accounted for just 0.83 % of males, increasing to 12.11 % in queenless colonies. Four colonies contained a total of six workers which were not daughters of the queen, and were assumed to be drifters, and four male offspring of drifters. Drifting is clearly not common and results in few drifter offspring overall, although drifters produced approximately seven times more offspring per capita than workers that remained in their natal colony. Unexpectedly, two colonies contained clusters of sister workers and juvenile offspring that were not sisters to the rest of the adults or brood found in the colonies, demonstrating probable egg dumping by queens. A third colony contained a queen which was not a sister or daughter to the other bees in the colony. Although usurping of bumblebee colonies by queens in early season is well documented, this appears to be the first record of egg dumping, and it remains unclear whether it is being carried out by old queens or newly mated young queens.     

Deliberation and ecological democracy: from citizen to global system

ABSTRACT

Ecological democracy confronts a challenge of not only reconciling democracy and ecology, but doing so where human activities and their environmental consequences are increasingly global. Deliberative scholars dealing with these issues emphasise reflexive governance, involving the contestation of discourses, as part of the solution, mostly aimed at high-level institutions and intergovernmental cooperation. However, even at this level democracy demands responsiveness to the citizen. To this end, the paper explores citizen-level deliberation to inform possibilities for ecological democracy writ large, via a growing literature on deliberative governance and polycentrism. Different system levels are connected via ecologically reflexive capacity and the discursive conditions under which it is enhanced, including in small-scale minipublics. This understanding informs mechanisms for ‘scaling up’ deliberative quality to the wider public sphere via regulating the manipulation of public discourse. Minipublic deliberation, properly harnessed, can serve to decontaminate public debate of anti-reflexive strategic arguments and reshape public discourse. Such anti-reflexive strategies seek to shape the public will, specifically by de-emphasising ecology via intuitive arguments that short-cut public reasoning. Acting as discursive regulatory trustees, minipublics can improve reflexivity in the wider system via a nested polycentric approach that discursively connects citizens’ deliberation to the global system both horizontally and vertically.     

A convective wind resource model for Solar Vortex power generation

ABSTRACT

Climate change has increased the need for clean, nonpolluting energy sources to decrease dependence on fossil fuels. Alternative energy sources, mainly solar and horizontal wind, have been the primary focus for producing clean energy. New technologies are being developed, such as the Solar Vortex (SoV), which was developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and relies on a vertical wind resource to generate power. The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) has resource models representing solar and horizontal wind resources across the 48 United States. This research developed a vertical wind resource model that is comparable in resolution to NREL’s solar and horizontal wind resource models and uses the model for estimating power output for the SoV. This model complements NREL’s existing resource models and supports the deployment of an additional clean energy generation technology. The model was applied to Mesa, Arizona to find feasible sites for a small-scale vertical wind farm.     

Oxidative and genotoxic effects of bisphenol A on primary gill cell culture of Lake Van Fish (Alburnus tarichi Güldenstädt, 1814)

Lake Van is the largest lake in Turkey. The lake limits lifespan due to its high pH and brackish water. For this reason, only a single species of fish (Van Fish) is living in the lake that has been adapted to these conditions. In the present study, we investigated the total oxidant status (TOS), total antioxidant status (TAS), malondialdehyde (MDA) level and DNA damage effect of bisphenol A (BPA) (10^?7, 10^?6 and 10^?5?M) on primary gill cell culture of Van Fish for 24 and 48?h of incubation periods. TAS levels were not changed when compared to those of the control group, but TOS levels were decreased in both 24 and 48?h. The MDA level increased only at the highest concentration (10^?5) at the end of 12 and 24?h (p?.05). DNA damage increased only at the 10^?5?M concentration after 48?h. At the end of the experiment, BPA exposure caused lipid peroxidation and genotoxic effect. These results indicate that high levels of BPA exposure induced oxidative stress and DNA damage by time- and concentration-dependent fashion in the gill cell culture of Van Fish. Gill cell culture is a useful model for the rapid identification of the harmful effects of chemicals in the aquatic environment.     

Countering resistance to protected‐area extension

The establishment of protected areas is a critical strategy for conserving biodiversity. Key policy directives like the Aichi targets seek to expand protected areas to 17% of Earth's land surface, with calls by some conservation biologists for much more. However, in places such as the United States, Germany, and Australia, attempts to increase protected areas are meeting strong resistance from communities, industry groups, and governments. We examined case studies of such resistance in Victoria, Australia, Bavaria, Germany, and Florida, United States. We considered 4 ways to tackle this problem. First, broaden the case for protected areas beyond nature conservation to include economic, human health, and other benefits, and translate these into a persuasive business case for protected areas. Second, better communicate the conservation values of protected areas. This should include highlighting how many species, communities, and ecosystems have been conserved by protected areas and the counterfactual (i.e., what would have been lost without protected area establishment). Third, consider zoning of activities to ensure the maintenance of effective management. Finally, remind citizens to think about conservation when they vote, including holding politicians accountable for their environmental promises. Without tackling resistance to expanding the protected estate, it will be impossible to reach conservation targets, and this will undermine attempts to stem the global extinction crisis.     

Bayesian estimation of species relative abundances and habitat preferences using opportunistic data

We develop a new statistical procedure to monitor relative species abundances and their respective preferences for different habitat types, using opportunistic data. Following Giraud et al. (Biometrics 72(2):649–658, 2015), we combine the opportunistic data with some standardized data in order to correct the bias inherent to the opportunistic data collection. Species observations are modeled by Poisson distributions whose parameters quantify species abundances and habitat preferences, and are estimated using Bayesian computations. Our main contributions are (i) to tackle the bias induced by habitat selection behaviors, (ii) to handle data where the habitat type associated to each observation is unknown, (iii) to estimate probabilities of selection of habitat for the species. As an illustration, we estimate common bird species habitat preferences and abundances in the region of Aquitaine (France).     

Historical trends of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) recorded in sediments across the Tibetan Plateau

Sediment cores from four lakes across the Tibetan Plateau were used as natural archives to study the time trends of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs). The total concentrations of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (ΣDDT) and hexachlorocyclohexane isomers (ΣHCH) were in the range of 0.04–1.61 and 0.08–1.88 ng/g based on dry weight (dw), while the input fluxes were in the range of 0.3–236 and 0.7–295 pg/cm²/y in the core sediments, respectively. The input fluxes of ΣDDT and ΣHCH generally peaked in sediment layers corresponding to the 1970s–1990s and peaked in top sediment layers. The ratio of α/γ-HCH decreased in the top layer sediments, implying that the contribution of lindane (pure γ-HCH) has been increasing in recent years. In addition, the ratio of o,p′-DDT/p,p′-DDT increased significantly over the last 15–20 years, suggesting that dicofol (characterized by high ratio of o,p′-DDT/p,p′-DDT about 7.0) has recently become a relatively more important source of DDT compared to technical DDT itself. The time trends of OCPs recorded in lake sediments examined the impact on such remote alpine regions by human activities.     

Effect of climate change on flux of N and C: air-land-freshwater-marine links: synthesis

Projected climate change might increase the deposition of nitrogen by about 10% to seminatural ecosystems in southern Norway. At Storgama, increased precipitation in the growing season increased the fluxes of total organic carbon (TOC) and total organic nitrogen (TON) in proportion to the water flux. In winter, soil temperatures near 0 degrees C, common under a snowpack, induced higher runoff of inorganic nitrogen (N) and lower runoff of TOC. By contrast, soil temperatures below freezing, caused by little snow accumulation (expected in a warmer world), reduced runoff of inorganic N, TON, and TOC. Long-term monitoring data showed that reduced snowpack can cause either decreased or increased N leaching, depending on interactions with N deposition, soil temperature regime, and winter discharge. Seasonal variation in TOC was mainly climatically controlled, whereas deposition of sulfate and nitrate (NO3) explained the long-term TOC increase. Upscaling to the river basin scale showed that the annual flux of NO3 will remain unchanged in response to climate change projections.