Maternal investment in Antarctic fur seals: evidence for equality in the sexes?

Studies of the otariids (fur seals and sea lions), a highly sexually dimorphic group, have provided conflicting evidence of differential maternal expenditure in male and female offspring and, thus, suggestions that they conform to predictions of investment theory are equivocal. Since the mid-1970s, a diversity of research on Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella) including studies of their reproductive ecology, lactation energetics, and foraging behaviour have been conducted at Bird Island, South Georgia that have resulted in one of the more complete and diverse data sets for any species of otariid. These long-term data were reviewed to determine whether there was any evidence to support that differential maternal expenditure occurred in Antarctic fur seals. Most of the data examined were collected during five consecutive austral summers from 1988 through 1992 and included years in which local food resources were abundant and scarce. We were unable to detect differences in the sex ratios of pups at birth or sex-biased differences in growth rates estimated from serial data, the number of foraging trips made, the duration of attendance ashore, diving behaviour, suckling behaviour, or milk consumption in any year and in the duration of foraging trips or age at weaning in 2 of 3 years. In addition, we found no evidence of greater reproductive costs between mothers with sons or daughters relative to their reproductive performance the following year. In contrast, sex-biased differences were only found in the duration of foraging trips in 1990, the age at weaning in 1988, and consistently in growth rates estimated from cross-sectional data. We suggest that differential maternal expenditure does not occur in Antarctic fur seals because male pups probably do not gain greater benefit from additional maternal expenditure than female pups. After weaning, males experience a period of rapid juvenile growth over 3–4 years during which time body mass nearly trebles. This growth will almost certainly be dependent upon available food resources then rather than on any maternal expenditure received over the first 4 months of life and, thus, the assumptions of the Trivers and Willard hypothesis are probably invalid for Antarctic fur seals. Received: 10 July 1996 / Accepted after revision: 3 March 1997     

安全投资经济分析与效益评价

安全投资分析的目的是实现必要的安全功能,减少损失,保障企业的生产安全,以便集中投资,获取最大的安全效益。笔者给出了安全效益的新定义,以安全价值和边际效益分析为基础,结合企业安全生产实际,采用FTA法,分析安全所具有的功能与所耗成本的关系。揭示安全投入在生产经营活动中的作用,发现和消除不必要的安全投入,提高安全资金的利用率,以便优选安全措施方案和确定安全投资的方向,选择最优经济投入方案。运用数学方法,分析在多种生产要素限制条件下,安全投资对社会和其他方面影响的最优化问题。采用技术经济方法,评价净现值、内部收益率和投资回收期各指标是否符合设定值,确保安全投资项目的可行性,以利于人们对安全投入的认识,强化企业安全投入工作。     

煤矿安全投资效率评价的DEA模型及其应用

为评价煤矿安全投资效率,借助于数据包络分析(DEA)方法,选取某煤业集团6个煤矿的安全投入产出数据,构建DEA模型。用所得结果对各煤矿的安全投资效率进行分析,并提出改进意见。结果表明,随着安全投入的增加,煤矿综合生产效率、纯技术效率和规模报酬有所提升。通过规模报酬区间分析,发现煤矿安全投资存在不稳定的现象,煤矿在安全教育、职业健康及日常安全管理方面的投资还有待提高。建议煤矿决策层应根据实际情况加强煤矿安全投资持续性,并使决策单元向DEA的有效方向转变。实践说明,煤矿的安全投入是获得最大安全产出的关键。     

浅谈如何提高海外突发事件应急能力

本文根据近期国际安全局势变化,海外工程项目社会安全风险不断加大,结合公司应急处置经验,从提高海外突发事件应急能力入手,从五个方面进行了分析:一是提高应急预案针对性、操作性和实用性;二是加强出国人员安全培训;三是加强中国"走出去"企业间交流合作;四是加强同驻外领事馆联系;五是加强同当地政府、部落、居民的联系取得多方帮助。     

Microtargeting for conservation

Widespread human action and behavior change is needed to achieve many conservation goals. Doing so at the requisite scale and pace will require the efficient delivery of outreach campaigns. Conservation gains will be greatest when efforts are directed toward places of high conservation value (or need) and tailored to critical actors. Recent strategic conservation planning has relied primarily on spatial assessments of biophysical attributes, largely ignoring the human dimensions. Elsewhere, marketers, political campaigns, and others use microtargeting—predictive analytics of big data—to identify people most likely to respond positively to particular messages or interventions. Conservationists have not yet widely capitalized on these techniques. To investigate the effectiveness of microtargeting to improve conservation, we developed a propensity model to predict restoration behavior among 203,645 private landowners in a 5,200,000 ha study area in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (U.S.A.). To isolate the additional value microtargeting may offer beyond geospatial prioritization, we analyzed a new high-resolution land-cover data set and cadastral data to identify private owners of riparian areas needing restoration. Subsequently, we developed and evaluated a restoration propensity model based on a database of landowners who had conducted restoration in the past and those who had not (n = 4978). Model validation in a parallel database (n = 4989) showed owners with the highest scorers for propensity to conduct restoration (i.e., top decile) were over twice as likely as average landowners to have conducted restoration (135%). These results demonstrate that microtargeting techniques can dramatically increase the efficiency and efficacy of conservation programs, above and beyond the advances offered by biophysical prioritizations alone, as well as facilitate more robust research of many social–ecological systems.     

Bridging the financial gap in climate adaptation: Dutch planning and land development through a new institutional lens

Based on a case study of the Stadshaven port redevelopment in Rotterdam, this paper explores whether existing spatial planning mechanisms and processes can be used to facilitate local-level investment in climate-resilient public infrastructure and/or whether new processes and mechanisms are required to encourage investment in climate adaptation. The study reveals several key findings. First, a lack of conventional funding sources or formalised regulatory framework allowed room for experimentation with existing mechanisms and flexible strategies. Second, project planners are currently ambivalent towards introducing new mechanisms as a means to overcome implementation challenges. The case provides evidence about the role of the governance process, not simply as a means of system coordination that exists in isolation from institutional norms and values, but rather as a space for innovation, which can contribute towards reducing the financial gap associated with climate adaptation.     

Priority areas for conservation of and research focused on terrestrial vertebrates

Effective conservation policies require comprehensive knowledge of biodiversity. However, knowledge shortfalls still remain, hindering possibilities to improve decision making and built such policies. During the last 2 decades, conservationists have made great efforts to allocate resources as efficiently as possible but have rarely considered the idea that if research investments are also strategically allocated, it would likely fill knowledge gaps while simultaneously improving conservation actions. Therefore, prioritizing areas where both conservation and research actions could be conducted becomes a critical endeavor that can further maximize return on investment. We used Zonation, a conservation planning tool and geographical distributions of amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles to suggest and compare priority areas for conservation and research of terrestrial vertebrates worldwide. We also evaluated the degree of human disturbance in both types of priority areas by describing the value of the human footprint index within such areas. The spatial concordance between priority conservation and research areas was low: 0.36% of the world's land area. In these areas, we found it would be possible to protect almost half of the currently threatened species and to gather information on nearly 42% of data-deficient (DD) species. We also found that 6199 protected areas worldwide are located in such places, although only 35% of them have strict conservation purposes. Areas of consensus between conservation and research areas represent an opportunity for simultaneously conserving and acquiring knowledge of threatened and DD species of vertebrates. Although the picture is not the most encouraging, joint conservation and research efforts are possible and should be fostered to save vertebrate species from our own ignorance and extinction.     

High-ranking females bias their investment in favour of male calves in captive Ammotragus lervia

Calf suckling behaviour is a valid measure of maternal investment in the Saharan arrui, Ammotragus lervia sahariensis, since this variable is strongly correlated with the inter-birth interval. High-ranking females allocate their resources preferentially towards their sons, as the average suckling rate is significantly higher in male calves than in female calves during their 1st month of life, when maternal investment reaches the highest values of the whole lactation period. However, average suckling-bout duration shows no sex differences. Some maternal behaviours, such as sniffing and licking, are strongly correlated with suckling events. Only during the calves’ 1st week is the mother responsible for maintaining proximity; but from the following week on the calves are mainly responsible for maintaining it. In addition, when the calves are 1 month old, high-ranking females tend to maintain a stronger link with their male calves. Female calves spend more time with their mothers than male calves during their 1st month of life, if the mother’s rank is lower than 60%; otherwise, the opposite occurs, male calves being close to their mothers for longer, even from their 1st week of life. Finally, the higher the maternal rank the higher the proportion of male calves delivered. Received: 18 April 1995/Accepted after revision: 11 February 1996     

Female benefit,male risk: Polyandry in the true armyworm Pseudaletia unipuncta

In Lepidoptera polyandry is common and females may increase their lifetime reproductive output through repeated matings if they acquire essential resources from male ejaculates. However, the paternity of males mating with previously-mated females is far from assured unless sperm precedence is absolute. In this study on the polyandrous armyworm, Pseudaletia unipuncta, we used two strains of male (the black-eyed wild type and a red-eyed homozygous, recessive mutant), mated with red-eyed females, to determine (i) whether male investment has any impact on female reproductive output, and (ii) if females do benefit from multiple matings, to what extent males fertilize the eggs to which they contributed. Multiple mating resulted in a significant increase in both the fecundity and longevity of females. However, the degree of sperm precedence (those eggs fertilized by the second male) varied from 0–100%, but was not affected by either male size or age, or by the duration of copulation. In cases where sperm precedence was <50% (x = 12%) females produced significantly more eggs (1384 versus 940) prior to the second mating than females where sperm precedence was >50% (x = 89%), indicating that the quality of the first mating influenced the fertilization success of the female's second mate.     

Relationship between body size, provisioning rate, longevity and reproductive success in females of the solitary bee Osmia cornuta

Body size has often been related to reproductive success in bees and wasps. The objective of this 3-year study was to analyze the relationship between nesting female body size, provisioning rate and longevity and their effect on several traits related to parental investment and reproductive success in the solitary bee Osmia cornuta. Body size was not correlated to longevity, and it was only correlated to provisioning rate in the third year (with poor weather conditions during nesting). Variation in fecundity, offspring size and offspring mortality was not well explained by nesting female body size in any of the 3 years. However, in the third year, small females biased their investment toward males, the sex requiring smaller pollen–nectar provisions. Large females were more successful usurpers of other females' nests, but fecundity of usurpers was no higher than fecundity of nonusurpers. Large females were more likely to establish at the release site, probably in relation to size-dependent vigor at emergence. A review of the literature on parental investment in solitary aculeate Hymenoptera showed a stronger relationship between body size and reproductive success in wasps than in bees. In O. cornuta, fecundity was strongly related to longevity and provisioning rate in all 3 years. Offspring size was associated with provisioning rate in 1 year, when females with higher provisioning rates tended to produce larger sons and daughters. Both longevity and provisioning rate appeared to be strongly conditioned by stochastic events.