The evolution of Müllerian mimicry

It is now 130 years since Fritz Müller proposed an evolutionary explanation for the close similarity of co-existing unpalatable prey species, a phenomenon now known as Müllerian mimicry. Müller's hypothesis was that unpalatable species evolve a similar appearance to reduce the mortality involved in training predators to avoid them, and he backed up his arguments with a mathematical model in which predators attack a fixed number (n) of each distinct unpalatable type in a given season before avoiding them. Here, I review what has since been discovered about Müllerian mimicry and consider in particular its relationship to other forms of mimicry. Müller's specific model of associative learning involving a "fixed n" in a given season has not been supported, and several experiments now suggest that two distinct unpalatable prey types may be just as easy to learn to avoid as one. Nevertheless, Müller's general insight that novel unpalatable forms have higher mortality than common unpalatable forms as a result of predation has been well supported by field experiments. From its inception, there has been a heated debate over the nature of the relationship between Müllerian co-mimics that differ in their level of defence. There is now a growing awareness that this relationship can be mediated by many factors, including synergistic effects between co-mimics that differ in their mode of defence, rates of generalisation among warning signals and concomitant changes in prey density as mimicry evolves. I highlight areas for future enquiry, including the possibility of Müllerian mimicry systems based on profitability rather than unprofitability and the co-evolution of defence.     

人工湿地污水处理系统中植物体系的构建与展望

植物是人工湿地系统中的重要组成成分之一,它不仅可以起到净化污水的作用,而且还为微生物提供生存环境,同时具有景观价值。因此要选择适应性强、生物量大、根系发达、具有抗逆性的植物作为湿地植物。由于陆生植物受季节影响小且易于管理,超富集植物和转基因植物具有较高的吸收、吸附和富集的作用的特点相继成为湿地系统中植物研究的热点。而且通过合理配置植物系统可以提高湿地系统净化效果。湿地植物仍存在受季节变化的影响,植物的衰退,植物收割的后续处理等问题,仍有待研究。随着对湿地植物研究的深入,人工湿地系统一定会获得更加广阔的应用前景。     

A sustainability approach for selecting maintenance strategy

Appropriate maintenance can prolong the life of an asset and prevent costly breakdowns that may result in lost production, failed shipping schedules and a decline in customer satisfaction. The goal of this study was to present a comprehensive framework that utilises sustainability metrics based on social, environmental and economic criteria to select an appropriate maintenance strategy among a variety of maintenance strategy alternatives, such as preventive, failure-based, reliability-centred, condition-based and total productive maintenance strategies, for a manufacturing company. The sustainability-based approach may significantly influence the personnel, energy, material and the overall costs in a company. In the first step of this paper, a sustainability-based decision-making structure is proposed for the maintenance strategy selection problem applying the concept of factor analysis to determine the leading factors in each of the sustainability pillars. In the next step, a fuzzy VIKOR framework is used to select the most appropriate maintenance strategy. The provided approach is illustrated using a manufacturing industry case study.     

南水北调东线山东境内调蓄湖库蓝藻种群分布特征及环境驱动因子

为掌握南水北调东线山东境内调蓄湖库在工程运行前后蓝藻种群的分布情况及其环境驱动因子,于2010～2019年的5～11月对南四湖、东平湖、大屯水库、东湖水库和双王城水库进行藻类和水环境调查.共检出浮游蓝藻44种,其中丝状蓝藻23种.湖泊假鱼腥藻、拉氏拟柱孢藻、铜绿微囊藻和惠氏微囊藻在各调蓄湖库的检出频次和密度均较高,是主要有害蓝藻种.通过分析各调蓄湖库蓝藻种群的分布特征,发现丝状蓝藻在水力扰动较大水体中的生长优势较为明显,应成为日后调蓄湖库蓝藻风险防控的重点.Pearson相关性分析和广义线性拟合曲线结果显示,总氮、总磷、水温和水深是影响调蓄湖库主要有害蓝藻种生长的主要环境驱动因子.氮磷营养盐对于有害蓝藻种的生长具有显著的促进作用.湖泊假鱼腥藻具有良好的温度适应性,在夏初秋末仍能成为优势种,而当水温大于25℃时,拉氏拟柱孢藻、铜绿微囊藻和惠氏微囊藻具明显的生长优势.此外,较小的水深更利于拉氏拟柱孢藻的生长.建议在加强控制湖库氮磷营养盐输入的基础上,在夏初和秋末对湖泊假鱼腥藻进行重点监控,并在高温时期密切关注浅水区拉氏拟柱孢藻的生长情况,保障水质安全.     

Suitability of short or long conservation contracts under ecological and socio-economic uncertainty

Acquisition of land rights has become a primary tool used to protect terrestrial biodiversity. Fixed length contracts are often used when trying to secure conservation benefits on private land in agri-environment schemes and payment for environmental services schemes, but the duration of the conservation contracts used in different programmes varies. To date, very little research has been undertaken to determine the situations in which contracts of differing lengths are optimal or when conservation agencies or groups should use a portfolio of different contract lengths rather than relying on a single type. Using stochastic dynamic programming and related heuristic methods, we investigate how the choice between short or long conservation contracts is affected by uncertainty regarding the future availability of sites and their ecological condition. We also examine the benefits offered by using a portfolio of different contract lengths. Conservation agencies must pay private landowners a premium to secure longer agreements and because of this, shorter contracts are advantageous if sites are likely to remain available for conservation in the future. Long contracts are preferred when future site availability becomes more unlikely. In contrast to uncertainty over site availability, uncertainty over future ecological conditions has little effect on contract selection and only markedly influences the choice between short and long contracts when there is heterogeneity across sites in expected conservation outcomes and future availability of sites is also uncertain. Finally, when future site availability is unlikely, the use of a portfolio of short and long contracts would offer greater conservation gains than using either type in isolation, even though this option is not yet one that is commonly found in conservation practice.     

复合装药安全性优选BP神经网络模型

为在设计复合装药结构时得到复合装药的能量输出和安全性双优结构,利用BP人工神经网络理论,建立结构优选模型。利用不同的感度和能量输出试验数据,进行模型的训练,训练后对样本进行预测和优选。结果表明,该方法能够克服评估复合装药结构性能优劣的各因素之间的复杂关系,实现精确的非线性预测,得到安全性和能量输出双优的设计结构。     

Alternative mating tactics in the Italian treefrog, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Hyla intermedia</Emphasis>

As in many lekking anurans, Italian treefrog males use two mating tactics: they can attract females by calling vigorously or be satellites, that is, they can remain silent in proximity of a calling male and try to intercept females attracted by their neighbour. We investigated the factors that affected the expression of this mating tactic. Consistent with the conditional mating tactic hypothesis, satellites were smaller than average and smaller than their parasitised calling males. They spent a larger-than-average number of nights at the breeding site, where most of them were also observed calling. Moreover, satellites showed lower call rates and lower mating success than those of males they parasitise but not lower than those of males they did not parasitise. Overall, these results, together with those derived from the analyses of the seasonal and spatial distribution of males, provide evidence for a non-random association between satellites and calling males and are consistent with the hypothesis that satellites have spectral and temporal acoustic preferences that parallel those of females. By adopting the less-successful satellite mating tactic, competitively inferior males can nevertheless maximise their potential reproductive fitness by sexually parasitising the most attractive chorusing males.     

Territorial counter-singing in male sac-winged bats (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Saccopteryx bilineata</Emphasis>): low-frequency songs trigger a stronger response

In many animal species, individuals compete for resources but avoid escalated conflicts by threat displays, i.e. a mutual signalling behaviour that enables the opponents to predict the outcome of the conflict without the necessity of actual fighting. For example, territory holders may use acoustic signals to communicate not only their own identity and the borders of their territory but also their competitive quality, fighting ability and motivation. Here, we show that male sac-winged bats, Saccopteryx bilineata, adjust their vocal territorial displays according to the fundamental frequency of territorial songs of their opponents. In playback experiments with territorial males, low-frequency stimuli elicited a higher territorial song rate and length than high-frequency stimuli. Male S. bilineata that sing more often and with lower fundamental frequencies have been shown to sire more offspring than their competitors. Fundamental frequency of territorial songs, hence, may reveal male quality and, consequently, the resulting threat posed to competing males. We argue that this is reflected in the increased response of competitors to low-frequency territorial songs shown here. Such competitive signalling behaviour has been shown in a few mammal species like red deer and baboons but, thus far, not in bats. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Conservation planning for successional landscapes

The systematic conservation planning literature invariably assumes that the biodiversity features being preserved in sites do not change through time. We develop a conservation planning framework for ecosystems where disturbance events and succession drive vegetation dynamics. The framework incorporates three key attributes of disturbance theory: heterogeneity in disturbance rates, spatial correlation between disturbance events and different impacts of disturbance. In our conservation problem we wish to maximise the chance that we represent a certain number of successional types given a cap on the number of sites we can conserve. Correlation between disturbance events dramatically complicates the problem of choosing the optimal suite of sites. However, in our problem we discover that spatial correlation in disturbances affects the optimal reserve network very little. The reason is twofold: (i) through our probabilistic framework we focus on the long-term effectiveness of reserve networks and (ii) in the dynamics considered in our model the state of a site is not only affected by the most recent (correlated) disturbance event but also by the site's long-term stochastic history which blurs the impact of spatial correlation. If successional states are the conservation target rather than individual species then, conserving a site can only contribute to meeting one target. However, given that correlation of disturbance events may be ignored, we show that if the number of candidate reserves is sufficiently large the statistical dependence of different conservation targets may be ignored, too. We conclude that the computational complexity of reserve selection methods for dynamic ecosystems can be much simpler than they first appear.     

Effectiveness of Vegetation Surrogates for Parasitoid Wasps in Reserve Selection

Abstract:  Selecting suitable nature reserves is a continuing challenge in conservation, particularly for target groups that are time-consuming to survey, species rich, and extinction prone. One such group is the parasitoid Hymenoptera, which have been excluded from conservation planning. If basic characteristics of habitats or vegetation could be used as reliable surrogates of specific target taxa, this would greatly facilitate appropriate reserve selection. We identified a range of potential habitat indicators of the species richness of pimpline parasitoid communities (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae: Pimplinae, Diacritinae, Poemeniinae) and tested their efficiency at capturing the observed diversity in a group of small woodlands in the agricultural landscape of the Vale of York (United Kingdom). Eight of the 18 vegetation-based reserve-selection strategies were significantly better at parasitoid species inclusion than random selection of areas. The best strategy maximized richness of tree species over the entire reserve network through complementarity. This strategy omitted only 2–3 species more (out of 38 captured in the landscape as a whole) than selections derived from the parasitoid survey data. In general, strategies worked equally well at capturing species richness and rarity. Our results suggest that vegetation data as a surrogate for species richness could prove an informative tool in parasitoid conservation, but further work is needed to test how broadly applicable these indicators may be.