Ecological engineering of degraded ecosystems often manipulates plants, with positive outcomes for their restoration or ecosystem services production. The importance of soil biota for successional ...plant communities has prompted consideration of direct inoculation (active) or attraction (passive) of soil organisms as a relevant restoration strategy. However, few attempts have manipulated soil invertebrates as part of nature based solutions for ecosystem restoration, despite their major role in many soil ecological processes and in plant-soil feedback processes. In addition, while ecological restoration and ecological engineering approaches successfully incorporate plant traits, soil invertebrate traits remain underused. Exploiting the functional diversity of soil communities by adopting a trait-based approach could enhance restoration of soil chemical, biological and physical properties. Here, we conduct a narrative review and identify a set of soil invertebrate functional traits with great potential in ecosystem restoration. We focus on traits related to four main ecological functions that are often at the core of restoration plans: nutrient cycling and carbon cycling, pollutant detoxification, soil structure arrangement, and biological control agent by prey/pest regulation. This paper further proposes guidelines for stakeholders that need to be addressed to successfully integrate soil organism traits into ecological engineering. Finally, we highlight main knowledge gaps and limitations currently impeding the use of soil invertebrate traits in ecological engineering, and identify avenues for future research. We especially bring out (i) that few studies still use soil invertebrates in restoration, so even fewer are based on traits, (ii) a lack of data about soil invertebrate species role in ecosystems, (iii) a lack of data about attributes from specific traits and groups in existing soil functional trait databases, (iv) the complex relationships between functions and traits and (v) that future studies are needed to demonstrate the benefits of such trait-based approaches compared to approaches relying on emblematic species.
The species Neobisium (Neobisium) vilcekii Krumpál 1983 is redescribed and illustrated based on the adult specimens collected from Caucasian region of Russia. In addition, a new size range, a new ...description of the females and some morphological and minor morphometric variations within the species are provided.
Household composter is one of the fragmented habitats, which still ensures the survival of many animals, especially decomposer fauna. The components of organic matter in the composter are complex, ...thus providing opportunities for obtaining high diversity of decomposer fauna. The ability of decomposer fauna to break down organic matter may be supported by their gut microbiota. In this study, we compared the diversity, the abundance and distribution of gut prokaryotic microbiota among several decomposer fauna members, namely cockroaches, millipedes, beetle larvae, and snails, as well as the compost from a household composter in Surabaya, Indonesia, using a metataxonomic approach. Microbial community DNA was isolated from the guts of four types of dominant decomposer fauna and the compost. A total of 42 phyla and 497 genera were observed in five samples with the predominant bacteria belonging to the Proteobacteria phylum which appeared in all samples. The highest diversity of gut bacteria was found in cockroach although not higher than the compost as a habitat for the decomposer fauna. A total of 1131 operational taxonomic units derived from 232 genera were found in compost and guts of four decomposer fauna species. Similarities between the microbial community structures found in the gut of the four decomposer fauna to those found in compost indicated that the environment had a strong effect on the overall gut microbiota of the decomposer fauna.
Data on the fauna and vertical distribution of butterflies of the Moldo-Too Mountain Range (Inner Tien Shan) are presented. The material for research was collected during 12 summer seasons at 9 ...points of the ridge. The fauna of this mountainous region includes 118 species of Rhopalocera: 9 species of Hesperiidae, 7 species of Papilionidae, 15 species of Pieridae, 21 species of Nymphalidae, 23 species of Satyridae, 1 species of Riodinidae and 42 species of Lycaenidae. The vertical distribution of this fauna on the Moldo-Too Range is as follows: 79 species in low mountains,100 species in middle mountains, 60 species in high mountains and 31 species in ultrahigh mountains. The distribution of this fauna on the key habitats is as follows: 91 species in steppes, 105 species in dry meadows, 57 species in wet meadows, 14 species in screes, 23 species in rocks and rocky places and 18 species in the bushes. It is shown that the faunas of the low and middle mountains, high and ultrahigh mountains are similar, and that the faunas of two of the six key biotopes (steppes and dry meadows) are similar; possible causes of this similarity are discussed.
Preserving biodiversity is a global challenge requiring data on species’ distribution and abundance over large geographic and temporal scales. However, traditional methods to survey mobile species’ ...distribution and abundance in marine environments are often inefficient, environmentally destructive, or resource‐intensive. Metabarcoding of environmental DNA (eDNA) offers a new means to assess biodiversity and on much larger scales, but adoption of this approach for surveying whole animal communities in large, dynamic aquatic systems has been slowed by significant unknowns surrounding error rates of detection and relevant spatial resolution of eDNA surveys. Here, we report the results of a 2.5 km eDNA transect surveying the vertebrate fauna present along a gradation of diverse marine habitats associated with a kelp forest ecosystem. Using PCR primers that target the mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene of marine fishes and mammals, we generated eDNA sequence data and compared it to simultaneous visual dive surveys. We find spatial concordance between individual species’ eDNA and visual survey trends, and that eDNA is able to distinguish vertebrate community assemblages from habitats separated by as little as ~60 m. eDNA reliably detected vertebrates with low false‐negative error rates (1/12 taxa) when compared to the surveys, and revealed cryptic species known to occupy the habitats but overlooked by visual methods. This study also presents an explicit accounting of false negatives and positives in metabarcoding data, which illustrate the influence of gene marker selection, replication, contamination, biases impacting eDNA count data and ecology of target species on eDNA detection rates in an open ecosystem.
Od kilku lat obserwuje się wysoki poziom skali przemytu zwierząt. Dane statystyczne Ministerstwa Finansów za poprzedni rok wskazują, że w 2018 roku w Polsce zatrzymano 13 811 okazów CITES. Rozmiar ...oraz charakter zjawiska przesądzają o tym, że problem ma globalny zasięg. Ogromne znaczenie w fazie reagowania na zjawisko mają krajowe, międzynarodowe oraz unijne regulacje prawne. Zwrócić należy także uwagę na niehumanitarne traktowanie zwierząt podczas przemytu. W pracy zaprezentowano teoretyczne ujęcie problemu, skalę zjawiska oraz działania, które mogą przyczynić się do jego zwalczania.
In this study, descriptions of Atractides (Polymegapus) rutae (Lundblad, 1941) newly recorded for the fauna of Turkey is given. In addition, some taxonomically important morphological features of the ...females were analyzed in detail, diagnostic characters were illustrated and measurements belonging to body parts were given along with geographical distribution records.
Bu çalışmada, Türkiye faunası için yeni kayıt olan Atractides (Polymegapus) rutae (Lundblad, 1941)’nin tanımı verilmiştir. Ayrıca, türün dişi bireylerinin taksonomik açıdan önemli bazı morfolojik özellikleri detaylı şekilde incelenmiş, diagnostik karakterleri çizilmiş ve vücut üyelerine ait ölçümlerle birlikte coğrafik dağılım üzerinde durulmuştur.
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