Virtual agents have been widely used in human-agent collaboration work. One important problem with human-agent collaboration is the attribution of responsibility as perceived by users. We focused on ...the relationship between the appearance of a virtual agent and the attribution of perceived responsibility. We conducted an experiment with five agents: an agent without an appearance, a human-like agent, a robot-like agent, a dog-like agent, and an angel-like agent. We measured the perceived agency and experience for each agent, and we conducted an experiment involving a sound-guessing game. In the game, participants listened to a sound and guessed what the sound was with an agent. At the end of the game, the game finished with failure, and the participants did not know who made the mistake, the participant or the agent. After the game, we asked the participants how they perceived the agents' trustworthiness and to whom they attributed responsibility. As a result, participants attributed less responsibility to themselves when interacting with a robot-like agent than interacting with an angel-like robot. Furthermore, participants perceived the least trustworthiness toward the robot-like agent among all conditions. In addition, the agents' perceived experience had a correlation with the attribution of perceived responsibility. Furthermore, the agents that made the participants feel their attribution of responsibility to be less were not trusted. These results suggest the relationship between agents' appearance and perceived attribution of responsibility and new methods for designs in the creation of virtual agents for collaboration work.
In Japan, many incidents regarding manga-like virtual agents have happened recently, in which critics have indicated that virtual agents used in public spaces are too sexual. Prior study defined this ...perception as "moe-phobia." In many cases, critics have pointed to agents' clothes. However, after verifying actual moe-phobia incidents, I hypothesize that these incidents are associated with not only the agents' clothes but also the situations in which they are used. I conducted an experiment with three factors and two levels to verify this hypothesis. The independent values were the agents' clothes, usage scenario, and the gender of the participants. The dependent values were the agents' trustworthiness, familiarity, likability, sexuality, and suitability as perceived by humans. I conducted the experiment with female and male groups and conducted a three-way ANOVA for each dependent value for each group. As a result, I observed a different tendency regarding the impression of the agents between female and male groups; however, both groups had the same tendency regarding the perceived suitability. The female and male participants judged the agents' suitability from not only their clothes but also the scenario.
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•Characterization factors to determine CO2 emission impact on terrestrial biodiversity.•A method to calculate taxon-level characterization factors (CFs).•CFs are estimated for five ...taxa: bird, reptile, mammal, amphibian, vascular plant.
Species extinction risk is a crucial indicator of the global impact of climate change on biodiversity. In life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), the relationship between the potentially extinct ratio and temperature is used to calculate characterization factors (CFs) that indicate additional biodiversity impact per unit greenhouse gas emissions, using the biodiversity loss indicator termed potentially disappeared fraction (PDF). However, current methods for calculating CFs that focus on terrestrial biodiversity do not show differences among taxa and regions. Here, we estimated taxon-level CFs based on a species-specific extinction risk approach for determining impact of CO2 emission on terrestrial biodiversity. The extinction risk of a species is defined as the reciprocal of the estimated waiting times for extinction caused by climate-derived habitat loss of the species. Based on the approach, CFs for five taxa—birds, reptiles, mammals, amphibians, vascular plants—were estimated as 0.017, 0.017, 0.025, 0.027, and 0.040 (PDF·km2·year·kton−1), respectively. In addition, CFs that use the number of potentially extinct species (species·kton−1) as indicators were also calculated based on the same species-specific extinction risk approach. The proposed method successfully calculates taxon-level CFs and has the potential to show their regional variations, which contributes to the precise impact assessment on climate-derived biodiversity in LCIA.
Anthropomorphic agents used in online-shopping need to be trusted by users so that users feel comfortable buying products. In this paper, we propose a model for designing trustworthy agents by ...assuming two factors of trust, that is, emotion and knowledgeableness perceived. Our hypothesis is that when a user feels happy and perceives an agent as being highly knowledgeable, a high level of trust results between the user and agent. We conducted four experiments with participants to verify this hypothesis by preparing transition operators utilizing emotional contagion and knowledgeable utterances. As a result, we verified that users' internal states transitioned as expected and that the two factors significantly influenced their trust states.
Pine wilt disease (PWD) constitutes a serious threat to pine forests. Since development depends on temperature and drought, there is a concern that future climate change could lead to the spread of ...PWD infections. We evaluated the risk of PWD in 21 susceptible Pinus species on a global scale. The MB index, which represents the sum of the difference between the mean monthly temperature and 15 when the mean monthly temperatures exceeds 15°C, was used to determine current and future regions vulnerable to PWD (MB ≥ 22). For future climate conditions, we compared the difference in PWD risks among four different representative concentration pathways (RCPs 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5) and two time periods (2050s and 2070s). We also evaluated the impact of climate change on habitat suitability for each Pinus species using species distribution models. The findings were then integrated and the potential risk of PWD spread under climate change was discussed. Within the natural Pinus distribution area, southern parts of North America, Europe, and Asia were categorized as vulnerable regions (MB ≥ 22; 16% of the total Pinus distribution area). Representative provinces in which PWD has been reported at least once overlapped with the vulnerable regions. All RCP scenarios showed expansion of vulnerable regions in northern parts of Europe, Asia, and North America under future climate conditions. By the 2070s, under RCP 8.5, an estimated increase in the area of vulnerable regions to approximately 50% of the total Pinus distribution area was revealed. In addition, the habitat conditions of a large portion of the Pinus distribution areas in Europe and Asia were deemed unsuitable by the 2070s under RCP 8.5. Approximately 40% of these regions overlapped with regions deemed vulnerable to PWD, suggesting that Pinus forests in these areas are at risk of serious damage due to habitat shifts and spread of PWD.
Land cover change for agriculture is thought to be a major threat to global biodiversity. However, its ecological impact has rarely been quantified in the Northern Hemisphere, as broad-scale ...conversion to farmland mainly occurred until the 1400s-1700s in the region, limiting the availability of sufficient data. The Ishikari Lowland in Hokkaido, Japan, offers an excellent opportunity to address this issue, as hunter-gatherer lifestyles dominated this region until the mid-nineteenth century and land cover maps are available for the period of land cover changes (i.e. 1850-2016). Using these maps and a hierarchical community model of relationships between breeding bird abundance and land cover types, we estimated that broad-scale land cover change over a 166-year period was associated with more than 70% decline in both potential species richness and abundance of avian communities. We estimated that the abundance of wetland and forest species declined by greater than 88%, whereas that of bare-ground/farmland species increased by more than 50%. Our results suggest that broad-scale land cover change for agriculture has led to drastic reductions in wetland and forest species and promoted changes in community composition in large parts of the Northern Hemisphere. This study provides potential baseline information that could inform future conservation policies.
Investigating the correlation between environmental variables and species distribution should be performed using data acquired from appropriate spatial scales to meet adaptive management requirements ...in a changing environment. This research aimed to model the influence of climate change on the spatial distribution of Brant’s oak (Quercus brantii Lindl.) via presence data acquired from local (Ilam province, western Iran), regional (Zagros ecoregion), and global (whole distribution extent of Brant’s oak) extents. To project the potential habitat of Brant's oak, general circulation models (CCSM4, HADGEM2-ES, BCC-CSM1–1 and GISS-E2-R) under the 2.6 and 8.5 representative concentration pathways (RCP) for 2050 and 2070 were used. To model the distribution of Brant’s oak, artificial neural network (ANN), random forest (RF), generalized linear model (GLM), and maximum entropy (MaxEnt) were compared. To validate the models, random-holdback cross-validation, whereby 80% of the data was randomly selected to calibrate the model and the remaining 20% was used to validate the models, was carried out. The results revealed that enhancing the modeling extent increased the accuracy of the model; hence, a model trained using the global dataset performed better than local and regional datasets. In all three geographical extents, RF and MaxEnt had the best performance in modeling the spatial distribution range of Brant’s oak. The main predictors of Brant’s oak distribution were different in local, regional, and global models. The mean temperature of driest quarter (bio9), at the local extent; precipitation of wettest month (bio13), at the regional extent; and temperature annual range (bio7), at the global extent were the most important climatic variables. The findings also indicated that the potential habitat of Brant’s oak will decline in the future under climate change scenarios (i.e., RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5) and across all three geographical extents compared to the current habitat. Using the findings of this study, it is possible to identify the suitable habitats of Brant's oak forests with more certainty and take measures to manage and protect them.
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•The potential habitat of Persian oak was predicted based on local, regional and global models.•The most important variables affecting the distribution of oak were different in local, regional and global models.•The potential habitat of oak would decrease in the future based on all three geographical extents.•Management and protection of these forests must be carried out while accounting for climate changes.
Clarifying the influences of paleoclimate changes on the disjunct distribution formation of plants allows a historical and mechanical understanding of current vegetation and biodiversity. This study ...investigated the influences of paleoclimate changes on the present disjunct distribution formation of
Pinus koraiensis
(Korean pine) using species distribution modeling. A species distribution model (SDM) was built using maximum entropy principle algorithms (MaxEnt), data from 152 occurrences of the species, and four bioclimatic variables at 2.5 arcminute (approximately 5 km) spatial resolution. The simulation revealed the excellent fit of the MaxEnt model performance, with an area under the curve (AUC) value of 0.922 and continuous Boyce index (BCI) value of 0.925 with fivefold cross-validation. The most important climatic factor was the minimum temperature of the coldest month. Suitable habitats for the species ranged between − 30.1 and − 4.1 °C. Projected suitable habitats under the Last Glacial Maximum (approximately 22,000 years ago ka BP: LGM) period showed wide distributions in eastern China, the southern part of the Korean Peninsula, and the Japanese Archipelago. After the mid-Holocene (approximately 6 ka BP), the suitable habitats expanded northwards in continental regions and retreated from both north and southwest of Japan. This eventually formed disjunct suitable habitats in central Japan. An increase in temperature after the LGM period caused the migration of
P. koraiensis
toward new, suitable habitats in continental Northeast Asia, while species in the Japanese Archipelago retreated, forming the present disjunct distributions.
Siebold's beech,
, is widely distributed across the Japanese Archipelago and islands in Japan Sea. Similar to the northern limit of the geographical distribution of
on the mainland of Hokkaido, the ...northern limit of the distribution of
on islands in the Japan Sea is observed on Okushiri Island (ca 42°
). To understand the genetic relationships of
on Okushiri Island, we examined chloroplast (cp) DNA haplotypes and 11 nuclear microsatellite (SSR) loci among 1,838 individuals from 44 populations from Okushiri Island, mainland Hokkaido, and the northern part of the Tohoku region on Honshu Island. We identified 2 cpDNA haplotypes, which represent not only populations on the Japan Sea coast but also those on the Pacific coast and this suggested the Okushiri Island populations might not be formed by single colonization. Genetic diversity of the Okushiri Island populations of nuclear SSR was not lower than the mainland and the STRUCTURE analysis revealed the Okushiri Island individuals were admixed between Hokkaido and Tohoku clusters. Approximate Bayesian computation inferred that divergence between Tohoku and Hokkaido, and admixture between two populations which generated Okushiri populations occurred before the last glacial maximum (LGM), that is, 7,890 (95% hyper probability density (HPD): 3,420 - 9,910) and 3,870 (95% HPD: 431- 8,540) generations ago, respectively. These inferences were well supported by a geological history which suggested an isolation of Okushiri Island from Hokkaido started prior to the Middle Pleistocene. We discuss the possible persistence of
during the last glacial maximum on northern islands in the Japan Sea such as Okushiri Island.
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