Paclitaxel and carboplatin combination chemotherapy has remained the standard of care in the front-line therapy of advanced epithelial ovarian cancer during the last decade. Maintenance chemotherapy ...has not been proven to impact on overall survival. Acceptable alternatives include weekly paclitaxel plus 3-weekly carboplatin, the addition of bevacizumab to 3-weekly carboplatin and paclitaxel, and intraperitoneal chemotherapy. In particular, anti-angiogenic therapy has been identified as the most promising targeted therapy, and the addition of bevacizumab to first-line chemotherapy followed by a maintenance period of bevacizumab in monotherapy has shown to prolong progression-free survival. This was considered the proof of concept of the value of anti-angiogenic therapy in the front-line of ovarian cancer, and the results of two additional clinical trials with anti-angiogenic tyrosine kinase inhibitors have shown results in the same direction.
Okinawa is the largest and most populated island of the Ryukyu Archipelago in southern Japan and is renowned for its natural resources and beauty. Similar as to what has been happening in the rest of ...the country, Okinawa Island has been affected by an increasing amount of development and construction work. The trend has been particularly acute after reversion to Japanese sovereignty in 1972, following 27 years of post-war American administration. A coastline once characterized by extended sandy beaches surrounded by coral reefs now includes tracts delimited by seawalls, revetments, and other human-made hardening structures. Additionally, part of coastal Okinawa Island was obtained by land-filling shallow ocean areas (land reclamation). Nevertheless, the current extension of the artificial coastline, as well as the level of fragmentation of the natural coastline are unclear, due to the lack of both published studies and easily accessible and updated datasets. The aims of this research were to quantify the extension of coastline alterations in Okinawa Island, including the amount of land-filling performed over the last 41 years, and to describe the coastlines that have been altered the most as well as those that are still relatively pristine. The analyses were performed using a reference map of Okinawa Island based on GIS vector data extracted from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) coastline dataset (average node distance for Okinawa Island = 24 m), in addition to satellite and aerial photography from multiple providers. We measured 431.8 km of altered coastline, equal to about 63% of the total length of coastline in Okinawa Island. Habitat fragmentation is also an issue as the remaining natural coastline was broken into 239 distinct tracts (mean length = 1.05 km). Finally, 21.03 km.sup.2 of the island's surface were of land reclaimed over the last 41 years. The west coast has been altered the most, while the east coast is in relatively more natural conditions, particularly the northern part, which has the largest amount of uninterrupted natural coastline. Given the importance of the ecosystem services that coastal and marine ecosystems provide to local populations of subtropical islands, including significant economic income from tourism, conservation of remaining natural coastlines should be given high priority.
Loss of biodiversity from lower to upper trophic levels reduces overall productivity and stability of coastal ecosystems in our oceans, but rarely are these changes documented across both time and ...space. The characterisation of environmental DNA (eDNA) from sediment and seawater using metabarcoding offers a powerful molecular lens to observe marine biota and provides a series of 'snapshots' across a broad spectrum of eukaryotic organisms. Using these next-generation tools and downstream analytical innovations including machine learning sequence assignment algorithms and co-occurrence network analyses, we examined how anthropogenic pressures may have impacted marine biodiversity on subtropical coral reefs in Okinawa, Japan. Based on 18 S ribosomal RNA, but not ITS2 sequence data due to inconsistent amplification for this marker, as well as proxies for anthropogenic disturbance, we show that eukaryotic richness at the family level significantly increases with medium and high levels of disturbance. This change in richness coincides with compositional changes, a decrease in connectedness among taxa, an increase in fragmentation of taxon co-occurrence networks, and a shift in indicator taxa. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the ability of eDNA to act as a barometer of disturbance and provide an exemplar of how biotic networks and coral reefs may be impacted by anthropogenic activities.
Abstract
Anthozoan cnidarians (corals and sea anemones) include some of the world’s most important foundation species, capable of building massive reef complexes that support entire ecosystems. ...Although previous molecular phylogenetic analyses have revealed widespread homoplasy of the morphological characters traditionally used to define orders and families of anthozoans, analyses using mitochondrial genes or rDNA have failed to resolve many key nodes in the phylogeny. With a fully resolved, time-calibrated phylogeny for 234 species constructed from hundreds of ultraconserved elements and exon loci, we explore the evolutionary origins of the major clades of Anthozoa and some of their salient morphological features. The phylogeny supports reciprocally monophyletic Hexacorallia and Octocorallia, with Ceriantharia as the earliest diverging hexacorals; two reciprocally monophyletic clades of Octocorallia; and monophyly of all hexacoral orders with the exception of the enigmatic sea anemone Relicanthus daphneae. Divergence dating analyses place Anthozoa in the Cryogenian to Tonian periods (648–894 Ma), older than has been suggested by previous studies. Ancestral state reconstructions indicate that the ancestral anthozoan was a solitary polyp that had bilateral symmetry and lacked a skeleton. Colonial growth forms and the ability to precipitate calcium carbonate evolved in the Ediacaran (578 Ma) and Cambrian (503 Ma) respectively; these hallmarks of reef-building species have subsequently arisen multiple times independently in different orders. Anthozoans formed associations with photosymbionts by the Devonian (383 Ma), and photosymbioses have been gained and lost repeatedly in all orders. Together, these results have profound implications for the interpretation of the Precambrian environment and the early evolution of metazoans.Bilateral symmetry; coloniality; coral; early metazoans; exon capture; Hexacorallia; Octocorallia photosymbiosis; sea anemone; ultraconserved elements.
"For scholars of social stratification one of the key questions regarding educational expansion is whether it diminishes or magnifies existing inequalities in educational attainment. The effect of ...expansion on educational inequality in tertiary education is of particular importance, as tertiary education has become increasingly relevant for labour market prospects and life course opportunities. Our article studies the access to tertiary education of students with different social origins in light of educational expansion in Germany. First, we examine inequalities in access to four vertical alternatives of postsecondary education by means of multinomial regression with national data from four school-leaver surveys from 1983, 1990, 1994, and 1999. Second, for those students who enrol at a tertiary institution, effects of social origin on horizontal choices of fields of study are analysed. Results show that unequal opportunities to access postsecondary and tertiary institutions remain constant at a high level. Likewise, social background effects have not changed over time for the choice of field of study. Thus, students from different social backgrounds did not change their educational strategies irrespective of the ongoing expansion of secondary and tertiary education." Forschungsmethode: empirisch-quantitativ; empirisch. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1983 bis 2002. (author's abstract, IAB-Doku).
Temperate reefs are at the forefront of warming-induced community alterations resulting from poleward range shifts. This tropicalisation is exemplified and amplified by tropical species' invasions of ...temperate herbivory functions. However, whether other temperate ecosystem functions are similarly invaded by tropical species, and by what drivers, remains unclear. We examine tropicalisation footprints in nine reef fish functional groups using trait-based analyses and biomass of 550 fish species across tropical to temperate gradients in Japan and Australia. We discover that functional niches in transitional communities are asynchronously invaded by tropical species, but with congruent invasion schedules for functional groups across the two hemispheres. These differences in functional group tropicalisation point to habitat availability as a key determinant of multi-species range shifts, as in the majority of functional groups tropical and temperate species share functional niche space in suitable habitat. Competition among species from different thermal guilds played little part in limiting tropicalisation, rather available functional space occupied by temperate species indicates that tropical species can invade. Characterising these drivers of reef tropicalisation is pivotal to understanding, predicting, and managing marine community transformation.
Consequences of reef phase shifts on fish communities remain poorly understood. Studies on the causes, effects and consequences of phase shifts on reef fish communities have only been considered for ...coral-to-macroalgae shifts. Therefore, there is a large information gap regarding the consequences of novel phase shifts and how these kinds of phase shifts impact on fish assemblages. This study aimed to compare the fish assemblages on reefs under normal conditions (relatively high cover of corals) to those which have shifted to a dominance of the zoantharian Palythoa cf. variabilis on coral reefs in Todos os Santos Bay (TSB), Brazilian eastern coast. We examined eight reefs, where we estimated cover of corals and P. cf. variabilis and coral reef fish richness, abundance and body size. Fish richness differed significantly between normal reefs (48 species) and phase-shift reefs (38 species), a 20% reduction in species. However there was no difference in fish abundance between normal and phase shift reefs. One fish species, Chaetodon striatus, was significantly less abundant on normal reefs. The differences in fish assemblages between different reef phases was due to differences in trophic groups of fish; on normal reefs carnivorous fishes were more abundant, while on phase shift reefs mobile invertivores dominated.
Shoreline armouring has progressively affected the coastal landscapes of countries all over the world, and armouring construction will increase in coming years as a consequence of climate change. ...Armouring has the potential to affect coastal environments and induce changes in the abundance and diversity of marine communities, and its effects might by increased by wide adoption. Moreover, compared with temperate locations, the effects of armouring have been less studied in tropical and subtropical areas. Okinawa Island, the largest and most populated island of the Ryukyu Archipelago in southern Japan, has been affected by numerous civil and military engineering works. After decades of development, less than 40% of its coastline remains natural, and yet impacts from armouring on local marine communities have been overlooked until recent years. The aim of this research was to evaluate effects of near-shore armouring on the surrounding environment by comparing diversity and abundance of coral rubble mobile cryptofauna benthic communities between armoured and control sites. Across six different geographic locations, coral rubble was sampled in front of subtidal breakwaters and at nearby control sites. Armoured sites were associated with lower cryptofauna abundances and reduced richness and diversity at higher taxonomic levels (phylum and class). Reduction in spatial complexity could be a plausible reason for the observed patterns. Impacts could be mitigated by combining technical innovations, habitat restoration, and use of natural spaces as buffers for coastal protection. Since less than half of Okinawa Island’s coastline remains in a natural state, environmental conservation should be prioritized.
PDF
