太湖生态系统发育的Ecopath with Ecosim动态模拟

以20世纪60年代作为初始状态,采用Ecosim对1961-2002年间太湖生态系统的发育动态进行了模拟。结果表明,在时间强制序列的驱动下,模型较准确地预测了各个功能组的捕捞量和生物量的变化趋势。结果较好地解释了太湖生态系统的发育机制。在不断增强的渔业捕捞压力下,大中型鱼类尤其是顶级肉食性鱼类的资源量遭到破坏,从而减少了对小型鱼虾类的捕食压力,使得这些r型物种占据了系统的统治地位,它们对植食性浮游动物的控制作用,由此从上至下(top-down)地改变了太湖生态系统的结构。而水体的富营养化使得太湖初级生产力显著提高,由于蓝藻不适于动物摄食和利用,使得大量初级生产力未能循环利用,造成水华暴发和底泥有机质富积,进而由下而上(bottom-up)地对整个生态系统造成了不良的影响。因此,建议保护凶猛鱼类和大型鱼类资源,利用营养级串联效应控制小型鱼虾类,来恢复太湖生态系统自然结构、减缓其富营养化程度和逆向发育的进程。

工业互联网高峰论坛盛大召开

＂智·造价值联·创未来＂工业互联网云平台INDICS全球发布2017年6月15日,恰逢航天云网上线两周年,以＂智·造价值联·创未来＂为主题的工业互联网高峰论坛在成都盛大召开。会上,中国航天科工集团公司向全球发布工业互联网平台INDICS＂以全球发布INDICS＋CMSS为起点,航天科工将与全球工业互联网平台企业开展广泛深入的合作。

最后的“完整森林”

完整森林,是一个近似于原始森林,并能够通过遥感学和地理信息系统的手段在地图上加以表现的概念,这个名词最早是由"绿色和平组织"提出的。原始森林,这个让人充满向往的名词究竟是怎样定义的?相关生态类和林业资料这样阐述:"原始森林是指天然形成的、未遭到人类破坏的完整森林生态系统,是陆地生态系统的核心,代表着区域森林生态系统发育的顶级水平,其生物多样性、生态系统复杂性和服务功能是人工林和次生林无法比拟的。"

Feeding ecology of hairtail Trichiurus margarites and largehead hairtail Trichiurus lepturus in the Beibu Gulf, the South China Sea

We evaluated the feeding ecology of largehead hairtail (Trichiurus lepturus) and hairtail (T. margarites). We collected specimens from fishing ports in the Beibu Gulf (Gulf of Tonkin) from October 2008 to September 2009 and analyzed their gut contents. We collected 857 T. lepturus and 666 T. margarites samples. The number of stomachs examined in this study was sufficient to describe the monthly and ontogenetic diet shifts for the two species, as indicated by the trophic diversity curves. T. lepturus was a general omnivore, feeding primarily on Bregmaceros rarisquamosu, Decapterus maruadsi, and Acetes chinensis. Conversely, T. margarites preyed primarily on D. maruadsi, B. rarisquamosus, B. nectabanus, and A. chinensis. Both species exhibited distinct ontogenetic diet shifts. Although the two hairtail specie fed on similar sources in the same habitat, the diet overlap was relatively low. Our results suggest that hairtail play an important role in controlling small pelagic and benthic fish populations in the gulf. This trophic correlation shall be used for developing a marine ecosystem model for the Beibu Gulf.

The Appearance of Ulva laetevirens(Ulvophyceae, Chlorophyta) in the Northeast Coast of the United States of America

Introduced species may outcompete or hybridize with native species, resulting in the loss of native biodiversity or even alteration of ecosystem processes. In this study, we reported an alien distromatic Ulva species, which was found in an embayment(Holly Pond) connected with Long Island Sound, USA. The morphological and anatomical observations in combination with molecular data were used for its identification to species. Anatomy of collected specimens showed that the cell shape in rhizoidal and basal regions was round and the marginal teeth along the basal and median region were not found. These characteristics were primarily identical to the diagnostic characteristics of Ulva laetevirens Areschoug(Chlorophyta). The plastid-encoding tufA and nucleus-encoding ITS1 were used for its molecular identification. Phylogenetic analysis for the tufA gene placed the specimens from Holly Pond in a well-supported clade along with published sequences of U. laetevirens identified early without any sequence divergence. In ITS tree, the sample also formed well-supported clades with the sequences of U. laetevirens with an estimated sequence divergence among the taxa in these clades as low as 1%. These findings confirmed the morpho-anatomical conclusion. Native to Australia, this species was reported in several countries along the Mediterranean coast after the late of 1990 s. This is the first time that U. laetevirens is found in the northeast coast of United States and the second record for Atlantic North America.

Dental Variation Among Asian Colobines, with Specific Reference to the Macaques on the Same Continent

In order to discern dental morphometric variations among the Asian colobines, residuals of the colobines, derived from allometric baselines formed by the Asian macaques （Macaca）, were analyzed with Principal Components Analysis and Euclidean Distances. Results indicated that the widely accepted view that the colobines possess relatively smaller front teeth than the macaques is only the case for the first incisors. The colobines show relatively smaller molars than the macaques. Such profiles may be related to the differences in dietary preferences between the two major groups of the Asian Old World monkeys. The magnitude of such differences is not as great as usullay assumed for the two groups that contain both African and Asian taxa. In other words, the two Asian cercopithecoid groups may have homogenously been shaped by the tectonic modifications and climate alterations in the past five million years. There exist marked differences among the Asian colobines when each of the genera is compared with macaques; the dental profile reflects not only the variation in geographic distribution but also in phylogenetic divergence. Thus, the snub-nosed monkeys （Rhinopithecus） and the gray langurs （Semnopithecus） are characterized by relatively larger molars than the other colobines - larger even than those of the macaques. The differences among Asian colobines, depicted by Euclidean Distances, seems to reflect the relationship of the phylogeny and evolution between colobines and cercopithecines.

Microcosm Study： Effect of Fe（II） Addition in Sawdust for Phosphorous Recovery from Eutrophic Aquatic Ecosystems

The recovery of phosphorus in eutrophic water bodies adsorption in sawdust can be promoted by Fe（III） oxide-hydroxides is important to ensure water and food security, phosphorus biofllms. The main objective of this study was to analyze the influence of iron addition in sawdust on phosphorus adsorption. The microcosm experiment was performed with water and sediment samples from a eutrophic reservoir located in Barra Bonita/SP. Three control flasks （without bags） and 18 others as treatments （with two bags filled with sawdust, with or without previous Fe（II） addition） were assembled. The addition of iron did not promote greater phosphorus adsorption, the sawdust without previous iron addition had a total phosphorus concentration of 49μg·P·g^-1, while the sawdust with previous iron addition had 14.4μg.p.g^-1. The use of sawdust for the remediation of eutrophic water bodies is interesting, especially considering the low-cost and possibility of reuse as fertilizer in agriculture.

Testing three pipelines for 18S rDNA-based metabarcoding of soil faunal diversity

A number of basic and applied questions in ecology and environmental management require the characterization of soil and leaf litter faunal diversity. Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing of barcode-gene amplicons ('metabarcoding') have made it possible to survey biodiversity in a robust and efficient way. However, one obstacle to the widespread adoption of this technique is the need to choose amongst many candidates for bioinformatic processing of the raw sequencing data. We compare three candidate pipelines for the processing of 18S small subunit rDNA metabarcode data from solid substrates: (i) USEARCH/CROP, (ii) Denoiser/UCLUST, and (iii) OCTUPUS. The three pipelines produced reassuringly similar and highly correlated assessments of community composition that are dominated by taxa known to characterize the sampled environments. However, OCTUPUS appears to inflate phylogenetic diversity, because of higher sequence noise. We therefore recommend either the USEARCH/CROP or Denoiser/UCLUST pipelines, both of which can be run within the QIIME (Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology) environment.

A taxonomic and phylogenetic perspective on plant community assembly along an elevational gradient in subtropical forests

Aims Biodiversity patterns along elevational gradients have been well documented.Yet,the variations of biodiversity patterns along elevations and their underlying mechanisms are still unclear.Integrating multiple facets of biodiversity provides novel insights into the mechanisms for driving community assembly.In this study,species abundance information was incorporated into taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity to reveal the ecological and evolutionary forces of plant community assembly along an elevational gradient in subtropical forests.Methods We selected 17 woody plant plots along an elevational gradient from 270 to 1470 m in eastern China’s subtropical forests.Both presence-based and abundance-based measures of angiosperm species were used to quantify taxonomic alpha diversity,phylogenetic alpha diversity,phylogenetic relatedness,as well as taxonomic and phylogenetic dissimilarity among these plots.And the relations between these measures and climatic and topographic variables were analyzed.Important Findings For both abundance-weighted and unweighted measures,we observed an overall increasing pattern for taxonomic alpha diversity along elevation,and distance-decay trends of taxonomic and phylogenetic similarity with increased elevational distances.However,there were disparity patterns of phylogenetic alpha diversity between abundance-weighted and unweighted measures.For phylogenetic structure,there was no significant trend along elevation.Both topographical and microclimatic variables were main drivers of diversity patterns and phylogenetic structure.Compared with unweighted measures,abundance-weighted measures were strongly related with the slope and stand basal area.Overall,our results prove that deterministic processes mediated by local species abundance imprint on plant community composition along the elevational gradient.

Genetic differentiation in two widespread, open-forest bird species of Southeast Asia （Copsychus saularis and Megalaima haemacephala）： Insights from ecological niche modeling

Ecological niche modeling has emerged as an useful tool in the investigation of the phylogeographic histories of species or communities in a region. The high biodiversity （oftentimes cryptic）, and complex geography and geological history of Southeast Asia particularly call for multipronged approaches in phylogeographic investigations. Past studies have focused on taxa that are associated with lowland rainforests, which is the dominant natural vegetation type. Here, we combine published phylogenetic data, ecological niche modeling and paleo-climate models to reveal potential drivers of divergence in two open-forest bird species, the oriental magpie-robin Copsychus saularis and Coppersmith barbet Megalaima haemacephala. In spite of broad overlap in current distributions, there are subtle differences in their climatic niches, which result in different responses to past climatic changes. For C saularis, both Last Glacial Maximum climate models indicated that the entire Sundaland was climati- cally suitable, while phylogenetic analyses found divergent eastern and western Sundaland lineages. We thus postulate that this genetic divergence was a result of past separations of coastal habitats into eastern and western portions due to the emergence of Sunda shelf as sea-level fell. The current separation of morphological subspecies in Borneo is maintained by low climatic suitability （high annual rainfall） in certain regions. The extirpation of M. haemacephala from Borneo and southern Malay Peninsula might have been driven by unsuitable conditions （high temperature seasonality） in central Sundaland and/or the lack of open woodlands. Our study shows that ecological niche modeling adds a powerful dimension to our attempt to understand lineage evolution in space [Current Zoology 61 （5）： 922-934, 2015].

Disentangling spatial,environmental and historical effects on tropical forest tree species turnover

Aims We aimed at disentangling the effects of spatial distance,current and past environmental dissimilarity,and their combinations on tree community taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover by addressing the following questions:(i)Is tree community taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover related to the indirect effects of spatial distance via environmental dissimilarity?(ii)Does tree community taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover respond to paleoclimate(Last Glacial Maximum and Mid-Holocene)?Methods The study was carried out in 14 Atlantic rainforest sites in Brazil(20.4 ha sampled)containing 615 tree species from 83 plant families.We obtained plot-level geographic coordinates and soil variables and site-level bioclimatic variables in the current,Mid-Holocene and Last Glacial Maximum.We used structural equation models with a distance-based approach to(i)test the direct effects of spatial distance and environmental dissimilarity and(ii)test the indirect effects of spatial distance via environmental dissimilarity on taxonomic(Bray–Curtis distance)and phylogenetic turnover(Comdist and Comdistnt distances).Important Findings Our results suggest a weak indirect effect of spatial distance via environmental dissimilarity on taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover.Tree community turnover was driven by the direct effects of neutral,niche-based and historical processes.Thus,we inferred that the paleoclimate(historical processes)promoted the selection of the clades that gave rise to the current flora,while spatial distances(neutral processes)limited the dispersal range of species from the regional pool and environmental conditions(niche-based processes)locally selected the taxa that are able to persist.

Orbit orientation in didelphid marsupials （Didelphimorphia： Didelphidae）

Usually considered a morphologically conservative group, didelphid marsupials present consider- able variation in ecology and body size, some of which were shown to relate to morphological structures. Thus, changes on orbit morphology are likely and could be related to that variation. We calculated orbit orientation in 873 specimens of 16 Didelphidae genera yielding estimates of orbits convergence （their position relative to midsagittal line） and verticality （their position relative to frontal plane）. We then compared similarities in these variables across taxa to ecological, morpho- logical and phylogenetic data to evaluate the influencing factors on orbit orientation in didelphids. We found an inverse relation between convergence and verticality. Didelphids orbits have low ver- ticality but are highly convergent, yet orbit orientation differs significantly between taxa, and that variation is related to morphological aspects of the cranium. Rostral variables are the only morpho- logical features correlated with orbit orientation： increasing snout length yields more convergent orbits, whereas increase on snout breadth imply in more vertical orbits. Size and encephalization quotients are uncorrelated with orbit orientation. Among ecological data, diet showed significant correlation whereas locomotion is the factor that less affects the position of orbits. Phylogeny is uncorrelated to any orbital parameters measured. Ecological factors seemingly play a more import- ant role on orbit orientation than previously expected, and differentiation on orbit orientation seems to be more functional than inherited. Thus, despite the apparent homogeneity on didelphid morphology, there is subtle morphological variability that may be directly related to feeding behavior.