First Successful Nesting of Black Oystercatchers among Endangered California Least Terns along the West Coast of North America

A pair of Black Oystercatchers(Haematopus bachmani)established a nest in June 2022 at“Tern Town”,an island located in Hayward,California along the eastern side of the San Francisco Bay.This is the first documented occurrence of oystercatchers successfully nesting and fledgling young in association with California Least Terns.The island provides nesting habitat for three special status species.Since 2015,and for a total of six breeding seasons,the endangered California Least Tern(Sternula antillarum browni),the threatened Western Snowy Plover(Charadrius alexandrinus nivosus)and species-of-special-concern Black Skimmer(Rynchops niger),have nested successfully,in association with American Avocet(Recurvirostra americana)and Black-necked Stilt(Himantopus mexicanus).We collected shells near the oystercatcher nest to assess their diet.Diet data showed the oystercatchers foraged on,in decreasing order of abundance,Japanese Little-necked Clams(Ruditapes philippinarum),Ribbed Mussels(Geukensia demissa),Bent-nose Clams(Macoma nasuta),Limpets(Patellogastropoda sp.)and Bay Mussels(Mytilus edulis).This new report on breeding Black Oystercatchers indicates that managing habitat for California Least Tern,Western Snowy Plover,and Black Skimmer can also benefit Black Oystercatcher.This site-specific information on breeding Black Oystercatchers supports recovery plan tasks that are consistent with managing habitat for California Least Tern,Western Snowy Plover and Black Skimmer.

Assessing nest attentiveness of Common Terns via video cameras and temperature loggers

Background:While nest attentiveness plays a critical role in the reproductive success of avian species,nest attentiveness data with high temporal resolution is not available for many species.However,improvements in both video monitoring and temperature logging devices present an opportunity to increase our understanding of this aspect of avian behavior.Methods:To investigate nest attentiveness behaviors and evaluate these technologies,we monitored 13 nests across two Common Tern(Sterna hirundo)breeding colonies with a paired video camera-temperature logger approach,while monitoring 63 additional nests with temperature loggers alone.Observations occurred from May to August of 2017 on Poplar(Chesapeake Bay,Maryland,USA)and Skimmer Islands(Isle of Wight Bay,Maryland,USA).We examined data respective to four times of day:Morning(civil dawn‒11:59),Peak(12:00‒16:00),Cooling(16:01‒civil dusk),and Night(civil dusk‒civil dawn).Results:While successful nests had mostly short duration off-bouts and maintained consistent nest attentiveness throughout the day,failed nests had dramatic reductions in nest attentiveness during the Cooling and Night periods(p<0.05)with one colony experiencing repeated nocturnal abandonment due to predation pressure from a Great Horned Owl(Bubo virginianus).Incubation appeared to ameliorate ambient temperatures during Night,as nests were significantly warmer during Night when birds were on versus off the nest(p<0.05).Meanwhile,off-bouts during the Peak period occurred during higher ambient temperatures,perhaps due to adults leaving the nest during the hottest periods to perform belly soaking.Unfortunately,temperature logger data alone had limited ability to predict nest attentiveness status during shorter bouts,with results highly dependent on time of day and bout duration.While our methods did not affect hatching success(p>0.05),video-monitored nests did have significantly lower clutch sizes(p<0.05).Conclusions:The paired use of iButtons and video cameras enabled a detailed description of the incubation behavior of COTE.However,while promising for future research,the logistical and potential biological complications involved in the use of these methods suggest that careful planning is needed before these devices are utilized to ensure data is collected in a safe and successful manner.

THE PATTERN OF GENERAL ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION IN EASTERN ASIA BEFORE THE UPLIFT OF THE TIBETAN PLATEAU

The global climatic change study is a hot point today.As the pattern of the general circulation of the atmosphere is the key factor for climate,the reconstruction of the pattern of the past general circulation of the atmosphere has become important part of the global climatic change study.The paleowind belts are the comprising part of the past general circulation of the atmosphere and also the records of the circulation,therefore,their reconstruction will be helpful to the reconstruction of the general circulation of the atmosphere.In present years,the pattern of the general circulation of the atmosphere has attracted great concern from scientists.For example,Zhang Linyuan and Liu Dongsheng, based on the existence and inexistence of the Tibetan Plateau and paleogeography,divide the evolution of the general circulation of the atmosphere in eastern asia into two stages:the planetary wind stage before the uplift of the plateau and the monsoon stage after the uplift of the plateau which is subdivided into ancient monsoon and modern monsoon stages.While Dong Guangrong et al., Jiang Xinsheng et al. and Cooke et al, based on the latitudinal distribution of the Cretaceous and Tertiary deserts and the generation of arid climate,suggest that there was a subtropical high pressure zone across the eastern asia and was a planetary wind system,but have not found any direct record of the circulation.It is true that before the Early Tertiary,not only organism, but also inorganism,i.e.,biogeography and lithogeography, show strong zonal distribution.It can only indicate that zonal climate was evident at that time.Of course, as the climate is the result of the influences on the ground by zones of the circulation,it is reasonable to deduce the existence of zonal circulation,i.e. the the existence of the planetary wind system,from the zonal climate.But it would be much better if direct record of planetary wind system were found.Prevailing winds are the main geological agent for a desert which must leave deep stamps on the desert.The stamps on modern desert are reflected by dune migrating directions and on paleodesert by foreset dip directions..It is the most direct geological record for reconstructing paleowind belts and has been extensively used to reconstruct paleowind belts,paleogeography,paleoclimate and even to check the paleolatitude determined by paleomagnetism (for example, Opdyke and Runcorn, 1960; Creer, 1958; Pook, 1962; Bigarella and Salamuni,1961).

Abundance and prey capture success of Common Terns(Sterna hirundo)and Pied Kingfishers(Ceryle rudis)in relation to water clarity in south-east coastal Ghana

Background: Water clarity may negatively influence rate of plunge diving and prey capture success of piscivorous plunge-diving birds, and therefore has implications for their conservation in polluted urban wetlands. We studied the relationship between water clarity and the abundance and prey capture success of Pied Kingfishers(Ceryle rudis) and Common Terns(Sterna hirundo) in two polluted coastal waters of south-east Ghana—the Weija Lake and Densu Delta Ramsar Site.Methods: On each wetland, data on abundance and prey capture success of plunge-divers were collected in four spatio-temporal quadrats of 100 m × 100 m and analysed with concurrent measurements of water quality parameters using GLM regression with Pearson's correlation coefficients.Results: Mean prey capture success of Pied Kingfishers(34.7 e two species responded differently to water clarity. The± 13.1%) and Common Terns(35.3 abundance of Common Terns was± 11.0%) were similar but th significantly higher in less transparent/more turbid water while that of Pied Kingfishers showed no significant relationship with turbidity and transparency. In contrast, the prey capture success of Common Terns was neither related to transparency nor turbidity, as opposed to that of Pied Kingfishers which was significantly higher in more turbid/less transparent waters. Correlations between capture success and bird abundance, as well as capture attempts were insignificant, suggesting that increased fish abundance associated with cloudy water may not necessarily promote higher abundance and capture success of foraging birds. Thus, when foraging in less transparent water, capture success may depend more on predator avoidance by fish prey than lower prey detectability of foraging birds.Conclusion: Within a gradient of 15–51 cm transparency studied, lower water clarity did not constrain prey capture success of Common Terns and Pied Kingfishers. Further studies on the foraging ecology of plunge-divers in coastal Ghana are however required to make firm conclusions on the relationship between water clarity and foraging birds and fish prey abundances, as well as capture success.

GPS tracking data reveal the annual spatiotemporal movement patterns of Bridled Terns

Understanding the spatiotemporal patterns of animal movement is a central theme in the growing field of movement ecology.The Bridled Tern(Onychoprion anaethetus)is widely distributed across tropical and subtropical latitudes;however,knowledge of its annual movement is based only on relatively scarce recoveries of ringed birds.Studying the annual movement of pelagic seabirds is important to identify the impact of changes of marine habitats on them.We examined fine-scaled movement patterns of the species from two colonies in southern China by using GPS-GSM transmitters in 2018–2022.Twenty-three terns bred in Xichiyu Islet and Qilianyu Islet while wintered in four different sites:Gulf of Thailand,Natuna Islands,The Sulu Sea,and Makassar Strait.Bridled Terns made small detours and employed a fly-and-forage strategy with frequent stopovers to forage during autumn migration,but took more direct routes and reduced the need for stopovers during spring migration.Distance of migration between breeding and winter sites was significantly longer in autumn(average 3635 km)when compared with spring(2777 km).Ten birds with whole-year tracking data used the same breeding sites both years and four birds with tracking data of two consecutive years returned to the same wintering area,indicating that Bridled Terns are highly faithful to their breeding and wintering grounds.

Breeding Habitat Use of Little Tern along Enshunada Coast-Tenryu River Continuum in Relation to Dam Development

Breeding habitat of the Little Tern in a coast-river continuum was studied in relation to dam development. A habitat shift from coast to river occurred decades after dam construction as the dam-caused coastal erosion became manifested. On the other hand, the riverine habitat was affected by dam both positively and negatively. The positive aspect is the reduction of inundation risk for the habitat, and the negative effect is the vegetation development on the habitat. As a result, the bird did not abandon the riverine habitat although its physical characteristics may be considered as suboptimal. In addition, reasoning was given to explain why an artificially created habitat was not used by the bird. A general message resulting from this study is that species adaptive behaviors should be taken into consideration in assessing environmental impacts caused by human activities such as dam development.

Pair bonds during the annual cycle of a long-distance migrant,the Arctic Tern(Sterna paradisaea)

Background:The extent to which pairs remain together during the annual cycle is a key question in the behav-ioural ecology of migratory birds.While a few species migrate and winter as family units,for most the extent to which breeding partners associate in the non-breeding season is unknown.The Arctic Tern(Sterna paradisaea)has one of the longest migrations of any species,and the aim of this study was to establish whether or not partners remain together after breeding.Methods:Leg-mounted geolocators were fitted to breeding pairs of Arctic Terns nesting on the Farne Islands,North-umberland,UK.The devices were recovered for analysis the following year.Results:Analysis of data for the six pairs which returned the following year showed that partners departed from the colony at different times after breeding and migrated independently to different Antarctic regions.Partners also departed from the Antarctic and turned to the breeding colony independently.One third of the pairs divorced on return.Conclusions:For long-distance migrants reliant on unpredictable foraging opportunities,it may not be viable to remain as pairs away from the breeding colony.Synchrony in arrival times at the breeding colony may maximise the chance of retaining a familiar partner,but could be affected by environmental factors in wintering areas or along migration routes.

Hybrid Sooty Tern Optimization and Differential Evolution for Feature Selection

In this paper,a hybrid model based on sooty tern optimization algo-rithm(STOA)is proposed to optimize the parameters of the support vector machine(SVM)and identify the best feature sets simultaneously.Feature selec-tion is an essential process of data preprocessing,and it aims to find the most rele-vant subset of features.In recent years,it has been applied in many practical domains of intelligent systems.The application of SVM in many fields has proved its effectiveness in classification tasks of various types.Its performance is mainly determined by the kernel type and its parameters.One of the most challenging process in machine learning is feature selection,intending to select effective and representative features.The main disadvantages of feature selection processes included in classical optimization algorithm are local optimal stagnation and slow convergence.Therefore,the hybrid model proposed in this paper merges the STOA and differential evolution(DE)to improve the search efficiency and con-vergence rate.A series of experiments are conducted on 12 datasets from the UCI repository to comprehensively and objectively evaluate the performance of the proposed method.The superiority of the proposed method is illustrated from dif-ferent aspects,such as the classification accuracy,convergence performance,reduced feature dimensionality,standard deviation(STD),and computation time.

Panda and Colorful Lan terns as the Highlights on China Festival in Moscow

On September 13 to 15, a series of events of the two-day China Festival, dedicated to celebrate the 70^th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic ot China and the establishment of China-Russia diplomatic relations.The China Festival was initiated by the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and supported by the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Russia, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China, China Cultural Center in Moscow and other government bodies and organizations from both countries.

新发展格局下农产品流通系统构建思考

梳理了2018年以来国内外在冷链物流、农产品批发市场、农产品品牌、现代化协同四个方面的研究热点,并立足于新发展格局的背景,深入剖析了农产品流通系统的发展现状;发现我国的农产品流通系统仍处于初级发展阶段,在生产、分配、流通和消费四个环节中面临着一系列亟待解决的问题。这些问题主要表现为冷链物流效益低下、品牌竞争力不强以及现代化协同程度较低等。针对这些问题,从冷链物流系统、农产品批发市场、农产品品牌和现代化水平等方面提出了农产品流通系统的发展对策,其重点在于利用现代化技术优化协同运作体系,构建农产品流通系统的协同创新模式,以提升农产品流通的效益和服务质量。

基于LE-ISTOA-SVM的聚合釜化工过程故障诊断

聚合釜是制备高分子化合物的最主要设备,其能否稳定的运行关系到产品的质量以及人员、设备的安全。但是,现代化工生产流程非常复杂,化工过程诊断数据具有高维非线性的特点。提出了基于LE-ISTOA-SVM的聚合釜化工过程故障诊断方法。首先,使用拉普拉斯特征映射算法(Laplace Feature Mapping Algorithm,LE)对故障数据进行降维。然后,使用改进乌燕鸥优化算法(Improved Sooty Tern Optimization Algorithm,ISTOA)优化SVM(Support Vector Machine,SVM)的参数来提高其性能。最后,利用聚合釜的实验数据做仿真测试。测试结果表明,该方法有较好的诊断效果。

基于STOA-XGBoost的风电机组滚动轴承故障诊断

为保证风电机组的正常运行,提高风电机组滚动轴承故障诊断的可靠性,提出了一种基于STOA-XGBoost的风电机组滚动轴承故障诊断方法,提取振动信号时域特征作为故障特征,使用乌燕鸥优化算法对极端梯度提升树的超参数进行优化,提高模型的泛化能力和预测精度,利用训练好的模型进行故障诊断。实例表明,此诊断模型可以更加高效地识别风电机组滚动轴承故障。

红砖古厝元素在鞋靴设计中的应用

本文以闽南红砖古厝的装饰纹样为切入点,系统阐述了闽南红砖古厝的建筑特色、艺术价值和红砖装饰纹样样式;着重分析红砖四瓣柿蒂纹装饰纹样,对四瓣柿蒂纹和相关装饰元素进行外观特征提取和纹样的解构,让红砖古厝元素的图案与色彩通过现代设计的重组更好地与鞋靴设计结合。在现代鞋靴设计中融入红砖古厝元素,既能提高鞋靴设计的艺术风格,增加鞋靴产品的市场竞争力,又能更好地传播与深化人们对闽南红砖古厝这一非物质文化遗产的认知。

高平市地质灾害时空分布规律及孕灾地质条件分析

山西省高平市位于山西省东南部,是地质灾害易发区域,在对高平市现有地质灾害调查的基础上,分析了市内地质灾害的空间及时间分布规律,并进行了地质灾害孕灾地质条件的分析,为高平市地质灾害防治管理提供基础依据。

基于改进乌燕鸥算法的主动配电网优化调度

为了提高主动配电网运行经济性,提升风光利用率,提出了一种基于改进乌燕鸥算法AND优化调度方法。综合考虑ADN运行过程中的各类成本及售电收益,建立了以调度内ADN总成本的主动配电网优化调度模型。采用混沌初始化、免碰撞因子非线性变化、莱维飞行等方法对乌燕鸥算法进行改进,得到了优化性能更好的ISTOA算法。采用ISTOA算法对ADN优化调度模型进行求解,并与其他算法对比。结果表明,经ISTOA算法优化得到的ADN总成本为4 307.98元,在求解精度、进化代数和收敛时间方面均优于其他方法,验证了所提AND优化调度方法实用性和优越性。

攀西林火时空分布格局与气候影响因素的空间异质性研究

基于四川攀西地区2004—2020年防火期林火灾情数据和气象数据,对攀西林火的时间分布特征、空间分布规律、主要气候影响因子分布趋势与格局进行挖掘;利用ArcGIS格网法,结合双变量空间自相关分析方法,探讨气候影响因子对攀西林火发生的影响机制。结果表明:2004—2020年攀西地区林火发生次数随时间发展呈现上升趋势,其中2004—2014年间,火灾次数和过火面积波动增加;2015—2020年火灾次数显著下降,但过火面积呈增加趋势,攀西地区林火主要发生在河谷盆地和丘陵地带,且多集中在丘陵的边缘地带。攀枝花市是林火频发区,凉山州次之。不同级别林火对不同时期气候影响因子的响应存在差异,火险期最高气温、降水、相对湿度及连续无降水日数的相关性显著,而非火险期连续无降水日数和平均风速的相关性较高,各气象要素与林火的逐月滞后相关也存在差异,表明前期气温、降水通过影响地面可燃物进而影响林火发生,持续性的干旱极有可能引发火灾。空间相关显示,林火次数与气温、蒸发、连续无雨日数的高高值主要分布在攀西地区的河谷盆地及丘陵区域,降水、相对湿度与林火的低高值聚集在北部的山原区,平均风速、干旱指数与林火的低高值和低低值聚集在西部山原区,表明攀西地区河谷盆地及丘陵区域的高温干旱使林火呈现聚集效应;而攀西区域南部的山地区,由于海拔较高,人为活动少火源较少,虽然是高温干旱区,也未出现林火聚集效应。

Lévy飞行的正余弦乌燕鸥混合算法及应用

为解决标准乌燕鸥算法(STOA)易陷入局部最优和收敛速度慢等缺点,提出一种混合正余弦算法(SCA)和Lévy飞行的自适应乌燕鸥算法(SLSTOA)。采用正余弦算法的搜索方式,同时采用非线性递减自适应正弦因子,改进乌燕鸥算法的攻击搜索方式,来增强STOA算法的全局与局部探索能力。乌燕鸥个体和最优个体通过Lévy飞行策略进行变异,来增加种群多样性和扩大搜索空间,以达到提高跳出局部最优和全局探索能力。与四种先进的元启发式算法比较,SLSTOA算法性能通过6个基准测试函数进行评价,结果表明,相比其他四种元启发式算法,SLSTOA算法精度高、稳定性好和鲁棒性强。同时为验证SLSTOA算法的科学性与实用性,将其应用于解决32t/22.5m桥式起重机主梁结构优化设计中。

基于改进乌燕鸥算法的移动机器人路径规划

为克服传统智能算法在解决复杂环境下移动机器人路径规划问题中存在的搜索效率慢和寻优精度低等不足,提出改进乌燕鸥优化算法(ISTOA)。以乌燕鸥算法(STOA)为基础,引入Circle混沌映射机制保证初始种群的质量,提升算法初期搜索效率。同时,提出旋转式翻筋斗搜索策略,对算法的扑食位置进行更新,提高了算法的局部寻优能力。在迁徙过程中,混合正弦控制非碰撞因子和自适应Lévy飞行策略平衡了算法的全局搜索和局部搜索。通过3种不同环境下移动机器人路径规划案例验证了改进乌燕鸥优化算法的有效性。结果表明:改进乌燕鸥优化算法可快速且稳定获得全局最优路径,整体寻优能力优于其他算法,有效地解决了移动机器人在复杂环境中的最优路径规划问题。