Optimal restoration for pollination services increases forest cover while doubling agricultural profits.

Pollinators are currently facing dramatic declines in abundance and richness across the globe. This can have profound impacts on agriculture, as 75% of globally common food crops benefit from pollination services. As many native bee species require natural areas for nesting, restoration efforts within croplands may be beneficial to support pollinators and enhance agricultural yields. Yet, restoration can be challenging to implement due to large upfront costs and the removal of land from production. Designing sustainable landscapes will require planning approaches that include the complex spatiotemporal dynamics of pollination services flowing from (restored) vegetation into crops. We present a novel planning framework to determine the best spatial arrangement for restoration in agricultural landscapes while accounting for yield improvements over 40 years following restoration. We explored a range of production and conservation goals using a coffee production landscape in Costa Rica as a case study. Our results show that strategic restoration can increase forest cover by approximately 20% while doubling collective landholder profits over 40 years, even when accounting for land taken out of production. We show that restoration can provide immense economic benefits in the long run, which may be pivotal to motivating local landholders to undertake conservation endeavours in pollinator-dependent croplands.

Beyond ecology: ecosystem restoration as a process for social-ecological transformation.

Ecosystem restoration conventionally focuses on ecological targets. However, while ecological targets are crucial to mobilizing political, social, and financial capital, they do not encapsulate the need to: integrate social, economic, and ecological dimensions and systems approaches; reconcile global targets and local objectives; and measure the rate of progress toward multiple and synergistic goals. Restoration is better conceived as an inclusive social-ecological process that integrates diverse values, practices, knowledge, and restoration objectives across temporal and spatial scales and stakeholder groups. Taking a more process-based approach will ultimately enable greater social-ecological transformation, greater restoration effectiveness, and more long-lasting benefits to people and nature across time and place.

Considering landscape-level processes in ecosystem service assessments.

The provision of ecosystem services is inherently spatial. Landscape structure affects service provision through multiple landscape-level processes, such as fragmentation, edge and connectivity effects. These processes can affect areas of ecosystem service supply and demand, and the flows linking those areas. Despite the emergence of sophisticated spatial ecosystem service assessments in the last two decades, we show through a literature review that landscape-level processes are still rarely considered in a comprehensive way. Even when they are considered, landscape effects are mostly limited to landscape composition, and configuration effects are underrepresented. Furthermore, most studies infer ecosystem service provision by only evaluating supply, ignoring demand and flows. Here we present a simple conceptual framework that illustrates how to incorporate landscape-level processes in the assessment of the different components of the service provision chain (supply, demand and flows). Using simulations, we evaluated how estimations of ecosystem service provision change when considering different landscape processes and discussed the implications of disregarding landscape effects. However, to fully implement the framework, a series of challenges linked to mapping and quantifying supply and demand, defining adequate scales of analysis, measuring flows, and parameterizing models for different types of services, still need to be overcome. To promote an adequate use and management of ecosystem services, it is essential to better incorporate landscape processes in ecosystem service assessments. This will lead to more quantitatively accurate and spatially precise estimates.

Advancing Systematic Conservation Planning for Ecosystem Services.

Conservation and sustainable management activities are critical for enhancing ecosystem services. Systematic conservation planning (SCP) is a spatial decision support process used to identify the most cost-effective places for intervention and is increasingly incorporating ecosystem services thinking. Yet, there is no clear guidance on how to incorporate ecosystem service components (i.e., supply, demand, and flow) for multiple beneficiaries into the decision problem underpinning SCP. As such, conservation plans may fall short of maximizing benefits for both people and nature. We propose a benefit-based approach to integrate ecosystem service components into SCP that uses the principles of decision theory. Our approach will improve the likelihood that ecosystem service benefits are enhanced in spatial planning applications.

Reduced FOXM1 Expression Limits Trophoblast Migration and Angiogenesis and Is Associated With Preeclampsia.

Trophoblast cells are often compared to highly invasive carcinoma cells due to their capacity to proliferate in hypoxic conditions and to exhibit analogous vascular, proliferative, migratory, and invasive capacities. Thus, genes that are important for tumorigenesis, such as forkhead box M1 ( FOXM1) may also be involved in processes of trophoblast invasion. Indeed, we found Foxm1 protein and messenger RNA (mRNA) levels decreased as gestational age increased in rat's placentae. Accordingly, when mimicking early placental events in vitro, protein and mRNA expression of FOXM1 increased from 21% to 8% O2, reaching its highest expression at 3% oxygen tension, which reflects early implantation environment, and dropping to very low levels at 1% O2. Remarkably, FOXM1 silencing in JEG-3 cells was able to significantly decrease migration by 27.9%, in comparison with those cells transfected with control siRNA. Moreover, angiogenesis was compromised when conditioned media (CM) from FOXM1-siRNA -JEG-3 (3% O2) was added to human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) cells; however, when CM of JEG-3 cells overexpressing FOXM1 at 1% O2 was added, the ability of HUVEC to form tubule networks was restored. Additionally, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays of FOXM1 knockdown and overexpression experiments in JEG-3 cells revealed that the depletion of FOXM1 at 3% O2 and overexpression of FOXM1 at 1% O2 led to downregulation and upregulation of vascular endothelial growth factor transcriptional (VEGF) levels, respectively. Conversely, we also observed deregulation of FOXM1 in placentae derived from pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia (PE). Therefore, we demonstrate that FOXM1 may be a new regulatory protein of early placentation processes and that under chronic hypoxic conditions (1% O2) and in patients with severe PE, its levels decrease.

Diabetic concentrations of metformin inhibit platelet-mediated ovarian cancer cell progression.

Clinical studies have suggested a survival benefit in ovarian cancer patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus taking metformin, however the mechanism by which diabetic concentrations of metformin could deliver this effect is still poorly understood. Platelets not only represent an important reservoir of growth factors and angiogenic regulators, they are also known to participate in the tumor microenvironment implicated in tumor growth and dissemination. Herein, we investigated if diabetic concentrations of metformin could impinge upon the previously reported observation that platelet induces an increase in the tube forming capacity of endothelial cells (angiogenesis) and upon ovarian cancer cell aggressiveness. We demonstrate that metformin inhibits the increase in angiogenesis brought about by platelets in a mechanism that did not alter endothelial cell migration. In ovarian cancer cell lines and primary cultured cancer cells isolated from the ascitic fluid of ovarian cancer patients, we assessed the effect of combinations of platelets and metformin upon angiogenesis, migration, invasion and cancer sphere formation. The enhancement of each of these parameters by platelets was abrogated by the present of metformin in the vast majority of cancer cell cultures tested. Neither metformin nor platelets altered proliferation; however, metformin inhibited the increase in phosphorylation of focal adhesion kinase induced by platelets. We present the first evidence suggesting that concentrations of metformin present in diabetic patients may reduce the actions of platelets upon both endothelial cells and cancer cell survival and dissemination.

Platelets enhance tissue factor protein and metastasis initiating cell markers, and act as chemoattractants increasing the migration of ovarian cancer cells.

BACKGROUND: An increase in circulating platelets, or thrombocytosis, is recognized as an independent risk factor of bad prognosis and metastasis in patients with ovarian cancer; however the complex role of platelets in tumor progression has not been fully elucidated. Platelet activation has been associated with an epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), while Tissue Factor (TF) protein expression by cancer cells has been shown to correlate with hypercoagulable state and metastasis. The aim of this work was to determine the effect of platelet-cancer cell interaction on TF and "Metastasis Initiating Cell (MIC)" marker levels and migration in ovarian cancer cell lines and cancer cells isolated from the ascetic fluid of ovarian cancer patients. METHODS: With informed patient consent, ascitic fluid isolated ovarian cancer cells, cell lines and ovarian cancer spheres were co-cultivated with human platelets. TF, EMT and stem cell marker levels were determined by Western blotting, flow cytometry and RT-PCR. Cancer cell migration was determined by Boyden chambers and the scratch assay. RESULTS: The co-culture of patient-derived ovarian cancer cells with platelets causes: 1) a phenotypic change in cancer cells, 2) chemoattraction and cancer cell migration, 3) induced MIC markers (EMT/stemness), 3) increased sphere formation and 4) increased TF protein levels and activity. CONCLUSIONS: We present the first evidence that platelets act as chemoattractants to cancer cells. Furthermore, platelets promote the formation of ovarian cancer spheres that express MIC markers and the metastatic protein TF. Our results suggest that platelet-cancer cell interaction plays a role in the formation of metastatic foci.

A mandible arresting system in neotropical social wasps (Vespidae; Polistinae): structural diversity within homogeneous functionality.

Microtrichia are epidermal protuberances that may serve as temporary adhesive devices. Several insects possess these structures; however, they have not previously been reported in social wasps. With scanning electron microscopy, we characterize the shape and abundance of microtrichia in ten species of social wasps (Vespidae: Polistinae) and three species of related taxa (Vespidae: Eumeninae, Pompilidae, and Scoliidae). Semi-thin sections of the head of Leipomeles spilogastra and Apoica albimacula were also studied. We found microtrichia on a thin, flexible membrane connected to the mandible in all the Vespidae specimens. The flexible membrane can be divided into three regions: the basal region that covers the mandibular mesial emargination, the medial region located around the height of the mandibular condyles, and the distal region that appears anterior to the apodeme folding. Basal and distal regions of the membrane are extensively covered by microtrichia while the medial region has either less microtrichia or is entirely devoid of them. The shape and density of the microtrichia differed between species, and these traits are unrelated with nest material construction or phylogenetic closeness. We propose that the microtrichial membrane described is a passive mechanism to keep the wasps' mandibles retracted through a mechanical interlocking system. It is possible that this energy-saving mechanism is present in other mandibulate insects.