A structured open dataset of government interventions in response to COVID-19.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have implemented a wide range of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). Monitoring and documenting government strategies during the COVID-19 crisis is crucial to understand the progression of the epidemic. Following a content analysis strategy of existing public information sources, we developed a specific hierarchical coding scheme for NPIs. We generated a comprehensive structured dataset of government interventions and their respective timelines of implementation. To improve transparency and motivate collaborative validation process, information sources are shared via an open library. We also provide codes that enable users to visualise the dataset. Standardization and structure of the dataset facilitate inter-country comparison and the assessment of the impacts of different NPI categories on the epidemic parameters, population health indicators, the economy, and human rights, among others. This dataset provides an in-depth insight of the government strategies and can be a valuable tool for developing relevant preparedness plans for pandemic. We intend to further develop and update this dataset until the end of December 2020.

Species-area relationships in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands emerge because rarer species are disproportionately favored on larger islands.

The island species-area relationship (ISAR) describes how the number of species increases with increasing size of an island (or island-like habitat), and is of fundamental importance in island biogeography and conservation. Here, we use a framework based on individual-based rarefaction to infer whether ISARs result from passive sampling, or whether some processes are acting beyond sampling (e.g., disproportionate effects and/or habitat heterogeneity). Using data on total and relative abundances of four taxa (birds, butterflies, amphibians, and reptiles) from multiple islands in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, we examine how different metrics of biodiversity (total species richness, rarefied species richness, and abundance-weighted effective numbers of species emphasizing common species) vary with island area. Total species richness increased for all taxa, as did rarefied species richness controlling for a given sampling effort. This indicates that the ISAR did not result because of passive sampling, but that instead, some species were disproportionately favored on larger islands. For birds, frogs, and lizards, this disproportionate effect was only associated with species that were rarer in the samples, but for butterflies, both more common and rarer species were affected. Furthermore, for the two taxa for which we had plot-level data (reptiles and amphibians), within-island ß-diversity did not increase with island size, suggesting that within-island compositional effects were unlikely to be driving these ISARs. Overall, our results indicate that the ISARs of these taxa are most likely driven by disproportionate effects, that is, where larger islands are important sources of biodiversity beyond a simple sampling expectation, especially through their influence on rarer species, thus emphasizing their role in the preservation and conservation of species.