Ecology of Bathymodiolus puteoserpentis mussels from the Snake Pit vent field (Mid-Atlantic Ridge).

Along the northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge (nMAR), in habitats under moderate (<10 °C) hydrothermal influence on the Snake Pit vent field (SP), large assemblages dominated by Bathymodiolin mussels remain poorly characterised, contrary to those in warmer habitats dominated by gastropods and alvinocaridid shrimps that were recently described. In this study, we assessed and compared the population structure, biomass, diversity and trophic interactions of two Bathymodiolus puteoserpentis assemblages and their associated fauna at SP. Three sampling units distanced by 30 cm were sampled in 2014 during the BICOSE cruise at the top of the Moose site (''Elan'' site), while few meters further down three others, distanced by ∼1 m were obtained in 2018 during the BICOSE 2 cruise at the edifice's base. We observed a micro-scale heterogeneity between these six sampling units partially explained by temperature variations, proximity to hydrothermal fluids and position on the edifice. Meiofauna dominate or co-dominate most of the sampling units, with higher densities at the base of the edifice. In terms of macrofauna, high abundance of Pseudorimula midatlantica gastropods was observed at the top of the vent edifice, while numerous Ophioctenella acies ophiuroids were found at the base. Contrary to what was expected, the apparent health and abundance of mussels seems to indicate a current climax stage of the community. However, the modification of B. puteoserpentis isotopic signatures, low number of juveniles decreasing over the two years and observations made during several French cruises in the study area raise questions about the fate of the B. puteoserpentis population over time, which remains to be verified in a future sampling campaign.

Adjustment of the marine ecological red lines in China.

The marine ecological red lines (MERLs) is an institutional innovation of the Chinese government to seek a balance between ecological protection and social development. China's MERLs was designated in 2017, but there are problems such as insufficient consideration of areas of high ecological importance and lack of convergence with marine functional zoning. This paper carries out the adjustment of the MERLs in China by constructing the methods of marine ecological importance assessment and human activities disposal assessment, and the results show that after the adjustment, the type and distribution pattern of China's MERLs is more reasonable, the areas of high ecological importance in the MERLs increases significantly, the intensity of human activities in the MERLs declines significantly, and the unification with the use of marine space is realized. China's adjustment of the MERLs is based on scientific assessment and realizes the coordination of development and protection, which can provide a reference for global marine ecological protection.

People, places, things and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the twenty-first century.

Trends and developments in recent behavioural and cognitive sciences demonstrate the need for a well-developed theoretical and empirical framework for examining the ecology of human behaviour. The increasing recognition of the role of the environment and interaction with the environment in the organization of behaviour within the cognitive sciences has not been met with an equally disciplined and systematic account of that environment (Heft 2018 Ecol. Psychol. 30, 99-123 (doi:10.1080/10407413.2018.1410045); McGann 2014 Synth. Philos. 29, 217-233). Several bodies of work in behavioural ecology, anthropology and ecological psychology provide some frameworks for such an account. At present, however, the most systematic and theoretically disciplined account of the human behavioural ecosystem is that of behaviour settings, as developed by the researchers of the Midwest Psychological Field Station (see Barker 1968 Ecological psychology: concepts and methods for studying the environment of human behavior). The articles in this theme issue provide a critical examination of these theoretical and methodological resources. The collection addresses their theoretical value in connecting with contemporary issues in cognitive science and research practice in psychology, as well as the importance of the methodological specifics of behaviour settings research. Additionally, articles diagnose limitations and identify points of potential extension of both theory and methods, particularly with regard to changes owing to the advance of technology, and the complex relationship between the individual and the collective in behaviour settings work. This article is part of the theme issue 'People, places, things, and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the twenty-first century'.

A local community on a global collective intelligence platform: A case study of individual preferences and collective bias in ecological citizen science.

The collective intelligence of crowds could potentially be harnessed to address global challenges, such as biodiversity loss and species' extinction. For wisdom to emerge from the crowd, certain conditions are required. Importantly, the crowd should be diverse and people's contributions should be independent of one another. Here we investigate a global citizen-science platform-iNaturalist-on which citizens report on wildlife observations, collectively producing maps of species' spatiotemporal distribution. The organization of global platforms such as iNaturalist around local projects compromises the assumption of diversity and independence, and thus raises concerns regarding the quality of such collectively-generated data. We spent four years closely immersing ourselves in a local community of citizen scientists who reported their wildlife sightings on iNaturalist. Our ethnographic study involved the use of questionnaires, interviews, and analysis of archival materials. Our analysis revealed observers' nuanced considerations as they chose where, when, and what type of species to monitor, and which observations to report. Following a thematic analysis of the data, we organized observers' preferences and constraints into four main categories: recordability, community value, personal preferences, and convenience. We show that while some individual partialities can "cancel each other out", others are commonly shared among members of the community, potentially biasing the aggregate database of observations. Our discussion draws attention to the way in which widely-shared individual preferences might manifest as spatial, temporal, and crucially, taxonomic biases in the collectively-created database. We offer avenues for continued research that will help better understand-and tackle-individual preferences, with the goal of attenuating collective bias in data, and facilitating the generation of reliable state-of-nature reports. Finally, we offer insights into the broader literature on biases in collective intelligence systems.

Cross-scale coupling of ecosystem service flows and socio-ecological interactions in the Yellow River Basin.

As research on the full spectrum of ecosystem service (ES) generation and utilization within coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) has expanded, many studies have shown that the spatiotemporal dynamics of ESs are managed and influenced by human activities. However, there is insufficient research on how ESs are affected by bidirectional coupling between societal and ecological factors during spatial flow, particularly in terms of cross-scale impacts. These bidirectional influences between humans and nature are closely related to the utilization and transfer of ESs and affect the perception of spatiotemporal patterns of ESs and the formulation of management strategies. To fill this research gap, this study focuses on the Yellow River Basin (YRB), using network models to track the spatial dynamics of ES flows (ESFs) and the interactions between ecosystems and socio-economic systems within the basin on an annual scale from 2000 to 2020. The results highlight cross-scale impacts and feedback processes between local subbasins and the larger regional basin: As the supply-demand ratios of freshwater ESs, soil conservation ESs, and food ESs increase within individual subbasins of the YRB, more surplus ESs flow among subbasins. This not only alleviates spatial mismatches in ES supply and demand across the entire basin but also enhances the connectivity of the basin's ESF network. Subsequently, the cascading transfer and accumulation of ESs feedback into local socio-ecological interactions, with both socio-economic factors and the capacity for ES output within subbasins becoming increasingly reliant on external ES inflows. These results underscore the crucial role of ESFs within the CHANS of the YRB and imply the importance of cross-regional cooperation and cross-scale management strategies in optimizing ES supply-demand relationships. Furthermore, this study identifies the potential risks and challenges inherent in highly coupled systems. In conclusion, this work deepens the understanding of the spatial flow characteristics of ESs and their socio-ecological interactions; the analytical methods used in this study can also be applied to research on large river basins like the YRB, and even larger regional ecosystems.

The nexus between ecology of foraging and food security: cross-cultural perceptions of wild food plants in Kashmir Himalaya.

BACKGROUND: Wild food plants (WFPs) play an important role in the traditional dietary habits of various indigenous communities worldwide, particularly in mountainous regions. To understand the dynamics of food preferences, cross-cultural studies on food plants should be conducted across diverse ethnic groups in a given area. In this context, the current study investigated the use of WFPs by seven different cultural groups in the Kashmir Himalayan Region. In this area, people gather wild plants and their parts for direct consumption, traditional foods, or sale in local markets. Despite this reliance, documentation of the food system, especially concerning WFPs, is notably lacking. Hence, our research aimed to document WFPs, along with associated traditional ecological knowledge, and identify major threats to their long-term sustainability in Division Muzaffarabad. METHODS: Through a comprehensive approach involving questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, and market surveys, we gathered data from 321 respondents. PCA was performed to analyze threats and plant use using "factoextra" in R software. Origin Pro was used to create a chord diagram, while R software was used to generate a Polar heat map. Additionally, a Venn diagram was created using Bioinformatics software. RESULTS: The study included 321 informants, of whom 75.38% were men and 24.61% were women. In total, 113 plant taxa from 74 genera and 41 botanical families were reported. Polygonaceae and Rosaceae accounted for the majority (17 species each), followed by Lamiaceae (7 species). Leaves were the most used part as food sources (41.04%), followed by fruits (33.33%). Most of the species are consumed as cooked (46.46%) and as raw snacks (37.80%). A total of 47 plant species were collected and cooked as wild vegetables, followed by 40 species used as fruits. This study is the first to describe the market potential and ecological distribution of WFPs in the study area. Cross-comparison showed that utilization of WFPs varies significantly across the region and communities, including their edible parts and mode of consumption. Jaccard index (JI) value ranged from 5.81 to 25. Furthermore, the current study describes 29 WFPs and 10 traditional food dishes that have rarely been documented in Pakistan's ethnobotanical literature. Climate change, invasive species, expansion of agriculture, and plant diseases are some of the most significant threats to WFPs in the study area. CONCLUSIONS: The older age group has more knowledge about WFPs compared to the younger generation, who are not interested in learning about the utilization of WFPs. This lack of interest in information about WFPs among the younger generation can be attributed to their limited access to markets and availability of food plants in the study area. Traditional gathering of food plants has been reduced in younger generations during recent years; therefore, it is crucial to develop effective conservation strategies. These efforts not only safeguard indigenous flora, food knowledge, and cultural heritage, but they also contribute to food security and public health by utilizing local wild foods in the examined area.

Individual canopy tree species maps for the National Ecological Observatory Network.

The ecology of forest ecosystems depends on the composition of trees. Capturing fine-grained information on individual trees at broad scales provides a unique perspective on forest ecosystems, forest restoration, and responses to disturbance. Individual tree data at wide extents promises to increase the scale of forest analysis, biogeographic research, and ecosystem monitoring without losing details on individual species composition and abundance. Computer vision using deep neural networks can convert raw sensor data into predictions of individual canopy tree species through labeled data collected by field researchers. Using over 40,000 individual tree stems as training data, we create landscape-level species predictions for over 100 million individual trees across 24 sites in the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). Using hierarchical multi-temporal models fine-tuned for each geographic area, we produce open-source data available as 1 km2 shapefiles with individual tree species prediction, as well as crown location, crown area, and height of 81 canopy tree species. Site-specific models had an average performance of 79% accuracy covering an average of 6 species per site, ranging from 3 to 15 species per site. All predictions are openly archived and have been uploaded to Google Earth Engine to benefit the ecology community and overlay with other remote sensing assets. We outline the potential utility and limitations of these data in ecology and computer vision research, as well as strategies for improving predictions using targeted data sampling.

Time is of the essence: A general framework for uncovering temporal structures of communities.

Ecological communities are inherently dynamic: species constantly turn over within years, months, weeks or even days. These temporal shifts in community composition determine essential aspects of species interactions and how energy, nutrients, information, diseases and perturbations 'flow' through systems. Yet, our understanding of community structure has relied heavily on static analyses not designed to capture critical features of this dynamic temporal dimension of communities. Here, we propose a conceptual and methodological framework for quantifying and analysing this temporal dimension. Conceptually, we split the temporal structure into two definitive features, sequence and duration, and review how they are linked to key concepts in ecology. We then outline how we can capture these definitive features using perspectives and tools from temporal graph theory. We demonstrate how we can easily integrate ongoing research on phenology into this framework and highlight what new opportunities arise from this approach to answer fundamental questions in community ecology. As climate change reshuffles ecological communities worldwide, quantifying the temporal organization of communities is imperative to resolve the fundamental processes that shape natural ecosystems and predict how these systems may change in the future.

An integrated approach through controlled experiment and LCIA to evaluate water quality and ecological impacts of irrigated paddy rice.

This study used an integrated approach to mainly assess the water quality of paddy field during cultivation and quantify its equivalent ecological damages. Accordingly, an isolated pilot area with 0.6 ha and subsurface drainage pipes was prepared for flow measurement and multiple pollutant examination (DO, EC, pH, COD, TKN, TN, TP, NO3, butachlor) under controlled condition during 94 days of rice cultivation. Based on life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) database, the indices of ReCiPe (2016) were used to convert the examined nutrient and herbicide pollution. Results showed that TKN and TP were significant pollutants and reached the maximum concentrations of 7.2 and 4.9 mg/L in pilot outflow, respectively. Here, their average discharged loads were 56.2 gN/day and 45.3 gP/day. These loads equal leaching 8.5% and 9.4% of applied urea and phosphate fertilizers, respectively. The nutrient export coefficients were 8.4 kgN/ha and 6.8 kgP/ha. Nevertheless, the majority of this pollution was transferred by inflow. The net export coefficients were 0.3 kgN/ha and 2.6 kgP/ha while net leaching rates were 0.3%TN and 3.3%TP. The trend of combined ecological damages also showed that the 11-17th day of cultivation imposed the highest ecological risks. The state-of-the-art index of ecological footprint per food production estimates the equivalent ratio of lost lives by impaired ecosystem against lives saved from starvation. This index showed that 7% of the potential of produced paddy rice in this area for saving lives would be spoiled by releasing pollution to the terrestrial ecosystem in the long term. Yet, it can be enhanced as a matter of direct discharge to the freshwater. Therefore, using suitable agricultural operations or improving farm management practices for pollution abatement or assimilation potential is highly recommended.

Unlocking the tapestry of conservation: Navigating ecological resettlement policies in Nepal.

Conservation initiatives involve a complex interplay of various ecological, socio-political, and economic factors. Ecological resettlement (ER), implemented within the context of nature conservation policies, stands as one of the most contested issues worldwide. This study aims to navigate the domain of ER policy in conservation through discursive institutionalism and a policy arrangement approach. Focusing on Nepal's conservation policy pathways over the last seven decades, we critically analyze policy ideas and narratives, trends, patterns of policy development, institutional arrangements, driving factors, and responses to contemporary ER policies. Methods involved a systematic literature review (n = 271), a comprehensive review of policy documents and project reports (n > 150), and expert interviews (n = 20). Over the past 50 years, >7600 households in Nepal have been displaced in the name of ER and are still persisting despite the rhetoric of participatory conservation. With changes in political regimes, conservation policy has shifted from a hunting-focused approach to landscape-level and transboundary conservation. Initially influenced by internal factors such as economic and political governance, conservation policies were later shaped by international conservation discourse. Also, the operational sphere of such policy ideas and narratives - including actors, resources, discourses, and rules - along with trends, priorities, institutional arrangements, and driving factors of ER policies, has changed over time. Further, the exclusion of deprived communities and the capture of conservation benefits by elites have undermined conservation values. This research stresses the importance of a judicious balance between people's welfare and nature's integrity, emphasizing community-based natural resource management models accredited to a conservation standard. We further urge the revision of displacement-oriented conservation policies to secure the rights of Indigenous people and traditional landholders, thereby ensuring conservation and sustainable development at both national and global levels.

EGO to ECO: Tracing the History of Radioecology from the 1950's to the Present Day.

This paper starts with a brief history of the birth of the field of radioecology during the Cold War with a focus on US activity. We review the establishment of the international system for radiation protection and the science underlying the guidelines. We then discuss the famous ICRP 60 statement that if "Man" is protected, so is everything else and show how this led to a focus in radioecology on pathways to "Man" rather than concern about impacts on environments or ecosystems. We then review the contributions of Radiation Research Society members and papers published in Radiation Research which contributed to the knowledge base about effects on non-human species. These fed into international databases and computer-based tools such as ERICA and ResRad Biota to guide regulators. We then examine the origins of the concern that ICRP 60 is not sufficient to protect ecosystems and discuss the establishment of ICRP Committee 5 and its recommendations to establish reference animals and plants. The review finishes with current concerns that reference animals and plants (RAPs) are not sufficient to protect ecosystems, given the complexity of interacting factors such as the climate emergency and discusses the efforts of ICRP, the International Union of Radioecologists and other bodies to capture the concepts of ecosystem services and ecosystem complexity modelling in radioecology.

The changing landscape of text mining: a review of approaches for ecology and evolution.

In ecology and evolutionary biology, the synthesis and modelling of data from published literature are commonly used to generate insights and test theories across systems. However, the tasks of searching, screening, and extracting data from literature are often arduous. Researchers may manually process hundreds to thousands of articles for systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and compiling synthetic datasets. As relevant articles expand to tens or hundreds of thousands, computer-based approaches can increase the efficiency, transparency and reproducibility of literature-based research. Methods available for text mining are rapidly changing owing to developments in machine learning-based language models. We review the growing landscape of approaches, mapping them onto three broad paradigms (frequency-based approaches, traditional Natural Language Processing and deep learning-based language models). This serves as an entry point to learn foundational and cutting-edge concepts, vocabularies, and methods to foster integration of these tools into ecological and evolutionary research. We cover approaches for modelling ecological texts, generating training data, developing custom models and interacting with large language models and discuss challenges and possible solutions to implementing these methods in ecology and evolution.

On formal limitations of causal ecological networks.

Causal multivariate time-series analysis, combined with network theory, provide a powerful tool for studying complex ecological interactions. However, these methods have limitations often underestimated when used in graphical modelling of ecological systems. In this opinion article, I examine the relationship between formal logic methods used to describe causal networks and their inherent statistical and epistemological limitations. I argue that while these methods offer valuable insights, they are restricted by axiomatic assumptions, statistical constraints and the incompleteness of our knowledge. To prove that, I first consider causal networks as formal systems, define causality and formalize their axioms in terms of modal logic and use ecological counterexamples to question the axioms. I also highlight the statistical limitations when using multivariate time-series analysis and Granger causality to develop ecological networks, including the potential for spurious correlations among other data characteristics. Finally, I draw upon Gödel's incompleteness theorems to highlight the inherent limits of fully understanding complex networks as formal systems and conclude that causal ecological networks are subject to initial rules and data characteristics and, as any formal system, will never fully capture the intricate complexities of the systems they represent. This article is part of the theme issue 'Connected interactions: enriching food web research by spatial and social interactions'.

Traditional ecological knowledge for monitoring Anaphalis javanica (DC.) Sch.Bip. (Asteraceae) in Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, Indonesia.

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) possessed by indigenous communities offers a vital source of information regarding the status and threats faced by species. Anaphalis javanica (DC.) Sch.Bip. commonly known as Javanese edelweiss is a culturally significant species in Indonesia's mountainous regions, yet conservation efforts for it remain limited. We utilized TEK to assess the status and threats to the Javanese edelweiss in Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, Indonesia. The research aims to assess the distribution, abundance, population trends, and threats faced by Javanese edelweiss using TEK. We interviewed 641 individuals from seven Tengger villages near the park to gather data on the distribution, status, and threats facing the Javanese edelweiss, contributing to conservation efforts. Data were analyzed using generalized linear mixed models and ordinal logistic regression. TEK regarding the Javanese edelweiss was extensive, as 96.3% of respondents recognized the plant. A majority (73.2%) had observed Javanese edelweiss in the wild, yet a significant portion (85%) perceived it as "very rare" or "rare." Furthermore, 50% of respondents reported a decline in its population. Variations in sighting frequency, perceived abundance, and population trends across different locations provide crucial insights for identifying priority areas and shaping community-based conservation strategies for Javanese edelweiss. This research underscores the importance of integrating TEK into conservation planning, emphasizing community involvement for effective and sustainable biodiversity conservation.

Variation in ecological scorecards and their potential for wider use.

Ecological monitoring is a vital tool to help us assess habitat condition and understand the mechanism(s) for habitat change. Yet many countries struggle to meet their monitoring requirements in part due to the high assessment workload. Rapid ecological assessment methods may have an important role to play in this regard. Following their success within several European habitats (e.g., semi-natural grasslands), they are now being developed for additional habitats such as heathlands, peatlands, and other agri-associated areas. Whilst some rapid assessments using ecological scorecards have been shown to be accurate compared to traditional ecological monitoring, less is known about the functionality of these scorecards in heterogenous landscapes. In this study, we selected four existing scorecards to test alongside a prototype. We assessed how these different scorecards measured habitat condition on the same heathland sites. We found that the choice of metrics, their score weighting, and the thresholds used for categorical scores cause scorecards to assess the same site with substantial variation (37%). Vegetation metrics were the primary cause of score variation, with vegetation structure and positive indicator species being the leading causes. Our study indicates that whilst current scorecards may be representative of project-specific goals, they may not be suitable for wider monitoring uses in their current form. Ecological scorecards have great potential to drastically increase the extent of monitoring, but caution is needed before adapting existing scorecards beyond the purposes from which they were designed.

Roots of synthetic ecology: microbes that foster plant resilience in the changing climate.

Microbes orchestrate nearly all major biogeochemical processes. The ability to program their influence on plant growth and development is attractive for sustainable agriculture. However, the complexity of microbial ecosystems and our limited understanding of the mechanisms by which plants and microbes interact with each other and the environment make it challenging to use microbiomes to influence plant growth. Novel technologies at the intersection of microbial ecology, systems biology, and bioengineering provide new tools to probe the role of plant microbiomes across environments. Here, we summarize recent studies on plant and microbe responses to abiotic stresses, showcasing key molecules and micro-organisms that are important for plant health. We highlight opportunities to use synthetic microbial communities to understand the complexity of plant-microbial interactions and discuss future avenues of programming ecology to improve plant and ecosystem health.

Multi-level decisions for addressing trade-off in the cross-regional water-environment-agriculture interactive system under constraint of water ecological carrying capacity.

The complex-enhanced hierarchical relationship among multiple stakeholders in the water-environment-agriculture interactive system has been overlooked. This study develops a leader-follower-enhanced framework (named as FCMLP) that integrates variable-weight combination prediction model, multi-level programming, and fuzzy credibility constrained programming, which can effectively address the above problems under uncertainties. Five water ecological carrying capacity (WECC) statuses are treated as a critical constraint into the modeling framework to improve the accuracy of decision-making. An interactive fuzzy satisfaction algorithm is advanced for solving this multi-level problem, in which COD discharge minimization, economic benefits maximization, and grain yield maximization are taken as the upper-, middle-, and lower-level goals, respectively. The framework is applied to plan the cross-regional water-environment-agriculture interactive system in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Yangtze River Economic Belt. Solutions reveal that increased WECC status and credibility level would decrease 1.40%-1.74%, 0.71%-9.61%, and 1.63%-2.26% of water resources allocation, COD emissions, and economic benefits, respectively. Crop area and grain yield would dramatically decline by 4.13%-4.46% and 4.03%-4.67% when a credibility level increases from 0.8 to 1, respectively. The overall satisfactory degree would range from 0.58 to 0.70, which illustrates interactive decision-making process of multiple stakeholders. Significant differences can be observed in the optimized schemes of water resources allocation and environmental-economic-agricultural performances among various models. The amounts of allocated water resources, pollutant discharge, and economic output from the FCMLP model would be respectively 11.30%-13.45%, 14.90%-15.21%, and 73.12%-73.48% higher than those from the environment- and agriculture-oriented schemes, yet 13.81%, 32.05%, and 15.29% lower than those from the economy-oriented scheme. Some water adaptability countermeasures are given for ensuring the scientific operation of the South-to-North Water Transfer Project and alleviating conflicts between water source and receiving areas. Further exploration of the optimization scheme of water-environment-energy-agriculture system driven by climate change is still required for guaranteeing the dynamic balance of regional resources.