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Author: Colleen Seymour ×Clear All Filters
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Horizon scans identify potential changes, enabling proactive rather than reactive conservation strategies. Here, in a follow up to the 2020 horizon scan, 14 biodiversity professionals from different sectors identify ten emerging issues potentially relevant to biodiversity conservation in South Africa over the next 5–10 years. The issues identified highlight three critical needs: adaptive governance systems, cross-sectoral coll...
Impacts of Supplemental Feeding on Sunbird-Pollination Systems in Young Fynbos Varies with Floral AbundanceNARA Subscribed
Supplementary sugar-water feeding offers nectarivorous birds a source of spatially concentrated food, as opposed to the dispersed food available in flowers. This could impact bird visits to native flowers and alter plant-bird mutualisms, particularly in young post-fire vegetation. This study examined the effects of sugar-water feeders on nectarivorous birds and their plant mutualists in young (burned 18 months previously) and...
Seventy‐five percent of Madagascar is treeless C 4 ‐grassland adapted to human‐lit fire, which likely succeeded pre‐human mosaics of forest, ericoids, grassy‐woodlands and some smaller treeless‐grasslands. In support of pre‐settlement Malagasy grasslands having evolved with many grassland specialist faunal elements, Bond et al. (2022) cite “considerable overlap” in African and Malagasy hippo diets, and suggest time‐scale hampe...
Papers arguing for Malagasy central highlands (MCH) as natural grassland rely disproportionally on a single reference (Bond et al. 2008, The antiquity of Madagascar's grasslands and the rise of C4 grassy biomes. Journal of Biogeography , 35 , 1743–1758). The paper argues that (1) evolution of endemic grassland specialist fauna, (2) paleoecological findings and (3) existence of subfossil C 4 ‐grazers provide evidence that when...
TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open accessNARA Subscribed
Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodivers...
Global agricultural productivity is threatened by increasing pollinator dependence without a parallel increase in crop diversificationNARA Subscribed
The global increase in the proportion of land cultivated with pollinator‐dependent crops implies increased reliance on pollination services. Yet agricultural practices themselves can profoundly affect pollinator supply and pollination. Extensive monocultures are associated with a limited pollinator supply and reduced pollination, whereas agricultural diversification can enhance both. Therefore, areas where agricultural diversi...
Pacific Rim Forestry / Silviculture and Forest EcologyNARA Subscribed
Leucaena leucocephala (leucaena) is an important agroforestry tree of tropics and subtropics due to its protein rich foliages, ability to grow on poor soils, and high level of tolerance to various stresses including drought and diseases. We hypothesized that leucaena have a unique set of genes which confer tolerance to various abiotic and biotic stresses and these genes are either absent or not expressed in other legumes that...