Robert Howe results 41
· Newest (Page 1/2, per page 25)
Author: Robert Howe ×Clear All Filters
Search Results
A rapid national survey of terrestrial and semi-aquatic mammals using environmental DNA metabarcodingNARA Subscribed
Assessing the distribution and diversity of terrestrial and semi-aquatic mammals is fundamental for effective conservation efforts. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding has emerged as a rapid and cost-effective method for surveying mammals. It has promising avenues for conducting national surveys and enabling comprehensive assessments of mammalian populations across diverse habitats. We collected eDNA samples from 60 water s...
When plants die, neighbours escape competition. Living conspecifics could disproportionately benefit because they are freed from negative intraspecific processes; however, if the negative effects of past conspecific neighbours persist, other species might be advantaged, and diversity might be maintained through legacy effects. We examined legacy effects in a mapped forest by modelling the survival of 37,212 trees of 23 species...
A review of new and existing non-extractive techniques for monitoring marine protected areasOA Marine
Ocean biodiversity loss is being driven by several anthropogenic threats and significant efforts are required to halt losses and promote healthy marine ecosystems. The establishment of a network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can help restrict damaging activities and have been recognised as a potential solution to aid marine conservation. When managed correctly they can deliver both ecological and socio-economic benefits. In...
Biogeographic context is related to local scale tree demography, co‐occurrence and functional differentiationNARA Subscribed
Identifying the drivers of community structure and dynamics is a major pursuit in ecology. Emphasis is typically placed on the importance of local scale interactions when attempting to explain these fundamental ecological patterns. However, regional scale phenomena are also important predictors. The importance of regional scale context should be more evident in assemblages where multiple species are close to their range margin...
Brain volume in chronic ketamine users — relationship to sub-threshold psychotic symptoms and relevance to schizophreniaNARA Subscribed
Rationale Ketamine may model aspects of schizophrenia arising through NMDA receptor activity deficits. Although acute ketamine can induce effects resembling both positive and negative psychotic symptoms, chronic use may be a closer model of idiopathic psychosis. Objectives We tested the hypotheses that ketamine users had lower brain volumes, as measured using MRI, and greater sub-threshold psychotic symptoms relative to a poly...
Characterizing the Effects of Nasal Prong Interfaces on Aerosol Deposition in a Preterm Infant Nasal ModelNARA Subscribed
The objective of this study was to characterize the effects of multiple nasal prong interface configurations on nasal depositional loss of pharmaceutical aerosols in a preterm infant nose-throat (NT) airway model. Benchmark in vitro experiments were performed in which a spray-dried powder formulation was delivered to a new preterm NT model with a positive-pressure infant air-jet dry powder inhaler using single- and dual-prong...
Prolonging survival in good health is a fundamental societal goal. However, the leading determinants of disability-free survival in healthy older people have not been well established. Data from ASPREE, a bi-national placebo-controlled trial of aspirin with 4.7 years median follow-up, was analysed. At enrolment, participants were healthy and without prior cardiovascular events, dementia or persistent physical disability. Disab...
A dual compartment cuvette system for correcting scattering in whole-cell absorbance spectroscopy of photosynthetic microorganismsNARA Subscribed
Absorption spectroscopy is widely used to determine absorption and transmission spectra of chromophores in solution, in addition to suspensions of particles, including micro-organisms. Light scattering, caused by photons deflected from part or all of the cells or other particles in suspension, results in distortions to the absorption spectra, lost information and poor resolution. A spectrophotometer with an integrating sphere...
Common, low-frequency, rare, and ultra-rare coding variants contribute to COVID-19 severityNARA Subscribed
The combined impact of common and rare exonic variants in COVID-19 host genetics is currently insufficiently understood. Here, common and rare variants from whole-exome sequencing data of about 4000 SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals were used to define an interpretable machine-learning model for predicting COVID-19 severity. First, variants were converted into separate sets of Boolean features, depending on the absence or the pr...
Addressing the welfare needs of farmed lumpfish: Knowledge gaps, challenges and solutionsNARA Subscribed
Lumpfish ( Cyclopterus lumpus L.) are increasingly being used as cleaner fish to control parasitic sea lice, one of the most important threats to salmon farming. However, lumpfish cannot survive feeding solely on sea lice, and their mortality in salmon net‐pens can be high, which has welfare, ethical and economic implications. The industry is under increasing pressure to improve the welfare of lumpfish, but little guidance exi...
Temporal population variability in local forest communities has mixed effects on tree species richness across a latitudinal gradientNARA Subscribed
Among the local processes that determine species diversity in ecological communities, fluctuation‐dependent mechanisms that are mediated by temporal variability in the abundances of species populations have received significant attention. Higher temporal variability in the abundances of species populations can increase the strength of temporal niche partitioning but can also increase the risk of species extinctions, such that...
Aim The relationship between the proportion of sites occupied by a species and the area of a site [occupancy–area relationship (OAR)] offers key information for biodiversity management and has long fascinated ecologists. We quantified the variation in OAR for 3,157 woody species in 17 forest plots worldwide and tested the relative importance of environment and species traits for explaining this variation and evaluated overall...
Front CoverNARA Subscribed
Global importance of large‐diameter treesNARA Subscribed
Aim To examine the contribution of large‐diameter trees to biomass, stand structure, and species richness across forest biomes. Location Global. Time period Early 21st century. Major taxa studied Woody plants. Methods We examined the contribution of large trees to forest density, richness and biomass using a global network of 48 large (from 2 to 60 ha) forest plots representing 5,601,473 stems across 9,298 species and 210 plan...
Ecological drivers of spatial community dissimilarity, species replacement and species nestedness across temperate forestsNARA Subscribed
Aims Patterns of spatial community dissimilarity have inspired a large body of theory in ecology and biogeography. Yet key gaps remain in our understanding of the local‐scale ecological processes underlying species replacement and species nestedness, the two fundamental components of spatial community dissimilarity. Here, we examined the relative influence of dispersal limitation, habitat filtering and interspecific species in...
The role of functional uniqueness and spatial aggregation in explaining rarity in treesNARA Subscribed
Aim Determining the drivers of species rarity is fundamental for understanding and conserving biodiversity. Rarity of a given species within its community may arise due to exclusion by other ecologically similar species. Conversely, rare species may occupy habitats that are rare in the landscape or they may be ill‐suited to all available habitats. The first mechanism would lead to common and rare species occupying similar ecol...