Explore the vast range of titles available.

Human-wildlife conflicts are commonly addressed by excluding, relocating, or lethally controlling animals with the goal of preserving public health and safety, protecting property, or conserving other valued wildlife. However, declining wildlife populations, a lack of efficacy of control methods in achieving desired outcomes, and changes in how people value animals have triggered widespread acknowledgment of the need for ethical and evidence-based approaches to managing such conflicts. We explored international perspectives on and experiences with human-wildlife conflicts to develop principles for ethical wildlife control. A diverse panel of 20 experts convened at a 2-day workshop and developed the principles through a facilitated engagement process and discussion. They determined that efforts to control wildlife should begin wherever possible by altering the human practices that cause human-wildlife conflict and by developing a culture of coexistence; be justified by evidence that significant harms are being caused to people, property, livelihoods, ecosystems, and/or other animals; have measurable outcome-based objectives that are clear, achievable, monitored, and adaptive; predictably minimize animal welfare harms to the fewest number of animals; be informed by community values as well as scientific, technical, and practical information; be integrated into plans for systematic long-term management; and be based on the specifics of the situation rather than negative labels (pest, overabundant) applied to the target species. We recommend that these principles guide development of international, national, and local standards and control decisions and implementation. Los conflictos entre los humanos y la vida silvestre son tratados comúnmente al excluir, reubicar o controlar letalmente a los animales con el objetivo de preservar la salud pública y la seguridad, proteger la propiedad o conservar a otros ejemplares valiosos de vida silvestre. Sin embargo, las poblaciones de vida silvestre declinantes, la falta de efectividad de los métodos de control para obtener los resultados deseados y los cambios en cómo las personas valoran a los animales han disparado un reconocimiento extendido por la necesidad de estrategias éticas basadas en evidencias para manejar dichos conflictos. Exploramos las perspectivas sobre y las experiencias internacionales con los conflictos entre humanos y vida silvestre para desarrollar los principios para un control ético de la vida silvestre. Un panel diverso de veinte expertos se reunió durante dos días en un taller y desarrolló los principios por medio de un proceso de participación facilitada y discusiones. Los expertos determinaron que los esfuerzos para controlar a la vida silvestre deberían comenzar en donde sea posible alterando las prácticas humanas que ocasionan el conflicto humano-vida silvestre y desarrollando una cultura de coexistencia; deberían estar justificados por la evidencia de los daños significativos que afectan a la gente, la propiedad, el sustento, los ecosistemas y otros animales; deberían tener objetivos medibles basados en resultados que son claros, alcanzables, monitoreados y adaptativos; deberían minimizar los daños al bienestar animal para el menor número de animales: deberían estar informados por los valores comunitarios así como la información científica, técnica y práctica; deberían ser integrados a los planes para el manejo sistemático a largo plazo; y deberían estar basados en las especificidades de la situación en lugar de las etiquetas negativas (plaga, sobreabundante) aplicadas a las especies objetivo. Recomendamos que estos principios guíen el desarrollo de los estándares internacionales, nacionales y locales y controlen las decisiones y su implementación.

Vertebrate animals can be injured or threatened with injury through human activities, thus warranting their \"rescue.\" Details of wildlife rescuef rehabilitation, release, and associated research (our 4 Rs) are often recorded in large databases, resulting in a wealth of available information. This information has huge research potential and can contribute to understanding of animal biology, anthropogenic impacts on wildlife, and species conservation. However, such databases have been little used, few studies have evaluated factors influencing success of rehabilitation and/or release, recommended actions to conserve threatened species have rarely arisen, and direct benefitsfor species conservation are yet to be demonstrated. We therefore recommend that additional research be based on data from rescue, rehabilitation, and release of animals that is broader in scope than previous research and would have community support. Los animales vertebrados pueden ser heridos o sufrir amenazas de heridas por medio de las actividades humanas, lo que garantiza su \"rescate\". Los detalles del rescate, rehabilitación, liberación e investigación asociada de fauna (las 4 Rs, por sus siglas en inglés) están continuamente registrados en grandes bases de datos, lo que resulta en una riqueza de información disponible. Esta información tiene un enorme potencial de investigación y puede contribuir al entendimiento de la biología animal, los impactos antropogénicos sobre la fauna, y la conservación de las especies. Sin embargo, dichas bases de datos se han utilizado muy poco, escasos estudios han evaluado los factores que influyen sobre el éxito de la rehabilitación y/o la liberación, las acciones recomendadas para conservar a las especies amenazadas han surgido en raras ocasiones, y los beneficios directos para la conservación de las especies todavía no se han demostrado. Por esto recomendamos que investigaciones futuras se basen en datos sobre el rescate, rehabilitación y liberación de los animales, pues tiene un enfoque más generalizado que las investigaciones previas y tendría apoyo dentro de la comunidad.

La aparente similitud entre las técnicas de extracción, así como el estudio de materiales pretéritos, parece que es lo que ha marcado la unidad del Patrimonio Paleontológico y Arqueológico en la normativa cultural. Sin embargo, debemos tener en cuenta las diferencias entre ellos y que su unidad en la legislación puede provocar una indefensión legal en algunos casos por la falta de ajuste a las necesidades concretas de cada tipo de Bien.Para realizar este estudio sobre la protección de un material tan sensible como es el Patrimonio Paleontológico, se han examinado las normas y las figuras de protección aprobadas por los convenios internacionales y nacionales de Patrimonio Cultural y Natural; así como la legislación autonómica castellano manchega y se han revisado los códigos profesionales.La conclusión a la que se ha llegado es que existe una clara indefinición en las distintas legislaciones que afecta negativamente al Patrimonio Paleontológico. En consecuencia, es necesario promulgar aquellas leyes y reglamentos que se ajusten a las características específicas de dicho patrimonio para garantizar, legalmente, una adecuada protección y conservación de este.

Jawed vertebrates have inner ears with three semicircular canals, the presence of which has been used as a key to understanding evolutionary relationships. Ostracoderms, the jawless stem gnathostomes, had only two canals and lacked the lateral canal 1 – 3 . Lampreys, which are modern cyclostomes, are generally thought to possess two semicircular canals whereas the hagfishes—which are also cyclostomes—have only a single canal, which used to be regarded as a more primitive trait 1 , 4 . However, recent molecular and developmental analyses have strongly supported the monophyly of cyclostomes 5 – 7 , which has left the evolutionary trajectory of the vertebrate inner ear unclear 8 . Here we show the differentiation of the otic vesicle of the lamprey Lethenteron camtschaticum and inshore hagfish Eptatretus burgeri . This is the first time, to our knowledge, that the development of the hagfish inner ear is reported. We found that canal development in the lamprey starts with two depressions—which is reminiscent of the early developmental pattern of the inner ear in modern gnathostomes. These cyclostome otic vesicles show a pattern of expression of regulatory genes, including OTX genes, that is comparable to that of gnathosomes. Although two depressions appear in the lamprey vesicle, they subsequently fuse to form a single canal that is similar to that of hagfishes. Complete separation of the depressions results in anterior and posterior canals in gnathostomes. The single depression of the vesicle in hagfishes thus appears to be a secondarily derived trait. Furthermore, the lateral canal in crown gnathostomes was acquired secondarily—not by de novo acquisition of an OTX expression domain, but by the evolution of a developmental program downstream of the OTX genes. The differentiation of the inner ear in the lamprey Lethenteron camtschaticum and hagfish Eptatretus burgeri sheds light on the evolution of the semicircular canals of jawed vertebrates.

La conurbación La Serena-Coquimbo ha sufrido un fuerte crecimiento de su radio urbano, producto del desarrollo inmobiliario e infraestructura vial. Lo anterior ha provocado la fragmentación y pérdida de sus zonas naturales (humedales) con los consecuentes impactos en la biodiversidad. Los humedales se combinan con el espacio construido socialmente (e.g., parques), donde ambos conforman el ecosistema de la ciudad y constituyen su patrimonio biocultural. Con el objetivo de documentar algunos de los elementos distintivos de este patrimonio, analizamos la riqueza filética de vertebrados en tres humedales costeros de la bahía de Coquimbo según métodos estandarizados. Para el análisis del patrimonio cultural seguimos una aproximación cualitativa de tipo exploratorio. Registramos 22 órdenes, 48 familias, 120 géneros y 154 especies de vertebrados. Las especies nativas representaron 93 % del total y las introducidas el 6,5 %. La riqueza de la avifauna de los humedales urbanos fue alta en relación a otras ciudades del país. Identificamos varios sitios relevantes del patrimonio cultural como plazas, caletas pesqueras, playas y ferias de abasto de la metrópolis. Se discuten las posibles relaciones entre biodiversidad, humedales urbanos y otros elementos del patrimonio biocultural de esta conurbación.

Glycolytic metabolism is closely involved in physiological homeostasis and pathophysiological states. Among glycolytic enzymes, phosphoglycerate mutase (PGAM) has been reported to exert certain physiological role in vitro , whereas its impact on glucose metabolism in vivo remains unclear. Here, we report the characterization of Pgam1 knockout mice. We observed that homozygous knockout mice of Pgam1 were embryonic lethal. Although we previously reported that both PGAM-1 and -2 affect global glycolytic profile of cancers in vitro , in vivo glucose parameters were less affected both in the heterozygous knockout of Pgam1 and in Pgam2 transgenic mice. Thus, the impact of PGAM on in vivo glucose metabolism is rather complex than expected before.

Invasive alien species are one of the primary threats to native biodiversity on islands worldwide. Consequently, eradicating invasive species from islands has become a mainstream conservation practice. Deciding which islands have the highest priority for eradication is of strategic importance to allocate limited resources to achieve maximum conservation benefit. Previous island prioritizations focused either on a narrow set of native species or on a small geographic area. We devised a prioritization approach that incorporates all threatened native terrestrial vertebrates and all invasive terrestrial vertebrates occurring on 11 U.K. overseas territories, which comprise over 2000 islands ranging from the sub‐Antarctic to the tropics. Our approach includes eradication feasibility and distinguishes between the potential and realistic conservation value of an eradication, which reflects the benefit that would accrue following eradication of either all invasive species or only those species for which eradication techniques currently exist. We identified the top 25 priority islands for invasive species eradication that together would benefit extant populations of 155 native species including 45 globally threatened species. The 5 most valuable islands included the 2 World Heritage islands Gough (South Atlantic) and Henderson (South Pacific) that feature unique seabird colonies, and Anegada, Little Cayman, and Guana Island in the Caribbean that feature a unique reptile fauna. This prioritization can be rapidly repeated if new information or techniques become available, and the approach could be replicated elsewhere in the world.

After their failure to achieve a significant reduction in the global rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, world governments adopted 20 new ambitious Aichi biodiversity targets to be met by 2020. Efforts to achieve one particular target can contribute to achieving others, but different targets may sometimes require conflicting solutions. Consequently, lack of strategic thinking might result, once again, in a failure to achieve global commitments to biodiversity conservation. We illustrate this dilemma by focusing on Aichi Target 11. This target requires an expansion of terrestrial protected area coverage, which could also contribute to reducing the loss of natural habitats (Target 5), reducing human‐induced species decline and extinction (Target 12), and maintaining global carbon stocks (Target 15). We considered the potential impact of expanding protected areas to mitigate global deforestation and the consequences for the distribution of suitable habitat for >10,000 species of forest vertebrates (amphibians, birds, and mammals). We first identified places where deforestation might have the highest impact on remaining forests and then identified places where deforestation might have the highest impact on forest vertebrates (considering aggregate suitable habitat for species). Expanding protected areas toward locations with the highest deforestation rates (Target 5) or the highest potential loss of aggregate species’ suitable habitat (Target 12) resulted in partially different protected area network configurations (overlapping with each other by about 73%). Moreover, the latter approach contributed to safeguarding about 30% more global carbon stocks than the former. Further investigation of synergies and trade‐offs between targets would shed light on these and other complex interactions, such as the interaction between reducing overexploitation of natural resources (Targets 6, 7), controlling invasive alien species (Target 9), and preventing extinctions of native species (Target 12). Synergies between targets must be identified and secured soon and trade‐offs must be minimized before the options for co‐benefits are reduced by human pressures.

We reviewed research on wildlife overpasses in the context of their genetic effectiveness to provide connectivity between population patches that have been isolated by road construction. The potential ecological consequences of such habitat fragmentation include reduction of gene flow between subpopulations and hence an increase in genetic differentiation and a decrease in genetic diversity. Among the solutions to provide connectivity between patches isolated by roads, wildlife overpasses are one of the most expensive alternatives. Despite the high costs associated with their construction, most of the studies assessing their use by wildlife remain observational, reporting evidence for passage use but few data on the number of individual crossings. Moreover, the use itself of wildlife overpasses does not appear sufficient to assess their effectiveness from a genetic viewpoint because a minimum number of individuals is required to assure gene flow between population patches and because the spatiotemporal dimension of individual movements and demographic parameters of subpopulations must be considered. So far, there is no evidence that wildlife overpasses do or do not efficiently address genetic issues. This lack of data is probably due to the fact that few mitigation efforts have implemented monitoring programs that incorporate sufficient experimental designs into pre- and postconstruction evaluation. To assess the genetic effectiveness of wildlife overpasses, long-term monitoring programs, including fieldwork and genetic analyses, are needed.

Understanding the environmental contributors to population structure is of paramount importance for conservation in urbanized environments. We used spatially explicit models to determine genetic population structure under current and future environmental conditions across a highly fragmented, humandominated environment in Southern California to assess the effects of natural ecological variation and urbanization. We focused on 7 common species with diverse habitat requirements, home-range sizes, and dispersal abilities. We quantified the relative roles of potential barriers, including natural environmental characteristics and an anthropogenic barrier created by a major highway, in shaping genetic variation. The ability to predict genetic variation in our models differed among species: 11-81% of intraspecific genetic variation was explained by environmental variables. Although an anthropogenically induced barrier (a major highway) severely restricted gene flow and movement at broad scales for some species, genetic variation seemed to be primarily driven by natural environmental heterogeneity at a local level. Our results show how assessing environmentally associated variation for multiple species under current and future climate conditions can help identify priority regions for maximizing population persistence under environmental change in urbanized regions. El entendimiento de los contribuyentes ambientales a la estructura poblacional es de importancia primordial para la conservación en ecosistemas urbanizados. Utilizamos modelos espacialmente explícitos para determinar la estructura genética poblacional bajo condiciones ambientales actuales y futuras a lo largo de un ambiente dominado por humanos y altamente fragmentado en el sur de California para valorar los efectos de la variación ecológica natural y la urbanización. Nos enfocamos en siete especies comunes con diversos requerimientos de habitat, tamaños de extensión doméstica, y habilidades de dispersión. Cuantificamos los papeles relativos de las barreras potenciales, incluyendo las características ambientales naturales y una barrera antropogénica creada por una gran autopista, en la formación de la variación genética. La capacidad de predecir la variación genética en nuestros modelos difirió entre especies: el 11 - 81% de variación genética intraespecífica se explicó con variables ambientales. Aunque una barrera inducida antropogénicamente (una gran autopista) restringió severamente elflujogénicoy el movimiento a escalas grandes para algunas especies, la variación genética pareció estar conducida principalmente por la heterogeneidad ambiental natural a nivel local. Nuestros resultados muestran cómo la valoración ambiental asociada con la variación para múltiples especies bajo condiciones climáticas actuales y futuras puede ayudar a identificar las regiones prioritarias para maximizar la persistencia poblacional bajo el cambio ambiental en regiones urbanizadas.