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Bill Fulkerson

Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems | Nature - 0 views

www.nature.com/...s41586-020-2562-8

host diversity ecosystems

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 05 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • Bill Fulkerson on 05 Aug 20
     
    Land use change-for example, the conversion of natural habitats to agricultural or urban ecosystems-is widely recognized to influence the risk and emergence of zoonotic disease in humans1,2. However, whether such changes in risk are underpinned by predictable ecological changes remains unclear. It has been suggested that habitat disturbance might cause predictable changes in the local diversity and taxonomic composition of potential reservoir hosts, owing to systematic, trait-mediated differences in species resilience to human pressures3,4. Here we analyse 6,801 ecological assemblages and 376 host species worldwide, controlling for research effort, and show that land use has global and systematic effects on local zoonotic host communities. Known wildlife hosts of human-shared pathogens and parasites overall comprise a greater proportion of local species richness (18-72% higher) and total abundance (21-144% higher) in sites under substantial human use (secondary, agricultural and urban ecosystems) compared with nearby undisturbed habitats. The magnitude of this effect varies taxonomically and is strongest for rodent, bat and passerine bird zoonotic host species, which may be one factor that underpins the global importance of these taxa as zoonotic reservoirs. We further show that mammal species that harbour more pathogens overall (either human-shared or non-human-shared) are more likely to occur in human-managed ecosystems, suggesting that these trends may be mediated by ecological or life-history traits that influence both host status and tolerance to human disturbance5,6. Our results suggest that global changes in the mode and the intensity of land use are creating expanding hazardous interfaces between people, livestock and wildlife reservoirs of zoonotic disease.
Bill Fulkerson

Bumble bee disease, reproduction shaped by flowering strip plants - 0 views

phys.org/...-bee-disease-reproduction.html

reproduction disease bee consequences

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 11 May 20 - No Cached
  • Bill Fulkerson on 11 May 20
     
    Flowering strips-pollinator-friendly rows of plants that increase foraging habitat for bees-can help offset pollinator decline but may also bring risks of higher pathogen infection rates for pollinators foraging in those strips.
Steve Bosserman

Citizen science efforts should be scaled up - SciDev.Net - 0 views

www.scidev.net/...forts-should-be-scaled-up.html

citizen science data collection biodiversity

shared by Steve Bosserman on 22 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • For instance, research institutions may work with local communities to help monitor biodiversity on habitats and species that the volunteers care about such as forests, species they hunt for food, economic or cultural reasons; the locals often have good knowledge of the diversity where they live. Global apps, such as iNaturalist or eBird, for urban groups, park managers and tourists can be promoted to help capture photographic records and species in certain locations.
Steve Bosserman

How Gaston Bachelard gave the emotions of home a philosophy - Gillian Darley | Aeon Essays - 0 views

aeon.co/...-emotions-of-home-a-philosophy

space intimacy philosophy architecture

shared by Steve Bosserman on 12 May 18 - No Cached
  • As Foucault said of Bachelard a few years later, his characteristic approach was to avoid all defined hierarchies, any universal judgments: ‘He plays against his own culture with his own culture.’ He stood apart, separating himself from the mainstream, finding cracks, dissonances, minor phenomena that he could make his own. Poetry of every description was his raw material.
  • Indoors, in The Poetics of Space, the journey into intimacy is neatly evoked by drawers, cupboards, wardrobes and above all locks, although he warns, somewhat testily, against their use as gratuitous metaphors (and he is strongly averse to the idea of habit).
  • The wellbeing of the warm animal (or human) protected in its nest or cocoon or cottage from the bad weather raging outside is a primitive sense of refuge that we can all share, adult or child. The appeal of a safe haven translates into domestic architecture with such features as the accommodating Arts and Crafts inglenook, seats close by the fire, Frank Lloyd Wright’s enduring penchant for an immense fireplace buried at the core of a house, or even, a favourite 1960s touch, the conversation pit – with or without its trademark shagpile carpet.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Late in life, Auden wrote a set of 15 verses titled Thanksgiving for a Habitat (1960-1964). They were a celebration of domestic contentment in his Austrian cottage, and were structured around the rooms of the house, including ‘the Cave of Meaning’ (his study), the cellar, the attic, and his bedroom ‘the Cave of Nakedness’. In the title poem he ends, happily, writing of ‘a place I may go both in and out of’.
  • The ‘cupboardness’ of children’s play areas; a library tucked beneath some stairs; a universe of emotions in the corner
  • In his neat phrase ‘reading a room’, Bachelard encouraged readers to think of some place in their own past: ‘You have unlocked a door to daydreaming.’
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