Hazardous site management in the United States includes remediation of contaminated environmental media and restoration of injured natural resources. Site remediation decisions are informed by ecological risk assessment (ERA), whereas restoration and compensation decisions are informed by the natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) process. Despite similarities in many of their data needs and the advantages of more closely linking their analyses, ERA and NRDA have been conducted largely independently of one another. This is the 4th in a series of papers reporting the results of a recent workshop that explored how ERA and NRDA data needs and assessment processes could be more closely linked. Our objective is to evaluate the technical underpinnings of recentmethods used to translate natural resource injuries into ecological service losses and to propose ways to enhance the usefulness of data obtained in ERAs to the NRDA process. Three aspects are addressed: 1) improving the linkage among ERA assessment endpoints and ecological services evaluated in the NRDA process, 2) enhancing ERA data collection and interpretation approaches to improve translation of ERA measurements in damage assessments, and 3) highlighting methods that can be used to aggregate service losses across contaminants and across natural resources. We propose that ERA and NRDA both would benefit by focusing ecological assessment endpoints on the ecosystem services that correspond most directly to restoration and damage compensation decisions, and we encourage development of generic ecosystem service assessment endpoints for application in hazardous site investigations. To facilitate their use in NRDA, ERA measurements should focus on natural resource species that affect the flow of ecosystem services most directly, should encompass levels of biological organization above organisms, and should be made with the use of experimental designs that support description of responses to contaminants as continuous (as opposed to discrete) variables. Application of a data quality objective process, involving input from ERA and NRDA practitioners and site decision makers alike, can facilitate identification of data collection and analysis approaches that will benefit both assessment processes. Because of their demonstrated relationships to a number of important ecosystem services, we recommend that measures of biodiversity be targeted as key measurement endpoints in ERA to support the translation between risk and service losses. Building from case studies of recent successes, suggestions are offered for aggregating service losses at sites involving combinations of chemicals and multiple natural resource groups. Recognizing that ERA and NRDA are conducted for different purposes, we conclude that their values to environmental decision making can be enhanced by more closely linking their data collection and analysis activities.
The Cleveland Bay horse is one of the oldest equines in the United Kingdom, with pedigree data going back almost 300 years. The studbook is essentially closed and because of this, there are concerns about loss of genetic variation across generations. The breed is one of five equine breeds listed as “critical” (<300 registered adult breeding females) by the UK Rare Breeds Survival Trust in their annual Watchlist. Due to their critically endangered status, the current breadth of their genetic diversity is of concern, and assessment of this can lead to improved breed management strategies. Herein, both genealogical and molecular methods are combined in order to assess founder representation, lineage, and allelic diversity. Data from 15 microsatellite loci from a reference population of 402 individuals determined a loss of 91% and 48% of stallion and dam lines, respectively. Only 3 ancestors determine 50% of the genome in the living population, with 70% of maternal lineage being derived from 3 founder females, and all paternal lineages traced back to a single founder stallion. Methods and theory are described in detail in order to demonstrate the scope of this analysis for wider conservation strategies. We quantitatively demonstrate the critical nature of the genetic resources within the breed and offer a perspective on implementing this data in considered breed management strategies.
The need to manage inbreeding in closed populations of animals such as domestic pets, captive populations of wildlife, or farmed livestock has been further emerging in international policy through individual national efforts, as well as guidance from regulatory bodies such as the United Nations Farm Animal Organization. As gene sequencing technologies become more widespread and levels of inbreeding can now be assessed using runs of homozygosity (ROH) determined using single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), it has been suggested that pedigrees alone are no longer adequate to formulate breed management programs (Dell et al., 2020a).Conversely, it has been suggested that where a pedigree is deep, it may well remain the preferred tool to assist in formulating breed
Genetic diversity and maternal ancestry line relationships amongst a sample of 96 Cleveland Bay horses were investigated using a 479bp length of mitochondrial Dloop sequence. The analysis yielded at total of 11 haplotypes with 27 variable positions, all of which have been described in previous equine mitochondrial DNA dloop studies. Four main haplotype clusters were present in the Cleveland Bay breed describing 89% of the total sample. This suggests that only four principal maternal ancestry lines exist in the present-day global Cleveland Bay population. Comparison of these sequences with other domestic horse haplotypes shows a close association of the Cleveland Bay horse with Northern European (Clade C), Iberian (Clade A) and North African (Clade B) horse breeds. This indicates that the Cleveland Bay horse may not have evolved exclusively from the now extinct Chapman horse, as previous work as suggested. The Cleveland Bay horse remains one of only fivedomestic horse breeds classified as Critical on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (UK) Watchlist and our results provide important information on the origins of this breed and represent a valuable tool for conservation purposes.
1970. The Tanytarsini (Diptera, Chironomidae) of a shallow woodland lake in South Finland, with special reference to the effect of winter conditions on the larvae. Ann. zool. fenn. 7 : 313-322. Berg, K. 1938. Studies on the bottom animals of Esrom Lake. K. danske Vidensk. Selsk. Skr., Naturv. Math. Afd. 9(8) : 1-255. Brundin, L. 1949. Chironomiden und andere Bodentiere der sudschwedischen Urgebirgsseen. Rep. Inst. Freshwaf. Res. Drottningholm, No. 30, 914 pp. Hamilton, A. L. 1965. An analysis of a freshwater benthic community with special reference to the Chironomidae. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of British Columbia. pp. 1-93, 1-216. AbstractCan. Ent. 103: 310-314 (1971) Larval forms of Chironomidae were collected on the U.S. Virgin Islands and Anegada, British Virgin Islands. A total of 16 species were found and seven of these were reared to the adult. The species represented 3 subfamilies, 4 tribes, and 12 genera. Species of the genus Chironomus were the most widespread and abundant. In addition, 4 species of Ceratopogonidae and 1 of Chaoboridae were collected.
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