Search Results (4)

Although much is known about the ecology and functional importance of canopy arthropods in temperate forests, few studies have tried to assess the overall diversity and investigate the composition and dynamics of tree-specific communities. This has impeded a deeper understanding of the functioning of forests, and of how to maintain system services. Here, we present the first comprehensive data of whole arthropod communities, collected by insecticidal knockdown (fogging) from 1159 trees in 18 study areas in Central Europe during the last 25 years. The data includes 3,253,591 arthropods from 32 taxa (order, suborder, family) collected on 24 tree species from 18 genera. Fogging collects free-living, ectophytic arthropods in approximately the same number as they occur in the trees. To our knowledge, these are the most comprehensive data available today on the taxonomic composition of arboreal fauna. Assigning all arthropods to their feeding guild provided a proxy of their functional importance. The data showed that the canopy communities were regularly structured, with a clear dominance hierarchy comprised of eight ‘major taxa’ that represented 87% of all arthropods. Despite significant differences in the proportions of taxa on deciduous and coniferous trees, the composition of the guilds was very similar. The individual tree genera, on the other hand, showed significant differences in guild composition, especially when different study areas and years were compared, whereas tree-specific traits, such as tree height, girth in breast height or leaf cover, explained little of the overall variance. On the ordinal level, guild composition also differed significantly between managed and primary forests, with a simultaneous low within-group variability, indicating that management is a key factor determining the distribution of biodiversity and guild composition. Full article

The research problem discussed in the paper covers innovative mobility solutions in rural areas. This study aims to identify the specifics of innovative mobility solutions expected by inhabitants of rural areas based on the example of selected regions in Lithuania and Poland. The research was conducted between 2019 and 2021 in two rural regions: Druskininkai and Birštonas in Lithuania, as well as the Hajnowski district and the area of the Bialowieza Forest in Poland. The quantitative methodology was used, i.e., survey research. The research confirmed the proposed concept and showed relatively many innovative mobility solution proposals in both regions. Another method used in the study was correspondence analysis, which was performed to assess the strength of the correlation between the proposed innovative solutions and the age and education of the respondents. Comparisons were also made with the use of Pearson’s chi-squared test and the Cramér’s V statistical method. Among the options presented, organisational innovation—the synchronisation of timetables of various means of transport—was met with great interest in Poland and Lithuania alike. The introduction of electric bikes was considered the most desirable product innovation. Solutions that require the ability to use a mobile application are accepted, especially by young people and individuals with university-level education. The results of the research include transport solution models that are expected to improve the mobility of residents of rural areas. This comparative approach concerning slightly different rural regions in two neighbouring countries ought to be deemed a new approach. Full article

The European bison is a non-model organism; thus, most of its genetic and genomic analyses have been performed using cattle-specific resources, such as BovineSNP50 BeadChip or Illumina Bovine 800 K HD Bead Chip. The problem with non-specific tools is the potential loss of evolutionary diversified information (ascertainment bias) and species-specific markers. Here, we have used a genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approach for genotyping 256 samples from the European bison population in Bialowieza Forest (Poland) and performed an analysis using two integrated pipelines of the STACKS software: one is de novo (without reference genome) and the other is a reference pipeline (with reference genome). Moreover, we used a reference pipeline with two different genomes, i.e., Bos taurus and European bison. Genotyping by sequencing (GBS) is a useful tool for SNP genotyping in non-model organisms due to its cost effectiveness. Our results support GBS with a reference pipeline without PCR duplicates as a powerful approach for studying the population structure and genotyping data of non-model organisms. We found more polymorphic markers in the reference pipeline in comparison to the de novo pipeline. The decreased number of SNPs from the de novo pipeline could be due to the extremely low level of heterozygosity in European bison. It has been confirmed that all the de novo/Bos taurus and Bos taurus reference pipeline obtained SNPs were unique and not included in 800 K BovineHD BeadChip. Full article

The Bialowieza Primeval Forest (BF) is one of the well-known forests in Central Europe. The most common tree species in BF was Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) H. Karst), comprising 26%. However, a mass dieback of spruce has occurred during recent years. The spruce dieback in Bialowieza Forest is directly caused by the spruce bark beetle. However, the mass appearance of this pest can be a consequence of global warming and drought. Changes in air temperature were presented and drought indices were calculated as follows: standardized precipitation index, Palmer drought severity index, climatic water balance and soil water storage deficit. The warming of the climate of Bialowieza from 1950 to 2015 is comparable to that observed throughout central Europe. The temperature increased by 1.27 °C. The occurrence of drought from 1950 to 1966 and from 1985 to 2015 had a similar frequency. From 1963 to 1966, the volume of removed deadwood from the managed part of Bialowieza Forest was 27 thousand m³ but from 2012 to 2016, the volume was more than one million m³. Full article