Search Results (6)

For decades, thousands of scientific institutions worldwide have been digitizing collections documenting biodiversity. The advantages and benefits of this process are widely described. In this study, we test the hypothesis that digital data from local scientific institutions gain additional value once shared through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). We have closely examined the fate of over 2.2 million digital records deposited at the Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland (FBAMU), which have been available to the global community for over three years. The effectiveness of this effort is measured by the number of downloads (approximately 123,000), the number of records downloaded (45 billion), and most importantly, the number of scientific publications utilizing these data (an average of 3 publications per week). These publications appear both in the most prestigious scientific journals and regional sources. The thematic scope of papers utilizing FBAMU data shared through GBIF is very broad, covering 12 research areas, including fundamental biological fields (morphology, taxonomy and systematics, phylogeny and evolution, paleobiology, ecology, biogeography, biodiversity conservation, and biodiversity informatics), closely related applied research (agriculture and human health), and climate science and linguistic phylogeny. The most frequent uses of GBIF/FBAMU data have been in studies on processes and phenomena such as biodiversity loss, biological invasions, biogeographical patterns, changes in species ranges, climatic niche dynamics, interactions between organisms, and mechanisms of evolution. Full article

The preservation of paleontological heritage is relevant for paleobiological and geological research, as well as for scientific dissemination. Fossils are indicative of the evolutionary processes, biodiversity, ecology, and geography of the past and require specific geoconservation actions. In Italy, fossils are protected as cultural heritage, and their unauthorized collection and trading are counteracted by a regulatory framework. The local superintendence and law enforcement provide control over the territory, often resorting to the expertise of university paleontologists. In the Calabria region (southern Italy), the collaboration among institutions is yielding interesting results in research, preservation, and public awareness of paleontological heritage. This paper highlights the different approaches to the conservation and promotion of fossils by three museums in Calabria. At the National Archeological Museum of Reggio Calabria, fossils are included in the Prehistory section. The history of life on Earth, with a focus on regional paleontology, characterizes the Museum of the University of Calabria. The Civic Museum of Ricadi exhibits local fossils. Collaboration among these museums and their institutional referents contributes to public awareness and scientific understanding of paleontological heritage, reinforcing the need for conservation and promotion strategies. Full article

Hungary’s first national park was created in 1973 in the Hortobágy area to protect Europe’s largest contiguous steppe area and its flora and fauna. The Hortobágy National Park—the Puszta was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as a cultural landscape in 1999. The park’s outstanding importance is due to the predominantly non-arboreal steppe vegetation, home to a unique bird fauna, and alkaline and chernozem soils with a complex, mosaic-like spatial structure. In addition, the landscape of Hortobágy has a pastoral history stretching back thousands of years. Several hypotheses have been put forward that suggest that the alkaline soils and the habitats that cover them were formed as a result of human activities related to river regulation that began in the second half of the 19th century. However, paleoecological and paleobiological studies over the last 30–40 years have pointed to the natural origin of the alkaline steppes, dating back to the end of the Ice Age. For thousands of years, human activities, in particular, grazing by domestic animals, hardly influenced the natural evolution of the area. The drainage of marshy and flooded areas began in the 19th century, as well as the introduction of more and more intensive agriculture, had a significant impact on the landscape. This paper aims to describe the past natural development of this special alkaline steppe ecosystem, with particular reference to the impacts of past and present human activities, including conservation measures. Full article

We are living in a time of rapid biodiversity loss. Numerous studies have shown that modern extinction rates are higher than pre-human background rates. However, these studies of biodiversity decline almost exclusively focus on large vertebrates. The scientific community lacks the sufficient long-term records necessary to track biodiversity loss for many invertebrate taxa. However, aquatic, benthic, and skeletonized invertebrates have the advantage of leaving a long-term record that can readily be sampled in conjunction with living communities because the mineralized skeletons accumulate in the very same sediments in which the animals that produced them once lived. These not-quite-fossil “death assemblages” contain an underutilized record for long-term monitoring. Here, we leverage three case studies of calcareous micro- and macro-faunal remains from three aquatic environments spanning two gradients: freshwater to fully marine and polluted to pristine and remediated. We compared the death assemblages to living assemblages in these case studies using Spearman’s rho and the Jaccard–Chao agreement to determine the degree of fidelity. Death assemblages of lacustrine, calcareous microcrustaceans (Ostracoda), collected from lakes in The Bahamas and Wisconsin, USA, faithfully record human impacts, both for degradation and remediation, as determined by a mismatch in the live–dead comparisons. Likewise, the live–dead comparisons of calcareous marine macrofauna (Bivalvia) from the southern California shelf also indicate human impact, including pollution and remediation. These case studies demonstrate how death assemblages can be used to gauge the changes in community assembly and population structures at local and regional scales, even in the absence of a systemic monitoring program. Conservation, restoration, and biomonitoring efforts would benefit from the inclusion of live–dead comparisons of taxa with easily fossilized, identifiable parts. Live–dead studies, such as those presented in these case studies, can be used as tools for recognizing targets and establishing baselines for conservation, tracking community responses to remediation efforts, and identifying local species extinctions. Full article

In this paper, I will briefly discuss the elements of novelty and continuity between twentieth-century paleobiology and twenty-first-century paleontology. First, I will outline the heated debate over the disciplinary status of paleontology in the mid-twentieth century. Second, I will analyze the main theoretical issue behind this debate by considering two prominent case studies within the broader paleobiology agenda. Third, I will turn to twenty-first century paleontology and address five representative research topics. In doing so, I will characterize twenty-first century paleontology as a science that strives for more data, more technology, and more integration. Finally, I will outline what twenty-first-century paleontology might inherit from twentieth-century paleobiology: the pursuit of and plea for a new synthesis that could lead to a second paleobiological revolution. Following in the footsteps of the paleobiological revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, the paleobiological revolution of the twenty-first century would enable paleontologists to gain strong political representation and argue with a decisive voice at the “high table” on issues such as the expanded evolutionary synthesis, the conservation of Earth’s environment, and global climate change. Full article

The key role of paralic environments as providers of ecosystem services, associated with their increasingly threatened state, led to the definition of international water management policies aimed to improve ecological quality status (EcoQs). Restoration actions rely on the definition of reference conditions, which is a particularly challenging task in naturally stressed transitional environments. In the present work, we apply the diversity index Exp(H’_bc) on benthic foraminifer assemblages from two anthropogenically unimpacted transitional to coastal Holocene sediment successions of the Po coastal plain, in order to assess past EcoQs (PaleoEcoQs). Ostracod ecological groups provided detailed insights on naturally stressful paleoenvironmental conditions. We show that “poor” to “moderate” PaleoEcoQs are recorded by biological indicators at reference conditions under fluctuations of chemical-physical parameters and organic matter enrichment. We emphasize the importance of a site-specific paleobiological approach, as significant differences in diversity occur even on a short spatial scale. This study illustrates that early to mid-Holocene sediment successions resulted to be appropriate for conservation paleobiological purposes, providing a high-resolution paleoecological record under the influence of the Holocene sea-level rise in analogy with the present-day global change. Full article