• Open Access close
• CZ close
• English close

Aim Temporal dynamics of biodiversity along tropical elevational gradients are unknown. We studied seasonal changes of Lepidoptera biodiversity along the only complete forest elevational gradient in the Afrotropics. We focused on shifts of species richness patterns, seasonal turnover of communities, and seasonal shifts of species’ elevational ranges, the latter often serving as an indicator of the global change effects on mountain ecosystems. Location Mount Cameroon, Cameroon. Taxon Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) Methods We quantitatively sampled nine groups of Lepidoptera by bait-trapping (16,800 trap-days) and light-catching (126 nights) at seven elevations evenly distributed along the elevational gradient from sea level (30 m asl) to timberline (2,200 m asl). Sampling was repeated in three seasons. Result Altogether, 42,936 specimens of 1,099 species were recorded. A mid-elevation peak of species richness was detected for all groups but Eupterotidae. This peak shifted seasonally for five groups, most of them ascending during the dry season. Seasonal shifts of species’ elevational ranges were mostly responsible for these diversity pattern shifts along elevation: we found general upward shifts in fruit-feeding butterflies, fruit-feeding moths and Lymantriinae from beginning to end of the dry season. Contrarily, Arctiinae shifted upwards during the wet season. The average seasonal shifts of elevational ranges often exceeded 100 metres and were even several times higher for numerous species. Main conclusion We report seasonal uphill and downhill shifts of several lepidopteran groups. The reported shifts can be driven by both delay in weather seasonality and shifts in resource availability, causing phenological delay of adult hatching and/or adult migrations. Such shifts may lead to misinterpretations of diversity patterns along elevation if seasonality is ignored. More importantly, considering the surprising extent of seasonal elevational shifts of species, we encourage taking account of such natural temporal dynamics while investigating the global climate change impact on communities of Lepidoptera in tropical mountains. The dataset was collected by two methodologies: 1/ bait-trapping and 2/ manual catching of target group at light. See Maicher et al. (2019) for details.

The group Anguimorpha represents one of the most unified squamate clades in terms of body plan, ecomorphology, ecophysiology and evolution. On the other hand, the anguimorphs vary between different habitats and ecological niches. Therefore, we focused on the group Anguimorpha to test a possible correlation between heart morphology and ecological niche with respect to phylogenetic position in Squamata with Sphenodon, Salvator, and Pogona as the outgroups. The chosen lepidosaurian species were investigated by microCT. Generally, all lepidosaurs had two well-developed atria with complete interatrial septum and one ventricle divided by ventricular septa to three different areas. The ventricles of all lepidosaurians had a compact layer and abundant trabeculae. The compact layer and trabeculae were developed in accordance with the particular ecological niche of the species; the trabeculae in nocturnal animals with low metabolism, such as Sphenodon, Heloderma or Lanthanotus, were more massive. On the other hand, athletic animals, such as varanids or Salvator, had ventricle compartmentalization divided by three incomplete septa. A difference between varanids and Salvator was found in compact layer thickness: thicker in monitor lizards and possibly linked to their mammalian-like high blood pressure, and the level of ventricular septation. In summary: heart morphology varied among clades in connection with the ecological niche of particular species and it reflects the phylogenetic position in the model clade Anguimorpha. In the absence of fossil evidence, this is the closest approach to understanding heart evolution and septation in clades with different cardiac compartmentalization levels.

Bioluminescent beetles of the superfamily Elateroidea (fireflies, fire beetles, glow-worms) are the most speciose group of terrestrial light-producing animals. The evolution of bioluminescence in elateroids is associated with unusual morphological modifications, such as soft-bodiedness and neoteny, but the fragmentary nature of the fossil record discloses little about the origin of these adaptations. We report the discovery of a new bioluminescent elateroid beetle family from the mid-Cretaceous of northern Myanmar (ca. 99 Ma), Cretophengodidae fam. nov. Cretophengodes azari gen. et sp. nov. belongs to the bioluminescent lampyroid clade, and represents a transitional fossil linking the soft-bodied Phengodidae + Rhagophthalmidae clade and hard-bodied elateroids. The fossil male possesses a light organ on the abdomen which presumably served a defensive function, documenting a Cretaceous radiation of bioluminescent beetles coinciding with the diversification of major insectivore groups such as frogs and stem-group birds. The discovery adds a key branch to the elateroid tree of life and sheds light on the timing of the evolution of soft-bodiedness and historical biogeography of elateroid beetles. The Burmese amber specimen studied here originates from amber mines near the Noije Bum Hill (26°20' N, 96°36' E), Hukawng Valley, Kachin State, northern Myanmar. The specimen is deposited in the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology (NIGP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China. The amber piece was trimmed with a small table saw, ground with emery papers of different grain sizes, and finally polished with polishing powder. Photographs under incident light were taken with a Zeiss Discovery V20 stereo microscope. Widefield fluorescence images were captured with a Zeiss Axio Imager 2 light microscope combined with a fluorescence imaging system. Confocal images were obtained with a Zeiss LSM710 confocal laser scanning microscope. Images under incident light and widefield fluorescence were stacked in Helicon Focus 7.0.2 or Zerene Stacker 1.04. Confocal images were manually stacked in Adobe Photoshop CC. Images were further processed in Adobe Photoshop CC to enhance contrast. 

Predators attack conspicuous prey phenotypes that are present in the environment. Male display behaviour of conspicuous nuptial colouration becomes risky in the presence of a predator, and adult males face higher predation risk. High predation risk in one sex will lead to low survival and sex ratio bias in adult cohorts, unless the increased predation risk is compensated by higher escape rate. Here, we tested the hypothesis that sand lizards (Lacerta agilis) have sex-specific predation risk and escape rate. We expected the differences to manifest in changes in sex ratio with age, differences in frequency of tail autotomy, and in sex-specific survival rate. We developed a statistical model to estimate predation risk and escape rate, combining the observed sex ratio and frequency of tail autotomy with likelihood-based survival rate. Using a Bayesian framework, we estimated the model parameters. We projected the date of the tail autotomy events from growth rates derived from capture-recapture data measurements. We found statistically stable sex ratio in age groups, equal frequency of tail regenerates between sexes, and similar survival rate. Predation risk is similar between sexes, and escape rate increases survival by about 5%. We found low survival rate and a low number of tail autotomy events in females during months when sand lizards mate and lay eggs, indicating high predator pressure throughout reproduction. Our data show that gravid females fail to escape predation. The risks of reproduction season in an ectotherm are a convolution of morphological changes (conspicuous colouration in males, body allometry changes in gravid females), behaviour (nuptial displays), and environmental conditions which challenge lizard thermal performance. Performance of endotherm predators in cold spring months endangers gravid females more than displaying males in bright nuptial colouration.  Capture-recapture data of sand lizards (Lacerta agilis, Lacertidae, Reptilia) from Hustopeče, Czechia (48.93 N, 16.72 E). animal - identification of the animal; prefix indicates the latest possible year of hatching day - day of capture month - month of capture year - year of capture season - phase I started from the arousal from hibernation, and lasted until the first adult male started to lose nuptial colouration; phase II constituted the season after males started to lose nuptial colouration, and lasted until the beginning of hibernation sex - sex of the animal ventralia - number of scales in the second rows from the ventral medial line age - young animals were juveniles and subadults, the remaining animals were considered adult aged.month - approximate age of the animal in months regenerate - presence of tail regenerate predation.attempt - first record of tail regenerate or reduced tail length at recapture Lreg - tail regenerate length in mm; 0 - animal with intact tail, 0.01 - recent tail autotomy, no tail regenerate growth measurable tailL - tail length from cloaca to tail tip corrected for body length from rostrum to cloaca48.93 N, 16.72 E48.93 N, 16.72 E)

Genome sequencing, assembly, and microsatellite development For whole-genome sequencing DNA from G. obscura isolate 6BE2, which originally was cultured from body wash samples from a X. crassiusculus beetle live-trapped in eastern Tennessee (Chahal et al. 2019), was extracted using Qiagen Blood and Cell Culture DNA Kit Maxi (Qiagen, Germantown, MD, USA), according to the protocol (Gazis et al., 2016). Libraries were prepared at the Michigan State University Genomics Core lab (https://rtsf.natsci.msu.edu/genomics/) using the Illumina TruSeq Nano DNA Library Preparation kit on a Perkin Elmer Sciclone G3 robot following the manufacturer’s recommendation. Completed libraries were checked for quality (QC) and quantified using a combination of Qubit dsDNA HS and Caliper LabChipGX HS DNA assays. All libraries were pooled in equimolar amounts based on QC and quantified using the Kapa Biosystems Illumina Library Quantification qPCR kit. Library sequencing was performed with Illumina HiSeq 4000 flow cell using a 2x150bp paired end format and a HiSeq 4000 SBS reagent kit. Base calling was completed using Illumina Real Time Analysis (RTA) v2.7.6 and output of RTA was demultiplexed and converted to FastQ format with Illumina Bcl2fastq v2.19.0. The transcript quality of these reads was assessed using FastQC (Andrews, 2010) and error correction performed using default values with Bloom Filter Correction (BFC) (Li, 2015). Using the trimming program Skewer (Jiang et al., 2014) adapter sequences were removed and reads were filtered by requiring a minimal quality score of 20 in at least 70% of the bases. With the exception of minimal read length after trimming set to 30, all default parameters were used. Next, the transcripts were assembled using Assembly By Short Sequences (ABySS), specifically its paired-end option, abyss-pe, using a k-mer size of 81 and default settings for all other options (Simpson et al., 2009). Finally, sequences were masked for low complexity regions with Dustmasker (level of 1) (Morgulis et al., 2006). Microsatellite markers were identified with a custom perl script (Staton and Ficklin, 2018) (Table 1). This script utilizes Primer3 (Rozen and Skaletsky, 2000) to search for di, tri, and tetra-repeating motifs, with primer product size range between 100-250 base pairs long (Untergasser et al., 2012). This script also produced text files containing the IDs and forward and reverse primers for the identified markers; these would be used to identify common regions between the different species’ genome scaffolds. Fungal strain selection, DNA extraction, amplification and molecular confirmation Following Gazis et al. (2018) protocol, axenic cultures from seven G. obscura isolates and 18 additional isolates of Geosmithia species (Table 2) were placed onto Difco™ Potato Dextrose Broth (PDB) (Becton, Dickinson and company, Sparks, MD, USA) at 22⁰C for up to two weeks, after which mycelium was harvested for DNA extraction. For species confirmation, GeneJet Genomic DNA Purification Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Pittsburgh, PA, USA) was used, following manufacturer’s protocols with slight modifications. These modifications included increased proteinase K to 40 µL/sample and an extended overnight incubation period at 56°C. Samples were quantified using a nanodrop 1000 spectrophotometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Pittsburgh, PA, USA) and stored at -20⁰C until used. To confirm the identity of the Geosmithia isolates, the RNA operon was amplified and sequenced using the ITS primers ITS1F (Gardes and Bruns, 1993) and ITS4R (White et al., 1990), following Gazis et al. (2018) protocol. PCR product was visualized on a 2% agarose gel and sent to MCLAB (www.mclab.com) for cleaning and sequencing. Sequenced strands were assembled into contigs using Sequencher 5.0 (Gene Codes Corporation, Ann Arbor, MI, USA). Sequences were compared to the NCBI nucleotide database using BLAST search optimized to exclude uncultured/environmental sample sequences and to search sequences from type material. If species identity of 99-100% was not obtained, an unrestricted BLAST search was performed (Table 2). Additional Geosmithia spp. (G. obscura CBS121749, G. lavendula CBS344.49, G. pallida CBS260.33,) and other species (Penicillium [formerly Geosmithia] namyslowskii CBS686.85 and Talaromyces [formerly Geosmithia] viridulus CBS252.07) were acquired as DNA samples from The Dutch Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures (CBS) Fungal Biodiversity Centre collection or from previously verified DNA samples from our collection [G. obscura 14MCE1, G. sp. 23 4MN3, G. morbida GM182, G. morbida GM249, G. morbida GM250, and Rasamsonia argillacea (Stolk, H.C. Evans & T. Nilsson) Houbraken & Frisvad (formerly G. argillacea)]. Microsatellite characterization and cross-amplification A total of 2815 microsatellite markers were identified with flanking primer sequences. Of those, 75 microsatellite markers (consisting of 25 di-, 25 tri-, and 25 tetra-nucleotide sequences) were randomly selected and screened to identify polymorphic markers. For the initial characterization, all primer pairs were tested using three G. obscura and one G. morbida isolates. PCR reactions were conducted using 4 µL GoTaq G2 Hot Start Colorless Master Mix (Promega Corporation, Madison, WI, USA), 1 µL each forward and reverse primers, 0.5 µL DMSO, 5 µL sterile water, and 1 µL genomic DNA providing a 12.5 µL sample volume. Samples were placed in a SimpliAmp ThermalCycler (Thermo Fisher Scientific) with the following protocol: 94°C for 3 min followed by 35 cycles of denaturation at 94°C for 40 sec, annealing at 55°C for 40 sec, and primer extension at 72°C for 30 sec, followed by 72°C for 4 min. PCR products were separated using a QIAxcel Capillary Electrophoresis System (Qiagen, Germantown, MD, USA) with a 25-500 bp size standard. Products with a relative fluorescence unit (RFU) of 100 or greater were scored as positive amplification. Only a subset of microsatellite markers (n=28) that were identified as polymorphic were further screened in the cross-amplification study. To accomplish this step, six G. obscura isolates along with 24 isolates from nine different Geosmithia species and three additional isolates outside Geosmithia were screened. Isolates were amplified using the PCR protocol described above and separated using QIAxcel Capillary Electrophoresis System with an RFU value of 100 or greater scored as positive. Number of alleles and haploid genetic diversity was obtained using the program GenAlEx 6.5 (Peakall and Smouse, 2012). Background. Symbioses between Geosmithia fungi and wood-boring and bark beetles seldom result in disease induction within the plant host. Yet exceptions exist such as Geosmithia morbida, the causal agent of Thousand Cankers Disease (TCD) of walnuts and wingnuts and Geosmithia sp. 41, the causal agent of Foamy Bark Canker disease of oaks. Isolates of G. obscura were recovered from black walnut trees in eastern Tennessee and at least one isolate induced cankers following artificial inoculation. Due to the putative pathogenicity and lack of recovery of G. obscura from natural lesions, a molecular diagnostic screening tool was developed using microsatellite markers mined from the G. obscura genome. Results. A total of 3,256 candidate microsatellite markers were identified (2236, 789, 137 di-, tri-, and tetra- motifs were identified, respectively), with 2011, 703, 101 di-, tri-, and tetra- motifs containing markers with primers. From these, 75 microsatellite markers were randomly selected, screened, and optimized, resulting in 28 polymorphic markers that yielded single, consistently recovered bands which were used in downstream analyses. Five of these microsatellite markers were found to be specific to G. obscura and did not cross-amplify into other, closely related species. Although the remaining tested markers could be useful, they cross-amplified within different Geosmithia species, making them not reliable for G. obscura detection. Conclusion. Five novel microsatellite markers (GOBS9, GOBS10, GOBS41, GOBS43, GOBS50) were developed based on G. obscura genome. These species-specific microsatellite markers are available as a tool for use in molecular diagnostics and can assist future surveillance studies. Abyss assembly of 9.1 million paired sequencing reads from DNA of G. obscura resulted in 5,752 unitigs spanning 28.9 Mb with an N50 of 24,134 and 47.4x coverage. The assembled sequences were screened for microsatellite development, from which 1,653 unitigs yielded at least one microsatellite marker, resulting in 3,256 candidate microsatellite markers. From this group, we identified 94 compound microsatellites, which were either located next to each other, or separated by less than 15 base pairs (bp), and 2,815 microsatellite markers with flanking primer sequences. Parameters for minimum number of replicates for each motif were established at 8 for dinucleotides, 7 for trinucleotides, and 6 for tetranucleotides. Using these baseline parameters, a total of 2236, 789, 137 di-, tri-, and tetra- motifs were identified respectively, with 2011, 703, 101 di-, tri-, and tetra- motifs containing markers with primers. We tested 75 markers for amplification and the presence of polymorphic bands. All tested markers resulted in amplification, and a total of 36 markers were polymorphic (11 di-, 13 tri-, 12 tetra-nucleotides). Further optimization of the microsatellite markers yielded 28 markers with single, consistently recovered bands (Table 3), which were used to test cross-amplification of G. obscura markers into other Geosmithia species.

Data in ASCII format related to the figures in the publication. Each figure has a description file (TXT) which contains the list of spreadsheet names and the data file (DAT, containing all the data relevant to the listed spreadsheets). \nFig1.dat.txt (description file)\nFig1.dat (data file)\n…\nFig8-9.dat.txt\nFig.8-9.dat\nEach spreadsheet in the data file contains a header where all the parameters of the experiment are listed.\n

Data supplement for the landscape connectivity study between Iron Age settlements (LT B-LT D) in Křivoklát Protected Landscape Area with focus on site of Nižbor (exact quotation of the paper will be added after its official publishing – Venclová, N. –Dreslerová, D. – Kyselý, R. – Dyčka, M. – Šebesta, J. – Pachnerová Brabcová, K. – Bíšková, J. – Matoušek, V. 2024: Paths to this and the next world: A La Tène sunken hut from Nižbor, Central Bohemia. Archeologické rozhledy 76, 329-358). The study is based on the analysis called Cumulative Focal Mobility Network (CFMN), which has been perfected for more than a decade. This method calculates directional-less movement in the artificial environment from a multitude of source points (grid of 256 equally spaced points in a 50 km radius around Nižbor) by means of the interpretation of slope model using hydrological tools (Fábrega-Álvarez 2006; Murrieta-Flores 2012). The resulting x-number of models, representing the most convenient paths to the selection of points, are then merged and analysed with the Density tool to find the highest number of overlaps (for the syntax, see Fig. 14). In practice, these are the corridors for the most convenient movement throughout the landscape (Bellavia 2001; Verhagen 2010; Déderix 2016). In other words, the analysis can be described as an ideal model of connectivity and accessibility of various locations in the terrain and of optimal pathways – natural corridors of movement – leading across the entire landscape (Verhagen et al. 2013; Stančo – Pažout 2020). The 5th generation Digital Terrain Model of the Czech Republic (DMR 5G) was used for the analysis. It was reclassified to an 8 m cell size and cleared of modern infrastructure developments (Novák et al. 2022). It was combined with the Model of Potential Floodplains in the Czech Republic (Novák 2017), which served as a further buffer for the movement. All analyses were calculated in ArcMap 10.8 software. To reconstruct the position of the studied site in the LT B–LT ­D period in a broader sense, the settlement pattern should be considered within the Křivoklát Protected Landscape Area and its surroundings (principally Beroun, Kladno, Praha-západ and Rakovník districts in Central Bohemia). An overview of La Tène sites was recently presented (Dreslerová et al. 2022) based on current archaeological records (AMCR database). Hence, in a 50 km radius around Nižbor, 344 positive confirmations of human activity can be found between LT B and LT D. For the needs of this study, the site location was refined by merging the immediately neighbouring ones into clusters, which are further treated as one site with positive confirmation of occupation in LT B­–LT D. A total of 149 sites were thus studied in relation to Nižbor. Sources: AMCR database: Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic. Available at: https://digiarchiv.aiscr.cz/ [accessed 01-01-2022]. Bellavia, G. 2001: Extracting "Natural Pathways" from a Digital Elevation Model. Applications to Landscape Archaeological Studies. In: G. Burenhult – J. Arvidsson (eds.), Archaeological Informatics: Pushing The Envelope. Proceedings of the CAA 2001. Oxford: Archaeopress, 5–12. Déderix, S. 2016: Travelling Across Archaeological Landscapes: the Contribution of Hierarchical Communication Networks. In: S. Campana et al. (eds.), Keep the revolution going. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, CAA 2015. Oxford: Archaeopress, 555–565. Dreslerová, D. – Venclová, N. – Demján, P. – Kyselý, R. – Matoušek, V. 2022: Did they leave or not? A critical perspective on the beginnings of the La Tène period in Bohemia. Archeologické rozhledy 74, 505–537. https://doi.org/10.35686/AR.2022.24 Fábrega-Álvarez, P. 2006: Moving without destination. A theoretical GIS-based determination of movement from a giving origin. Archaeological Computing Newsletter 64, 7–11. Murrieta-Flores, P. 2012: Understanding human movement through spatial technologies. The role of natural areas of transit in the Late Prehistory of south-western Iberia. Trabajos de Prehistoria 69, 103–122. Novák D. 2017: GIS data - Model potenciálních rozlivových zón na území ČR | GIS data - Model of Potential Floodplains in the Czech Republic. Zenodo. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3367357. Novák D. – Pružinec F. – Lieskovský T. 2022: The Potential and Implications of Automated Pre-Processing of Lidar-Based Digital Elevation Models for Large-Scale Archaeological Landscape Analysis. Slovak Journal of Civil Engineering 30, 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4063514 Stančo, L. – Pažout, A. 2020: Which way to Roxane: Mobility networks in the heartland of Central Asia. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 32, 102391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102391 Verhagen, P. 2010: On the Road to Nowhere? Least Cost Paths, Accessibility and the Predictive Modelling Perspective. In: F. Contreras – M. Farjas – F. J. Melero (eds.), Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, CAA 2010. Oxford: Archaeopress, 383–390. Verhagen, P. – Brughmans, T. – Nuninger, L. – Bertoncello, F. 2013: The Long and Winding Road: Combining Least Cost Paths and Network Analysis Techniques for Settlement Location Analysis and Predictive Modelling. In: E. Graeme (ed.), Archaeology in the Digital Era. Papers from the 40th Annual Conference of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA), Southampton, 26-29 March 2012. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 357–366.

Rapid and reliable identification of insects is important in many contexts, from the detection of disease vectors and invasive species to the sorting of material from biodiversity inventories. Because of the shortage of adequate expertise, there has long been an interest in developing automated systems for this task. Previous attempts have been based on laborious and complex handcrafted extraction of image features, but in recent years it has been shown that sophisticated convolutional neural networks (CNNs) can learn to extract relevant features automatically, without human intervention. Unfortunately, reaching expert-level accuracy in CNN identifications requires substantial computational power and huge training datasets, which are often not available for taxonomic tasks. This can be addressed using feature transfer: a CNN that has been pretrained on a generic image classification task is exposed to the taxonomic images of interest, and information about its perception of those images is used in training a simpler, dedicated identification system. Here, we develop an effective method of CNN feature transfer, which achieves expert-level accuracy in taxonomic identification of insects with training sets of 100 images or less per category. Specifically, we extract rich representations of intermediate to high-level image features from the CNN architecture VGG16 pretrained on the ImageNet dataset. This information is fed into a linear support vector machine classifier, which is trained on the target problem. We tested the performance of our approach on two types of challenging taxonomic tasks: (1) identifying insects to higher groups when they are likely to belong to subgroups that have not been seen previously; and (2) identifying visually similar species that are difficult to separate even for experts. For the first task, our approach reaches > 92 % accuracy on one dataset (884 face images of 11 families of Diptera, all specimens representing unique species), and > 96 % accuracy on another (2936 dorsal habitus images of 14 families of Coleoptera, over 90 % of specimens belonging to unique species). For the second task, our approach outperforms a leading taxonomic expert on one dataset (339 images of three species of the Coleoptera genus Oxythyrea; 97 % accuracy), and both humans and traditional automated identification systems on another dataset (3845 images of nine species of Plecoptera larvae; 98.6 % accuracy). Reanalyzing several biological image identification tasks studied in the recent literature, we show that our approach is broadly applicable and provides significant improvements over previous methods, whether based on dedicated CNNs, CNN feature transfer, or more traditional techniques. Thus, our method, which is easy to apply, can be highly successful in developing automated taxonomic identification systems even when training datasets are small and computational budgets limited. valan2018_SUPPLEMENT.tarThis directory contains: * metadata to obtain images from the three novel datasets we designed for our study * notebooks with thorough evaluation of off-the-shelf approach for image classification based on a feature extraction with a single feed forward pass trough pretrained VGG16 * script to run on your own dataset with what we found to be optimal settings. You can also access it here https://github.com/valanm/off-the-shelf-insect-identificationSupplementary_Figure1Impact of concatenating globally max pooled (MAX) and globally average pooled (AVG) features on identification accuracy for datasets D1, D2, D3 and D4. We used input images of size 416x416 and features are extracted after 4th convolutional block (c4). Concatenation of MAX and AVG features resulted in accuracy somewhere between the global average pooling (performed the best in all cases) and global max pooling (performed the worst in all cases).valan2018_latex

Human-driven environmental changes can induce marked shifts in the functional structure of biological communities with possible repercussion on important ecosystem functions and services. At the same time it remains unclear to which extent these changes may differently affect various types of organisms. We investigated species richness and community functional structure of species assemblages at the landscape scale (1km2 plots) for two contrasting model taxa, i.e., plants (producers and sessile organisms) and birds (consumers and mobile organisms), along topography, climate, landscape heterogeneity, and land-use (agriculture and urbanization) gradients in a densely populated region of Switzerland. Our study revealed that agricultural and urban land uses drove marked shifts in the functional structure of biological communities compared to changes along climate and topography gradients, especially for plants, while for birds these changes were comparable. Agricultural and urban land uses enhanced divergence in traits related to resource use for birds (diet and nesting), growth forms, dispersal, and reproductive traits for plants, while it induced convergence in vegetative plant traits (plant height and leaf dry matter content). These results suggest that contrasting assembly patterns may arise within and across taxonomic groups along the same environmental gradients as result of distinct underlying processes and 'organism-specific' environmental perceptions. Our results further suggest a potential homogenization of biological communities, as well as low functional diversity and redundancy levels of bird assemblages in our human-dominated study region. This might potentially compromise the maintenance of key ecological processes under future environmental changes. SES for plant and bird functional traits based on 1000 randomizationsSES_Data.zip