|
Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre
Newsletter | January 2022
|
|
|
Watch online now: Dr. Paul Jepson, Rewilding
Fourth Annual GGBC Biodiversity Lecture
In December 2021, the GGBC held its Fourth Annual Biodiversity Lecture. As many people, organisations and governments are looking to have a positive impact on biodiversity, we often ask: how? One practice that is moving quickly from theory to reality is rewilding. But what is rewilding, and how does it fit into the biodiversity narrative? We invited Dr. Paul Jepson to speak about rewilding and how it can fit into the biodiversity puzzle.
The GGBC Annual Biodiversity Lecture is held with the generous support of BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in a Changing Climate Strategic Research Area.
|
|
|
Dr. Paul Jepson delivered the GGBC Annual Biodiversity Lecture live from the Natural History Museum in Oxford, UK.
|
|
|
Tobias Andermann awarded prize for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis by The Royal Swedish Agricultural Academy
After receiving Faculty of Science’s award for his thesis on utilising the potential of big data in biodiversity research, the GGBC member Tobias Andermann continues to be recognized for his exceptional thesis work. He has now been awarded the prize for outstanding doctoral thesis 2022 by The Royal Swedish Agricultural Academy. The award will be handed to Tobias in person by H.M. Kung Carl XVI Gustaf during the Högtidssammankomsten in June, 2022. Read about Tobias' secret to success in an interview published by University of Gothenburg.
Huge congratulations Tobias!
|
|
|
Urban greenery keeps our air clean
Research on the ecosystem services of urban greenery carried out by GGBC'ers Jenny Klingberg, Henrik Sjöman and colleagues hit the news in recent weeks, highlighted by University of Gothenburg, Swedish Radio and Göteborgs Posten (subscription required). The study shows that urban trees have the capacity to reduce the amounts of airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) by accumulating them in leaves and needles. While some PAHs are suspected of having a very negative effect on human health, this group of compounds is largely under-studied. This research was an important step to understanding the fate and spatial distribution of PAHs in urban landscapes as well as having practical implications for city planning. The study is part of the FORMAS-financed research project “Clean the air with plants – can PAH exposure be reduced with urban vegetation?” led by Prof. Håkan Pleijel at University of Gothenburg.
You can read the paper in Science of the Total Environment.
In the image: Lead author Jenny Klingberg from Gothenburg Botanical Garden with an air sampler for PAH and NO2 installed on a pin oak ( Quercus palustris). |
|
|
Children's contact with wildlife in everyday life
– a research based synthesis
|
|
The ongoing urbanization and densification of our living environments are adversely affecting the opportunities for children to have contact with nature. GGBC member Linda Thelin from Slottskogen is a co-author of this literature review on the importance of children's contact with animals. The authors propose a perspective where the children's need for relationships with animals in their everyday lives forms the basis for community planning. At the same time they emphasize the importance of taking animal welfare and sustainable development in general into account. You can read the report in Swedish here. |
|
|
|
Så Vilda! in Sveriges Natur
Så Vilda! is a hugely successful initiative directed to school children, led by Helen Ekvall at Gothenburg Botanical Garden in collaboration with several GGBC members. Helen spoke to Sveriges Natur (in Swedish) about the decreasing capacity of children to notice and identify plants, known as "plant blindness", and the great importance of initiatives such as Så Vilda! for fostering interest in the plant components of the natural world.
|
|
|
University of Gothenburg's 2021 Faculty of Science Award Ceremony
In our October newsletter we reported that three of Faculty of Science's four major awards in 2021 were received by GGBC members: Henrik Nilsson, Tobias Andermann and Heather Reese (L to R above). The award ceremony took place in December and our awardees were inspired by the diversity of research at the faculty presented at the event as well as the sense of community that it brought about.
Congratulations Henrik, Tobias and Heather!
|
|
|
Henrik Nilsson featured in GU's Science Faculty Magazine
GGBC member Henrik Nilsson spoke to the GU Science Faculty Magazine about the limitations of current fungal nomenclature, how these constrain the possibilities to protect fungal diversity and how the database UNITE ( https://unite.ut.ee), which Henrik and his collaborators created, contributes to organising the immense diversity of fungi that currently lack a name. The interview is available in English and in Swedish.
Henrik's work earned him the faculty Science Faculty Research Prize in 2021. |
|
|
Subscribe to the GGBC YouTube Channel
|
|
|
PhD-level course: Target Capture for Illumina Sequencing
March 21-25, 2022
In person, Tjärnö, Sweden
Application deadline: February 14th
A 5-day course for PhD students and motivated MSc students on Target Capture for Illumina Sequencing. This is a fantastic opportunity to develop biodiversity informatics skills while enjoying the beautiful Swedish west coast! The course is open to all (but check recommended background) and free of charge.
Learn to design and carry out your own target capture project in this course with a heavy practical component. The course is organised by ForBio and University of Gothenburg and it is led by GGBC's Tobias Andermann. It will take place at Tjarnö Marine Laboratory.
Target capture is a laboratory technique that allows to focus the sequencing effort on specific genes or DNA regions. This is a useful tool for biodiversity research and evolutionary biology, since it enables to reliably recover those parts of the DNA that can inform us about the species identity and/or the evolutionary history of a sample. If you would like to find out more about target capture we recommend this publication in Frontiers in Genetics, written by several GGBC members.
Read more and register here. |
|
|
Upcoming Transmitting Science courses
GGBC members are eligible for a 20% discount. Note that you are a member in your application for the discount to apply.
- Conference bridges between disciplines: gender in stem and social sciences, Sep. 12th-16th, 2022, hybrid conference, onsite venue is at Gandía, Valencia, Spain
- Naturalistic and scientific illustration 2: digital techniques, online, Jan. 24th- 28th, 2022
- Understanding macroevolutionary dynamics using rpanda and jpanda, online, Jan. 31st-Feb. 11th, 2022
- Morphological phylogenetics: principles, applications, and techniques, online, Feb. 14th-25th, 2022
- Statistical analyses with R, online, Feb. 21st-25th, 2022
|
|
|
Member Research Highlights
|
|
Certification of açaí agroforestry increases the conservation potential of the Amazonian tree flora
A study led by Gabriel Damasco and including two other GGBC members, Christine Bacon & Alexandre Antonelli, shows that certified sustainable plantations of açaí berry harbor greater biodiversity than their non-certified counterparts. The certified plantations were characterised by 50% more tree species as well as presence of larger individuals and dense populations of threatened species.
Read the publication in Agroforesty Systems
|
|
|
Incongruent spatial distribution of taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity in Neotropical cocosoid palms
Three major components of biodiversity include taxonomic (species richness), phylogenetic (evolutionary history) and functional (role in the ecosystem) aspects. Despite spatial incongruence between these having been demonstrated for various groups of organisms, the first remains the most popular measure of biodiversity. This study by Freitas et al., with Christine Bacon as senior author, focused on cocosoid palms and confirmed that taxonomic diversity is a poor predictor of phylogenetic and functional diversity in plants, in which the incongruence has been poorly researched.
Read the publication in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change
|
|
|
The Global Soil Mycobiome consortium dataset for boosting fungal diversity research
This publication by Tedersoo et al. co-authored by GGBC'er Henrik Nilsson marks the release of a global soil fungal dataset of the Global Soil Mycobiome consortium. The dataset comprises 722,682 fungal operational taxonomic units (OTUs) together with geographical and edaphic metadata, and taxonomically and functionally assigned to guilds and other functional groups and is more geographically and phylogenetically inclusive than previously published data.
Read the publication in Fungal Diversity
|
|
|
UCEasy: A software package for automating and simplifying the analysis of ultraconserved elements (UCEs).
UCEasy is an easy-to-install and easy-to-use software package with a simple command line interface that facilitates the computational analysis of ultra-conserved elements from DNA sequence samples, following best practices. The project was led by Caio Ribeiro and involved GGBC'er Romina Batista. UCEs are genomic regions that are strongly conserved in different species throughout multiple evolutionary timescales and have been efficiently used as molecular markers for phylogenomic studies. The functionalities of UCEasy were demonstrated by reproducing the published results of phylogenomic studies of the bird genus Turdus (Aves) and of Adephaga families (Coleoptera) containing genomic datasets to efficiently extract UCEs.
Read the publication in Biodiversity Data Journal
|
|
|
Widespread homogenization of plant communities in the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene is characterised by a reduction of regional distinctiveness of floras due to the loss of native biodiversity and invasions by non-native species. Using a dataset of >200,000 plant species from a newly developed database GreenMaps, a team including Alexandre Antonelli demonstrate that homogenization has been driven largely by naturalizations, rather than extinctions. Moreover, Daru et al. reveal patterns of how different continents contribute to the number and phylogenetic diversity of naturalised species.
Read the publication in Nature Communications
|
|
|
IUCNN – Deep learning approaches to approximate species' extinction risk
Traditional assessment of a species' status on the IUCN's Red List is heavily limited by the availability of human resources, and is further biased taxonomically and geographically. To fill gaps in datasets for groups with a lot of unevaluated and data deficient species, Alexander Zizka and GGBC'ers Tobias Andermann and Daniele Silvestro developed an R-package called IUCNN which helps to predict species' IUCN Red List status based on publicly available occurrence records (and other data if available). The approximations can be used in biogeographic and macro ecological research.
Read the publication in Diversity and Distributions
|
|
|
Species perceived to be dangerous are more likely to have distinctive local names
Mapping and protection of species utilising data contributions from citizen reports might be susceptible to fear-related bias according to a new study by GGBC'ers Harith Farooq, Alexandre Antonelli, Søren Faurby and colleagues. The researchers found that northern Mozambicans knew four to five times more local names for snakes than for lizards and frogs, despite the local species richness being similar among the groups.
Read the publication in Journal of Ethnobotany and Ethnomedicine
|
|
|
Uses and benefits of digital sequence information from plant genetic resources: Lessons learnt from botanical collections
Digitized molecular data referred to as “Digital Sequence Information” by the Convention on Biological Diversity currently lacks a clear definition and regulations on benefit sharing. This poses a significant constraint to its potential applications in research and conservation. This review by Carly Cowell and colleagues including Alexandre Antonelli looks into the current regulations and possible ways forward towards open access digital sequence information.
Read the publication in Plants, People, Planet
|
|
|
Species delimitation and phylogeny of Doto (Nudibranchia: Dotidae) from the Northeast Atlantic, with a discussion on food specialization
Species from the nudibranch genus Doto are small and notoriously difficult to identify. A recent study led by Svante Martinsson, with contributions from Kennet Lundin and Klas Malmberg, used two markers: the mitochondrial COI and the nuclear H3 to reconstruct the phylogeny of NE Atlantic species and further delimitate them. The inclusion of COI revealed 11 species while only 8 were recognised using H3 alone.
Read the publication in Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research
|
|
|
Above- and below-ground biodiversity responses to the prolonged flood pulse in central-western Amazonia, Brazil
Anthropogenic pressures and climate change affect the hydrology of periodically flooded Amazonian forests, for instance by altering the natural flooding gradient. Alexandre Antonelli and Henrik Nilsson contributed to a genetic study led by Yennie Bredin which for the first time uses metabarcoding to investigate the relationship between the flooding gradient and soil microorganisms. The study contributes to a better understanding of how subterranean microorganisms respond to various environmental stressors.
Read the publication in Environmental DNA
|
|
|
Learning partial correlation graphs and graphical models by covariance queries
The problem of inferring the structure of a graphical model was studied by Gábor Lugosi and colleagues, including Jakub Truszkowki. A graphical model describes the structure of dependencies between variables as a graph: an edge between two variables implies their direct dependence, which may indicate a causal relationship. Graphical models arise in many fields, for example structural equation models and phylogenetic trees. The study develops an algorithm that efficiently estimates the structure of such models from observed data. It shows that under certain conditions, it is possible to find the structure faster than even computing the covariance matrix. This theoretical result suggests a path forward for efficient algorithms for finding structure and causality in large multivariate data sets.
Read the publication in Journal of Machine Learning Research
|
|
|
|
Have you recently published using your GGBC affiliation?
Email the publication link to anna.pielach@bioenv.gu.se and we will share your paper!
Are you a GGBC member publishing biodiversity-related research?
Don't forget to use this affiliation in addition to your main employment affiliation(s):
Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre, Box 461, Gothenburg, Sweden
|
|
|
|
New Funding to GGBC Members
|
|
|
Congratulations to Henrik Aronsson for receiving VR's Research Development funding and to Anne Bjorkman for receiving funding from the Carl Tryggers Foundation!
|
|
|
Farewell to E.O. Wilson: A biodiversity leader
|
|
|
The end of the year marked the passing of GGBC's first honorary member, Edward O. Wilson. Wilson inspired many GGBC members with his lifetime of varied work. His passion was for ants and all things small, but his contributions were large. He, along with Robert MacArthur, published The Theory of Island Biogeography in 1967, which had major impacts on the field of biogeography thereafter. Wilson was also a prolific writer, with several dozen popular science books published over his lifetime. He is widely credited with inventing the term biodiversity.
|
|
|
Edward O Wilson receives his GGBC honorary membership in 2018 at Harvard
|
|
Provenance matters: The birch that refused to drop its leaves for winter
If you happen to be in the small northern Swedish town of Malå this winter we encourage you to visit a birch growing next to the town church. The tree was reported by SVT to be standing green and proud in the midst of heavy snow on 30 October while other birches in the direct vicinity had long dropped their leaves. Some locals suspected the tree of having superpowers but we are more willing to bet on it having sprouted from a seed of southern provenance. This is a very striking example of how intra-species diversity is key in adaptation to local environment. |
|
|
Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre
Box 461, 40530, Gothenburg, SWEDEN
|
|
|
|
|
|
