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Se hizo una evaluación de la calidad bioclimática de tres edificios del arquitecto Gilberto Gatto Sobral en la Universidad Central del Ecuador con dos objetivos: encontrar evidencia sobre posibles problemas en los espacios que podrían afectar la salud y productividad de sus usuarios, y determinar si el clima tuvo un papel significativo en el diseño de estos edificios. Los edificios eran dos facultades: Jurisprudencia y Economía, y la Administración General. La calidad bioclimática se estableció a través de la comparación de los niveles existentes de temperatura, humedad relativa y luz natural contra estándares de confort y el clima local. Los datos fueron medidos en muestras de espacios usando data-loggers. Se concluyó que todos los edificios tienen espacios fuera del confort siendo demasiado fríos y oscuros; y el clima tuvo un rol menor debido a que se ignoró el comportamiento térmico de los materiales y el movimiento aparente del sol, pero se intentó controlar la luz natural.

This paper discusses the potential health risks and benefits to tagged wildlife from the use of radio tracking, radio telemetry, and related microchip and datalogger technologies used to study, monitor and track mostly wildlife in their native habitats. Domestic pets, especially canids, are briefly discussed as radio-tagging devices are also used on/in them. Radio tracking uses very high frequency (VHF), ultra-high frequency (UHF), and global positioning system (GPS) technologies, including via satellites where platform terminal transmitters (PTTs) are used, as well as geo-locating capabilities using satellites, radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips, and passive integrated responder (PIT) tags, among others. Such tracking technologies have resulted in cutting-edge findings worldwide that have served to protect and better understand the behaviors of myriad wildlife species. As a result, scientists, field researchers, technicians, fish and wildlife biologists and managers, plus wildlife and other veterinarian specialists, frequently opt for its use without fully understanding the ramifications to target species and their behaviors. These include negative physiological effects from electromagnetic fields (EMF) to which many nonhuman species are exquisitely sensitive, as well as direct placement/ use-attachment impacts from radio collars, transmitters, and implants themselves. This paper provides pertinent studies, suggests best management practices, and compares technologies currently available to those considering and/or using such technologies. The primary focus is on the health and environmental risk/benefit decisions that should come into play, including ethical considerations, along with recommendations for more caution in the wildlife and veterinarian communities before such technologies are used in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the potential health risks and benefits to tagged wildlife from the use of radio tracking, radio telemetry, and related microchip and data-logger technologies used to study, monitor and track mostly wildlife in their native habitats. Domestic pets, especially canids, are briefly discussed as radio-tagging devices are also used on/in them. Radio tracking uses very high frequency (VHF), ultra-high frequency (UHF), and global positioning system (GPS) technologies, including via satellites where platform terminal transmitters (PTTs) are used, as well as geo-locating capabilities using satellites, radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips, and passive integrated responder (PIT) tags, among others. Such tracking technologies have resulted in cutting-edge findings worldwide that have served to protect and better understand the behaviors of myriad wildlife species. As a result, scientists, field researchers, technicians, fish and wildlife biologists and managers, plus wildlife and other veterinarian specialists, frequently opt for its use without fully understanding the ramifications to target species and their behaviors. These include negative physiological effects from electromagnetic fields (EMF) to which many nonhuman species are exquisitely sensitive, as well as direct placement/use-attachment impacts from radio collars, transmitters, and implants themselves. This paper provides pertinent studies, suggests best management practices, and compares technologies currently available to those considering and/or using such technologies. The primary focus is on the health and environmental risk/benefit decisions that should come into play, including ethical considerations, along with recommendations for more caution in the wildlife and veterinarian communities before such technologies are used in the first place.

Simple Summary: Habitat design influences every aspect of welfare for captive animals, including the sensory milieu, opportunities to forage for food, the ability to make choices about where to engage in species-typical behaviors, and the opportunity to regulate proximity to other animals sharing a space. Moving a group of animals from one designed space to another provides an opportunity to observe how their behavior is shaped by habitat design features. In this study, we observed the behavior of ten king penguins as they were transferred back and forth between two habitats at the Detroit Zoo. The Penguinarium, although state of the art for its time, opened in 1968 and offered less space and complexity than the naturalistic, expansive Polk Penguin Conservation Center (PPCC), which opened in 2016. These penguins spent more time swimming when they had access to the substantially larger pool of the PPCC. They also engaged in more positive social behaviors, such as species-typical displays and allopreening, and fewer aggressive behaviors in the PPCC. The results support a positive connection between the design of the PPCC and improved welfare for these king penguins. Zoos and aquariums accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums embrace animal welfare as a foundational principle of habitat design. Modern habitats are designed to provide animals with choices and agency over their environment, and to encourage species-appropriate behavior and space use. In 2016, the Detroit Zoological Society opened the Polk Penguin Conservation Center, a 3065.80 m2 facility that features a naturalistic design. The building was designed to optimize animal welfare by incorporating various substrates, nesting sites, and a 1234 kL pool with elements of underwater complexity. The facility houses a mixed-species group of penguins that were previously housed in a smaller habitat that opened in 1968. Between 2015 and 2022, we opportunistically monitored the behavior of ten king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) as they moved back and forth between the two buildings while additional modifications were made to the new habitat. We collected 695 h of behavioral observations and 10,416 h of data from flipper-mounted time–depth recorders. We found that the king penguins spent less time engaged in aggression and more time engaged in swimming and positive social behaviors in the redesigned space. They also spent less time in proximity to other species of penguins and more time alone. These behavioral trends suggest that increased space and environmental complexity had positive welfare benefits for these penguins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of species' responses to microclimatic conditions have increased our understanding of their habitat requirements and possible responses to climate warming. However, little is known about the role of microclimate for insects inhabiting hollow trees.We explored the relationship between tree characteristics and microclimate, and analysed how the microclimate in tree‐hollows affects the occurrence and body size of an endangered beetle species, Osmoderma eremita.We placed temperature data‐loggers in wood mould (= loose material in tree‐hollows) and surveyed O. eremita in 47 hollows in oak pastures in south‐eastern Sweden. We found that tree characteristics previously known to be associated with occurrence of beetle species confined to tree‐hollows (larger diameters, more wood mould, entrances higher up, and not directed upwards) tend to decrease moisture and moisture variation, while their effects on temperature and temperature fluctuations differ during different seasons. This indicates that microclimatic conditions are important for beetles in hollow trees, and many specialised species seem to avoid conditions that are too moist.O. eremita occurred more frequently in trees with a warmer and more stable microclimate, while adult body size decreased with a warmer microclimate. A positive effect of a warmer microclimate was expected, since the study was done near the northern margin of the species' range.O. eremita is confined to living in hollow trees, which may be due to the microclimate there being more stable in comparison to both the ambient climate and the microclimate in standing and downed dead wood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research looked at the choices that children make in the classroom when offered manual and technological options to measure scientific variables. Over 170 school children were involved in science lessons designed in collaboration with school teachers and the research team as part of the planned curriculum. We found that approximately 25% of the students chose the manual measuring options, compared with 75% who chose the technological options. During the focus group interviews (n = 62) carried out immediately after the class, we found that some children who had selected the technological option had done so due to perceptions of the tool's novelty and "accuracy." Some later regretted their choice, reasoning that "real" scientists did not use technology, that it would have been more challenging to measure manually, and therefore that they would have "felt more like scientists" had they selected the manual option. Perceptions of ease of use sometimes lowered children's intent to use the technology option. Similarly, students who chose the manual option alluded to the inauthenticity of the technology option: this is not "what scientists do." Consequently, students who had selected the manual option were also more likely to describe feeling "like a scientist" when carrying out the measurements. The possible implications of the findings, in terms of a possible inversion of the technology acceptance model for students in the science classroom, are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home ranges in animals can be estimated by different methods like minimum convex polygons, characteristic hulls or kernels while correlative ecological niche models (ENMs) are commonly employed for forecasting species' ranges. However, ENMs can also model the distribution of individuals if environmental very high spatial resolution data are available. Indeed, remote sensing (RS) can provide images with pixel sizes of few centimetres. Here, we modelled the distribution of individual lizards (Podarcis bocagei) combining aerial‐like photographs recorded with a compact camera and a matrix of temperature/humidity data‐loggers to obtain several environmental layers with very high spatial resolution. We recorded lizards' positions in a 20 × 20 m mesocosm with a high precision GPS device (~10 cm of error), multiple times per day throughout the whole period of daily activity. We built an orthophoto map (pixels of 20 cm2) from camera pictures, a digital surface model, and a land‐cover supervised classification map. We recreated climate‐like variables by combining data‐logger data. For each individual, we calculated the distance to males and females, excluding the focal lizard. We computed individual realized niche models with Bioclim, GAM, GLM, Maxent and random forest. Models attained a very high evaluation score in most cases. The most contributing variables were related to microclimate (isothermality, minimum temperature and humidity) and distance to conspecifics. Our very high spatial resolution models provided robust information on how space is used by each lizard. Correlative models can identify the most suitable areas inside the home range, similar to core areas estimated from kernel algorithms, but allowed better statistical inference. Overall, RS tools generated high‐quality environmental data, and when combined with ENMs, improved the robustness of the predictions on spatial patterns of small terrestrial animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]