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International audience; A large part of the soil protist diversity is missed in metabarcoding studies based on 0.25 g of soil environmental DNA (eDNA) and universal primers due to ca. 80% co-amplification of non-target plants, animals and fungi. To overcome this problem, enrichment of the substrate used for eDNA extraction is an easily implemented option but its effect has not yet been tested. In this study, we evaluated the effect of a 150 μm mesh size filtration and sedimentation method to improve the recovery of protist eDNA, while reducing the co-extraction of plant, animal and fungal eDNA, using a set of contrasted forest and alpine soils from La Réunion, Japan, Spain and Switzerland. Total eukaryotic diversity was estimated by V4 18S rRNA metabarcoding and classical amplicon sequence variant calling. A 2- to 3- fold enrichment in shelled protists (Euglyphida, Arcellinida and Chrysophyceae) was observed at the sample level with the proposed method, with, at the same time, a 2-fold depletion of Fungi and a 3- fold depletion of Embryophyceae. Protist alpha diversity was slightly lower in filtered samples due to reduced coverage in Variosea and Sarcomonadea, but significant differences were observed in only one region. Beta diversity varied mostly between regions and habitats, which explained the same proportion of variance in bulk soil and filtered samples. The increased resolution in soil protist diversity estimates provided by the filtration-sedimentation method is a strong argument in favour of including it in the standard protocol for soil protist eDNA metabarcoding studies

Research on island species–area relationships (ISAR) has expanded to incorporate functional (IFDAR) and phylogenetic (IPDAR) diversity. However, relative to the ISAR, we know little about IFDARs and IPDARs, and lack synthetic global analyses of variation in form of these three categories of island diversity–area relationship (IDAR). Here, we undertake the first comparative evaluation of IDARs at the global scale using 51 avian archipelagic data sets representing true and habitat islands. Using null models, we explore how richness-corrected functional and phylogenetic diversity scale with island area. We also provide the largest global assessment of the impacts of species introductions and extinctions on the IDAR. Results show that increasing richness with area is the primary driver of the (non-richness corrected) IPDAR and IFDAR for many data sets. However, for several archipelagos, richness-corrected functional and phylogenetic diversity changes linearly with island area, suggesting that the dominant community assembly processes shift along the island area gradient. We also find that archipelagos with the steepest ISARs exhibit the biggest differences in slope between IDARs, indicating increased functional and phylogenetic redundancy on larger islands in these archipelagos. In several cases introduced species seem to have ‘re-calibrated’ the IDARs such that they resemble the historic period prior to recent extinctions. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The synthesis of luminescent molecular crystalline materials requires a good understanding of the luminescence properties of crystals in which many molecules are densely packed. Previously, we studied the near-infrared (NIR) luminescence of a trivalent ytterbium (Yb(iii)) complex with a Schiff base ligand, tris[2-(5-methylsalicylideneimino)ethyl]amine (H

Herein, introducing multiple fluorine atoms into aromatic rings of trimethine cyanine dyes is proposed as a powerful method for dramatically increasing sensitivity to amines. The highly sensitive ratiometric fluorescence properties previously available only by intramolecular addition can be exploited in reactions with intermolecular amines or other nucleophiles.

A one-step route to a series of perfluoronaphthalene-based donor (D)-acceptor (A)-D fluorescent dyes with various electron-donating groups was developed. The perfluoronaphthalene moiety in the D-A-D dyes served as a good electron-accepting aromatic ring with excellent intramolecular charge transfer properties, as determined by density functional theory calculations and measurements of the fluorescence properties in solution, in poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) films, and in crystal form. Notably, replacing the naphthalene ring with perfluoronaphthalene in the D-A-D dyes carrying the phenothiazine moiety not only stabilized the highest occupied molecular orbital and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy levels but also reduced the energy band gap to change the emission color from blue to yellow. Among the four synthesized perfluoronaphthalene D-A-D dyes, those bearing diphenylamino groups afforded the best fluorescence quantum yields in Et

We prepared Ln(III) (Ln=Eu, Gd, and Yb) complexes with a tripodal Schiff base, tris[2‐(5‐methylsalicylideneimino)ethyl]amine (H3L) and studied their photophysical properties. Upon ligand excitation, YbL showed Yb(III)‐centered luminescence in the near‐infrared region. While the overall quantum yield (0.60(1)%) of YbL in acetonitrile was moderate among the reported values for Yb(III) complexes, its radiative lifetime (0.33(2) ms) was significantly shorter than those reported previously. We propose that the ligand‐to‐metal charge‐transfer (LMCT) state mediated the sensitization in YbL. The emission and excitation spectra of EuL indicated the participation of the LMCT state in the sensitization. The radiative lifetime (0.84(7) ms) for EuL in the solid state was rather short compared to those of reported Eu(III) complexes. Our results show that the Yb(III) complex with the Schiff base ligand has two features: the short radiative lifetime and the non‐triplet sensitization path., A seven‐coordinated Yb(III) complex with a tripodal Schiff base exhibited efficient luminescence in the near‐infrared region with an extremely short radiative lifetime. The sensitization process for the Yb(III) complex was explained by the ligand‐to‐metal charge‐transfer state mediated mechanism.

The study of island community assembly has been fertile ground for developing and testing theoretical ideas in ecology and evolution. The ecoevolutionary trajectory of lineages after colonization has been a particular interest, as this is a key component of understanding community assembly. In this system, existing ideas, such as the taxon cycle, posit that lineages pass through a regular sequence of ecoevolutionary changes after colonization, with lineages shifting toward reduced dispersal ability, increased ecological specialization, and declines in abundance. However, these predictions have historically been difficult to test. Here, we integrate phylogenomics, population genomics, and X‐ray microtomography/3D morphometrics, to test hypotheses for whether the ecomorphological diversity of trap‐jaw ants (Strumigenys) in the Fijian archipelago is assembled primarily through colonization or postcolonization radiation, and whether species show ecological shifts toward niche specialization, toward upland habitats, and decline in abundance after colonization. We infer that most Fijian endemic Strumigenys evolved in situ from a single colonization and have diversified to fill a large fraction of global morphospace occupied by the genus. Within this adaptive radiation, lineages trend to different degrees toward high elevation, reduced dispersal ability, and demographic decline, and we find no evidence of repeated colonization that displaces the initial radiation. Overall these results are only partially consistent with taxon cycle and associated ideas, while highlighting the potential role of priority effects in assembling island communities.

Background Intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring is essential in neurosurgical procedures. In this study, we built and evaluated the performance of a deep neural network in differentiating between the presence and absence of a lateral spread response, which provides critical information during microvascular decompression surgery for the treatment of hemifacial spasm using intraoperatively acquired electromyography images. Methods and findings A total of 3,674 image screenshots of monitoring devices from 50 patients were prepared, preprocessed, and then adopted into training and validation sets. A deep neural network was constructed using current-standard, off-the-shelf tools. The neural network correctly differentiated 50 test images (accuracy, 100%; area under the curve, 0.96) collected from 25 patients whose data were never exposed to the neural network during training or validation. The accuracy of the network was equivalent to that of the neuromonitoring technologists (p = 0.3013) and higher than that of neurosurgeons experienced in hemifacial spasm (p < 0.0001). Heatmaps obtained to highlight the key region of interest achieved a level similar to that of trained human professionals. Provisional clinical application showed that the neural network was preferable as an auxiliary tool. Conclusions A deep neural network trained on a dataset of intraoperatively collected electromyography data could classify the presence and absence of the lateral spread response with equivalent performance to human professionals. Well-designated applications based upon the neural network may provide useful auxiliary tools for surgical teams during operations.

To reframe the imperfect review processes of nation-scale actions on area-based conservation through protected area (PA) networks, we first created novel infrastructure to visualize nation-level biodiversity information in Japan. We then assessed the performance of the existing PA network relative to land exploitation pressure and evaluated conservation effectiveness of PA expansion for the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. The Zonation algorithm was used to spatially prioritize conservation areas to minimize biodiversity loss and the extinction risk for 8,500 Japanese vascular plant and vertebrate species under constraints of the existing PA network and land use. The spatial pattern of the identified priority areas, which were considered candidate areas for expansion of the current PA network, was influenced by land-use types according to the mask layers of non-PAs, and low-, middle-, and high-ranked PAs. The current PA network reduced the aggregate extinction risk of multiple species by 36.6%. Indeed, the percentage of built-up areas in the existing PAs was in general smaller than that in the areas surrounding PAs. Notably, high-ranked PAs fully restrained built-up pressure (0.037% per 10 years), whereas low-ranked PAs in the national park and wild-life protection areas did not (1.845% per 10 years). Conservation effects were predicted to substantially improve by expansion of high-ranked (legally strict) PAs into remote non-PAs without population/socio-economic activities, or expansion of medium-ranked PAs into agriculture forestry satoyama and urban areas. A 30% land conservation target was predicted to decrease extinction risk by 74.1% when PA expansion was implemented across remote areas, satoyama, and urban areas; moreover, PA connectivity almost doubled compared with the existing PA network. In contrast, a conventional scenario showed that placing national parks in state-owned and non-populated areas would reduce extinction risk by only 4.0%. The conservation prioritization analyses demonstrated an effectiveness of using a comprehensive conservation approach that reconciles land-sparing protection and land-sharing conservation in other effective area-based conservation measures (OECM) in satoyama and urban green spaces. Our results revealed that complementary inclusion of various PAs interventions related to their governance and land-use planning plays a critical role in effectively preventing biodiversity loss and makes it more feasible to achieve ambitious conservation targets.

Aim: This work explores whether the commonly observed positive range size–niche breadth relationship exists for Fagus, one of the most dominant and widespread broad-leaved deciduous tree genera in temperate forests of the Northern Hemisphere. Additionally, we ask whether the 10 extant Fagus species’ niche breadths and climatic tolerances are under phylogenetic control. Location: Northern Hemisphere temperate forests. Taxon: Fagus L. Methods: Combining the global vegetation database sPlot with Chinese vegetation data, we extracted 107,758 relevés containing Fagus species. We estimated biotic and climatic niche breadths per species using plot-based co-occurrence data and a resource-based approach, respectively. We examined the relationships of these estimates with range size and tested for their phylogenetic signal, prior to which a Random Forest (RF) analysis was applied to test which climatic properties are most conserved across the Fagus species. Results: Neither biotic niche breadth nor climatic niche breadth was correlated with range size, and the two niche breadths were incongruent as well. Notably, the widespread North American F. grandifolia had a distinctly smaller biotic niche breadth than the Chinese Fagus species (F. engleriana, F. hayatae, F. longipetiolata and F. lucida) with restricted distributions in isolated mountains. The RF analysis revealed that cold tolerance did not differ among the 10 species, and thus may represent an ancestral, fixed trait. In addition, neither biotic nor climatic niche breadths are under phylogenetic control. Main Conclusions: We interpret the lack of a general positive range size–niche breadth relationship within the genus Fagus as a result of the widespread distribution, high among-region variation in available niche space, landscape heterogeneity and Quaternary history. The results hold when estimating niche sizes either by fine-scale co-occurrence data or coarse-scale climate data, suggesting a mechanistic link between factors operating across spatial scales. Besides, there was no evidence for diverging ecological specialization within the genus Fagus.

Herein, we report the Fe(III)-promoted linear intramolecular cascade cyclization of 1,3-diyne and 1,3,5-triyne for the construction of selenophene-fused, quinoline-based heteroacene scaffolds. In one step, 1,3-diyne and 1,3,5-triyne were cyclized via diversified internal nucleophiles by using diorganyl diselenides. The diorganyl diselenide plays dual role, one as a cyclizing agent and second as insertion of one and/or two selenium atom and one R′-Se group in the final product. This is highly important in terms of atom economy. Diversified internal nucleophiles were used to afford quinoline- and acridine-based cores. The synthesized selenophene-fused derivatives showed λmax, Fmax, and Φf values in the range from 370–411 nm, 427–472 nm, and 0.003–0.059, respectively, in dichloromethane solvent.

We have developed a novel aromatic fluorine-induced one-pot synthesis of ring-perfluorinated trimethine cyanine dye without the use of a pyridine by reacting hexafluorobenzoindolenine with 5 equiv of methyl trifluoromethanesulfonate in mixed solvents of dimethylformamide and toluene. The thus-obtained ring-perfluorinated trimethine cyanine dye shows much better fluorescence properties, including intensity, quantum yield, and lifetime, than the nonfluorinated dye, not only in CH2Cl2 solution and the poly(methyl methacrylate) film but also in the powder state. Furthermore, ring-perfluorinated trimethine cyanine dye 2a shows better photostability toward white light-emitting diode irradiation than nonfluorinated dye trimethine cyanine dye 2b.

Aim: The species abundance distribution (SAD) is a fundamental pattern in macroecology. Understanding how SADs vary spatially, and identifying the variables that drive any change, is important from a theoretical perspective because it enables greater understanding of the factors that underpin the relative abundance of species. However, precise knowledge on how the form of SADs varies across large (continental) scales is limited. Here, we use the shape parameter of the gambin distribution to assess how meta-community-scale SAD shape varies spatially as a function of various climatic variables and dataset characteristics. Location: Eastern North America (ENA). Time period: Present day. Major taxa studied: Trees. Methods: Using an extensive continental-scale dataset of 863,930 individual trees in plots across ENA sampled using a standardized method, we use a spatial regression framework to examine the effect of temperature and precipitation on the form of the SAD. We also assess whether the prevalence of multimodality in the SAD varies spatially across ENA as a function of temperature and precipitation, in addition to other sample characteristics. Results: We found that temperature, precipitation and species richness can explain two-thirds of the variation in tree SAD form across ENA. Temperature had the largest effect on SAD shape, and it was found that increasing temperature resulted in more logseries-like SAD shapes (i.e. SADs with a relatively higher proportion of rarer species). We also found spatial variation in SAD multimodality as a function of temperature and species richness. Main conclusions: Our results indicate that temperature is a key environmental driver governing the form of ENA tree meta-community-scale SADs. This finding has implications for our understanding of local-scale variation in tree abundance and suggests that niche factors and environmental filtering are important in the structuring of ENA tree communities at larger scales. (Less)

The study of species abundance distributions (SADs) needs a precise modeling of their drivers and ecological implications. We introduce the two-parameter Weibull distribution as a versatile tool to fit various kinds of observed SADs and to compare observed and theoretically expected values at the species level. We show that the shape and the scale parameter of this distribution have precise ecological interpretations, the first being a measure of the excess of either rare or common species, and the second as a quantification of the proportion of persistent species in the focal community. Applying the Weibull model to 534 global tree communities we demonstrate that plots of the parameters of the Weibull distribution demark ecologically impossible species abundance distributions. This promises new insight into the ecological constraints on community assembly.

QUESTION: To better understand the influence of deep-time diversification on extant plant communities, we assessed how community dissimilarity increases with spatial and climatic distances at multiple taxonomic ranks (species, genus, family, and order) in angiosperm trees. We tested the prediction that the dissimilarity–distance relationship should change across taxonomic ranks depending on the deep-time diversification in different biogeographical regions reflecting geohistories and geographical settings. LOCATION: Global. METHODS: Using a data set of plot-based surveys across the globe (861 plots), we compiled a community composition matrix comprising 21,455 species, 2,741 genera, 240 families, and 57 orders. We then calculated Sørensen's pairwise dissimilarity (βsor), and its turnover (βsim) and nestedness (βsne) components, among plots within seven biogeographical regions. Finally, we modeled the relationships between the biotic dissimilarities and the spatial/climatic distances at each taxonomic rank, and compared them among regions. RESULTS: βsor and βsim increased with increasing spatial and climatic distance in all biogeographical regions: βsim was dominant in all biogeographical regions in general, while βsne showed relatively high contributions to total dissimilarity in the temperate regions with historically unstable climatic conditions. The βsim-distance curve was more saturated at smaller spatial scales in the tropics than in the temperate regions. In general, the curves became flatter at higher taxonomic ranks (order or family), with the exception of Africa, North America, and Australia, pointing to region-specific geographical constraints. CONCLUSIONS: Compositional dissimilarity was generally shaped through the abrupt turnover of species along spatial/climatic gradients. The relatively high importance of the nestedness component in the temperate regions suggests that historical dispersal filters related to extinction/colonization may play important roles. Region-specific changes in the turnover and nestedness components across taxonomic ranks suggest differential imprints of historical diversification over deep evolutionary time in shaping extant diversity patterns in each biogeographical region. Financial support was provided by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (no. 20H03328), the Program for Advancing Strategic International Networks to Accelerate the Circulation of Talented Researchers by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Environment Research and Technology Development fund (JPMEERF20184002) of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Direct observations of marine ecosystems are inherently limited in their temporal scope. Yet, ongoing global anthropogenic change urgently requires improved understanding of long-term baselines, greater insight into the relationship between climate and biodiversity, and knowledge of the evolutionary consequences of our actions. Sediment cores can provide this understanding by linking data on the responses of marine biota to reconstructions of past environmental and climatic change. Given continuous sedimentation and robust age control, studies of sediment cores have the potential to constrain the state and dynamics of past climates and ecosystems on timescales of centuries to millions of years. Here, we review the development and recent advances in “ocean drilling paleobiology”—a synthetic science with potential to illumi-nate the interplay and relative importance of ecological and evolutionary factors during times of global change. Climate, specifically temperature, appears to control Cenozoic marine ecosystems on million-year, millennial, centennial, and anthropogenic time-scales. Although certainly not the only factor controlling biodiversity dynamics, the effect size of temperature is large for both pelagic and deep-sea ecosystems.

Author's accepted version (postprint). This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by the National Academy of Sciences in PNAS on 26/05/2020. Available online: https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/117/23/12891.full.pdf A major research question concerning global pelagic biodiversity remains unanswered: when did the apparent tropical biodiversity depression (i.e., bimodality of latitudinal diversity gradient [LDG]) begin? The bimodal LDG may be a consequence of recent ocean warming or of deep-time evolutionary speciation and extinction processes. Using rich fossil datasets of planktonic foraminifers, we show here that a unimodal (or only weakly bimodal) diversity gradient, with a plateau in the tropics, occurred during the last ice age and has since then developed into a bimodal gradient through species distribution shifts driven by postglacial ocean warming. The bimodal LDG likely emerged before the Anthropocene and industrialization, and perhaps ∼15,000 y ago, indicating a strong environmental control of tropical diversity even before the start of anthropogenic warming. However, our model projections suggest that future anthropogenic warming further diminishes tropical pelagic diversity to a level not seen in millions of years.

The novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread quickly across the globe. Here, we evaluated the role of climate (temperature and precipitation), region-specific susceptibility (BCG vaccination, malaria infection, and elderly population) and international traveller population (human mobility) in shaping the geographical patterns of COVID-19 cases across 1,055 countries/regions, and examined the sequential shift of multiple drivers of the accumulated cases from December, 2019 to April 12, 2020. The accumulated numbers of COVID-19 cases (per 1 million population) were well explained by a simple regression model. The explanatory power (R2) of the model increased up to > 70% in April 2020 as the COVID-19 spread progressed. Climate, host mobility, and host susceptibility largely explained the variance of the COVID-19 cases (per 1 million population), and their explanatory power improved as the pandemic progressed; the relative importance of host mobility and host susceptibility have been greater than that of climate. The number of days from outbreak onset showed greater explanatory power in the earlier stages of COVID-19 spread but rapidly lost its influence. Our findings demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic is deterministically driven by climate suitability, cross-border human mobility, and region-specific susceptibility. The present distribution of COVID-19 cases has not reached an equilibrium and is changing daily, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Nevertheless, the present results, based on mapping the spread of COVID-19 and identifying multiple drivers of this outbreak trajectory, may contribute to a better understanding of the COVID-19 disease transmission risk and the measures against long-term epidemic.

Recently, a 2018 study by Ulrich et al. introduced the Weibull distribution as a flexible approach to model the distribution of species abundances in ecological communities. They pointed to possible limitations in the realized parameter spaces of this distribution as possibly indicating ecological constraints on species abundances. Here, we explore this question in detail using three large global data sets on quantitatively assessed plant, invertebrate, and vertebrate communities. By fitting the Weibull distribution to these communities, we confirm that only a minor amount of the possible ranges in the scale and the shape parameters of the Weibull distribution are realized. Shapes of distributions become more similar across taxa with increasing species richness and average abundances. This finding points to stochastic explanations for species abundance shapes, possibly linked to local colonization and extinction dynamics. We introduce the Weibull survival time parameter as a way to define the proportion of rare species in a community. This proportion increased with increasing species richness. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (MEXT) Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; National Science Center, Poland (UMO-2017/27/B/NZ8/00316) info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

AIM: Estimating species richness from a series of samples is an important and widely debated issue in ecology and biodiversity conservation. Numerous tests of respective richness estimators gave insights into the precision, the limitations and the pitfalls of richness forecasting. However, few benchmark tests used almost complete empiric census data obtained at those spatial scales where richness estimation is most useful for conservation management. LOCATION: Japan. METHODS: We use an extraordinary dataset on the spatial distribution of Japanese plants containing complete information on the occurrence of each Japanese plant species at the 10 × 10 km² grid cell level. We link the estimates of four estimators representing different theoretical approaches, Chao2, rarefaction, species–area relationships (SAR) and species abundance distributions (SAD), to environmental data using a fully nested sampling design. RESULTS: Chao2 and rarefaction behaved very similar in all tests and significantly underestimated true richness below 40% sampling fraction. SAR and SAD were less precise than Chao2 and rarefaction at higher sampling fraction but also less affected by low sample size. In general, SAD provided robust estimates over the whole range of sampling fraction and 67.4% of estimates ranged within the 10% error level. Higher species spatial turnover increased and high evenness in occurrence decreased the precision of the SAD estimator. Precision of the four estimators was largely unaffected by environmental variability but increased with increasing latitude. MAIN CONCLUSIONS: Our results strongly indicate that the pattern of Japanese plant species spatial distribution is sufficiently scale invariant for richness estimators to provide precise forecasting results at the country level. The simplest process to generate such a spatial distribution is ecological drift.

We develop a novel class of measures to quantify sample completeness of a biological survey. The class of measures is parameterized by an order q ≥ 0 to control for sensitivity to species relative abundances. When q = 0, species abundances are disregarded and our measure reduces to the conventional measure of completeness, that is, the ratio of the observed species richness to the true richness (observed plus undetected). When q = 1, our measure reduces to the sample coverage (the proportion of the total number of individuals in the entire assemblage that belongs to detected species), a concept developed by Alan Turing in his cryptographic analysis. The sample completeness of a general order q ≥ 0 extends Turing's sample coverage and quantifies the proportion of the assemblage's individuals belonging to detected species, with each individual being proportionally weighted by the (q − 1)th power of its abundance. We propose the use of a continuous profile depicting our proposed measures with respect to q ≥ 0 to characterize the sample completeness of a survey. An analytic estimator of the diversity profile and its sampling uncertainty based on a bootstrap method are derived and tested by simulations. To compare diversity across multiple assemblages, we propose an integrated approach based on the framework of Hill numbers to assess (a) the sample completeness profile, (b) asymptotic diversity estimates to infer true diversities of entire assemblages, (c) non‐asymptotic standardization via rarefaction and extrapolation, and (d) an evenness profile. Our framework can be extended to incidence data. Empirical data sets from several research fields are used for illustration. Paid Open Access

The classical “low latitude–high defense” hypothesis is seldom supported by empirical evidence. In this context, we tested latitudinal patterns in the leaf defense traits of deciduous broadleaved (DB) and evergreen broadleaved (EGB) tree species, which are expected to affect herbivore diversity. We examined the co-occurrence of leaf defense traits (tannin and phenol content, leaf mechanical strength, leaf dry matter content, leaf mass per area, and leaf thickness) in 741 broadleaved tree species and their correlations with species geographical range in East Asian island flora. We discovered contrasting latitudinal defense strategy gradients in DB and EGB tree species. DB species employed chemical defenses (increasing tannin and phenol content) at higher latitudes and physical defenses (softer and thinner leaves) at lower latitudes, whereas EGB tree species exhibited opposite latitudinal defense patterns. The “low latitude high defense” hypothesis included a paradoxical aspect in chemical and physical defense traits across broadleaved tree species. To reconcile paradoxical defense strategies along the latitudinal gradient, we conclude that interactive correlations among leaf traits are controlled by leaf longevity, which differs between DB and EGB tree species.

Competitive intransitivity, the existence of loops in competitive hierarchies, is one mechanism that can promote the local coexistence of competitors and maintain high local species diversity, although its prevalence and importance remain largely unknown. A full understanding of local community assembly needs knowledge of how transitive and intransitive competitive interactions are linked to species functional traits and the strength of biotic and abiotic filters. We apply a recently developed statistical tool to quantitative data on central European inland saltmarsh plant communities to infer causal relationships between soil characteristics, species occurrences and functional traits, and we estimated coefficients of competition. We found a predominance of intransitive competitive hierarchies. The proportion of such hierarchies was positively correlated with local species richness and compositional variability. Average soil characteristics were not correlated with competitive intransitivity, whereas high soil pH and the high variability in local pH and soil salinity decreased the overall impact of competition on community composition. In pairwise comparisons of species, dissimilarity in morphology, resource demand and reproductive phenology was significantly negatively correlated with differences in competitive performance, while higher environmental dissimilarity was particularly linked to intermediate degrees of competitive superiority. Our results suggest that habitat filtering for similar traits might intensify competitive interactions, but might also give rise to intransitive competitive loops that subsequently promote species coexistence and permit species’ functional equivalence. Intransitive competition appears to increase local diversity and small scale‐species turnover. The observed local differences in competitive structures suggest frequent competitive plasticity and context‐dependent competitive interactions. Finally, our results support the view that local abundance distributions can be used to infer the strength and outcome of competitive interactions. Synthesis. Our results confirm that intransitive competitive interactions might be a strong force structuring local plant communities. Intransitivity needs to be considered when studying plant community assembly and species co‐existence.

To reframe the imperfect review processes of nation-scale actions on area-based conservation through protected area (PA) networks, we first created novel infrastructure to visualize nation-level biodiversity information in Japan. We then assessed the performance of the existing PA network relative to land exploitation pressure and evaluated conservation effectiveness of PA expansion for the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. The Zonation software was used to spatially prioritize conservation areas to minimize biodiversity loss and the extinction risk for 8077 Japanese vascular plant and vertebrate species under constraints of the existing PA network and land use. The spatial pattern of the identified priority areas, which were considered candidate areas for expansion of the current PA network, was influenced by land-use types according to the mask layers of non-PAs, and low-, middle-, and high-ranked PAs. The current PA network reduced the aggregate extinction risk of multiple species by 36.6%. Indeed, the proportion of built-up areas in the existing PAs was generally smaller than that in the areas surrounding PAs. Notably, high-ranked PAs effectively restricted the built-up pressure (0.04% every 10 years), whereas low-ranked PAs in national park and wild-life protection areas did not (1.8% every 10 years). Conservation effects were predicted to substantially improve by expansion of high-ranked (legally strict) PAs into remote non-PAs without population/socioeconomic activities, or expansion of medium-ranked PAs into satoyama which have traditionally been used for agriculture and forestry, and urban areas. A 30% land conservation target was predicted to decrease extinction risk by 74.1% when PA expansion was implemented across remote areas, satoyama, and urban areas; moreover, PA connectivity almost doubled compared with the existing PA network. In contrast, a conventional scenario showed that placing national parks in state-owned and non-populated areas would reduce extinction risk by only 4.0%. Conservation prioritization analyses demonstrated the effectiveness of using a comprehensive conservation approach that reconciles land-sparing protection and land-sharing conservation in other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) in satoyama and urban green spaces. Our results revealed that complementary inclusion of various PA interventions related to their governance and land-use planning plays a critical role in effectively preventing biodiversity loss and makes it more feasible to achieve ambitious conservation targets.

The effects of co-adsorbents on the performance of D205 in dye-sensitized solar cells were examined. 4,4,5,5,6,6,6-Heprafluoro-3,3-bis(trifluoromethyl)hexanoic acid exhibited the highest conversion efficiency of 6.2% on TiO2 among ten co-adsorbents. This result comes from improved short-circuit photocurrent owing to prevention of aggregate formation.

A novel boron complex based on a squarylium dye was synthesized by a simple two-step procedure starting from the pyrrole derivative. The absorption and fluorescence maxima of the squarylium–boron complex were slightly blue-shifted relative to those of the corresponding squarylium dye, and the fluorescence quantum yield of the former increased significantly. Deprotonation of the squarylium–boron complex led to the formation of the corresponding anion, with a further blue-shift of the absorption and fluorescence maxima.