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Raising public awareness and support for endangered species is critical for global biodiversity conservation. However, we know little about which factors drive public interest in wildlife and how an increase in people's interest shapes their behaviours towards wildlife conservation. The animal debut of ex situ endangered species at zoos may raise general public interest in the conservation of these species. We assessed the impact of an animal debut using a case study of ex situ‐bred Japanese rock ptarmigan, a bird subspecies locally endangered in Japan, on people's awareness, knowledge and behaviours regarding Japanese ptarmigan conservation. The public's reactions to ptarmigans were measured by using an online questionnaire survey and online sources of information (Google Trends, Wikipedia, Twitter and the donation website visits). The animal debut events generated a nationwide increase in information‐seeking and sharing behaviours on the web and in conservation‐oriented behaviour (measured by the number of donation website page visits). A significant increase in knowledge of ptarmigans was evident only among people living in prefectures where ptarmigans occurred. Overall, our results suggest that the debut of ex situ‐bred endangered animals has the potential to promote public awareness, knowledge and behaviours for their conservation on a nationwide scale. Policy makers and practitioners should view zoos as important conservation centres and encourage conservation agencies to collaborate with them to reinforce public support for conservation programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using plant-herbivore-decomposer trophic chains as an example, we have tried to clarify the key roles of multitrophic interactions in species diversity. The interactions included two-link (herbivore-decomposer and decomposer-plant) and three-link (decomposer-herbivore-plant) chains within a community. Specifically, we investigated how sika deer abundance impacted dung beetle populations via dung supply and vegetation changes by surveying deer and beetle abundance and community composition monthly in Japan. The forest sites were similar in canopy cover, but differed in the presence (sites A and B) or absence (sites C) of an understory and in the abundance of deer (rare at site A, moderate at sites B and C, and common at site D). Site D was patchy grassland. Beetle species fell into two groups based on whether they were more abundant at sites with more dung or at sites with an understory. We suspect that the type of dung usage and/or beetle body size affected this finding. First, one beetle group was more strongly affected by vegetation cover than dung supply, and they were mostly dwellers. The other group was affected by dung supply more than vegetation cover and comprised mostly tunnelers. Dwellers may be strongly negatively affected by decreased understory vegetation because of dung drying. Second, large beetle species were positively affected by decreasing vegetation cover and increasing dung supply; understory vegetation may negatively affect mobility in larger species. Our results suggested that increased deer abundance had both positive and negative as well as direct and indirect effects on the dung beetle community by increasing the dung supply and changing the vegetation structure, respectively. Moreover, dung beetle species responded differently depending on their ecological requirements and body sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are expanding rapidly worldwide. Modern cities are expected to carry heavy extinction debts owing to their recent and drastic fragmentation histories. Therefore, detecting extinction debt and identifying species threatened by it in recently created cities are necessary to prevent future biodiversity losses. Here, we studied the relationship between the life-history traits of butterfly species and the extent of their extinction debts using two different methodological approaches in Tokyo, central Japan. First, we compared the effects of current and past landscape parameters on current species richness using generalized linear models. Second, we predicted species richness in unstable (i.e. high loss) habitats using a model developed for stable (i.e. low loss) habitats. The difference between predicted and observed species richness was used to estimate the extinction debt (the number of species expected to go extinct). We classified butterfly species as seasonal specialists or generalists and as habitat specialists or generalists based on their life-history traits. With both methods, we found significant extinction debts only for specialist species. Mapping the potential extinction debts within our study area indicated that currently large patches had relatively low extinction debts, whereas small patches often had high extinction debts. These results suggested that improving patch area, connectivity and especially quality, would have more significant impacts in small patches than in large ones. Extinction debt is an important concept for setting conservation priorities in highly fragmented landscapes, especially in urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We have developed a prototype of a compact integrated visual sensor which detects direction and velocity of motion on a focal plane in a wide brightness range in real time with a newly devised motion measurement method. The sensor is composed of a lens and a single-chip very large scale integration whose die size is 2 mm × 2 mm that was fabricated with a 1.5-μ standard CMOS process. The spatial resolution is 10 × 2. As a result of performance evaluation of the prototype sensor, it was confirmed that the sensor can detect motion direction and velocity up to an on-chip image velocity of 100 mm/s in a response time of 10 μs under an illuminance range between 100 and 100,000 lux. Furthermore, we have demonstrated effectiveness of the visual sensor by applying the sensor to running vehicle detection on a road and blind-corner monitoring at a road junction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Read the Feature Paper: Mapping the potential extinction debt of butterflies in a modern city: implications for conservation priorities in urban landscapes Commentaries on this Feature Paper: Extinction debt at different spatial scales; Setting conservation priorities when what you see is not what you get [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epitaxial magnesium oxide (MgO) thin films prepared on Si(0 0 1) substrates revealed the contraction of its lattice constants along both out-of-plane and in-plane directions. X-ray Diffraction (XRD) verified the epitaxial growth with the relation of MgO(1 0 0) parallel to Si(1 0 0) [cubic on cubic growth] with large lattice misfit of ~22% instead of the relation of MgO(1 1 0) parallel to Si(1 0 0) [45° rotation growth] with lattice mismatch of ~9%. Although the domain epitaxy explaining the cubic on cubic growth is preferred in terms of crystallography, structural stability is not considered in the concept of the domain epitaxy. In order to explain the contraction of lattice constant from point of view of structural stability, ab initio method was used to evaluate all-electron total energy, and optimal lattice constant was estimated with point defects in the MgO structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]