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Plant recruitment interactions (i.e., what recruits under what) shape the composition, diversity, and structure of plant communities. Despite the huge body of knowledge on the mechanisms underlying recruitment interactions among species, we still know little about the structure of the recruitment networks emerging in ecological communities. Modeling and analyzing the community-level structure of plant recruitment interactions as a complex network can provide relevant information on ecological and evolutionary processes acting both at the species and ecosystem levels. We report a data set containing 143 plant recruitment networks in 23 countries across five continents, including temperate and tropical ecosystems. Each network identifies the species under which another species recruits. All networks report the number of recruits (i.e., individuals) per species. The data set includes >850,000 recruiting individuals involved in 118,411 paired interactions among 3318 vascular plant species across the globe. The cover of canopy species and open ground is also provided. Three sampling protocols were used: (1) The Recruitment Network (RN) protocol (106 networks) focuses on interactions among established plants ("canopy species") and plants in their early stages of recruitment ("recruit species"). A series of plots was delimited within a locality, and all the individuals recruiting and their canopy species were identified; (2) The paired Canopy-Open (pCO) protocol (26 networks) consists in locating a potential canopy plant and identifying recruiting individuals under the canopy and in a nearby open space of the same area; (3) The Georeferenced plot (GP) protocol (11 networks) consists in using information from georeferenced individual plants in large plots to infer canopy-recruit interactions. Some networks incorporate data for both herbs and woody species, whereas others focus exclusively on woody species. The location of each study site, geographical coordinates, country

Este artigo analisa a relação entre incidências de hepatite A — doença transmitida pela água ou falta de higiene — e indicadores de qualidade da prestação dos serviços de abastecimento de água por meio de dados secundários extraídos dos Sistemas Nacionais de Informação de Agravos de Notificação e sobre Saneamento, no período entre 2007 e 2018, para os municípios do estado do Rio de Janeiro. Os indicadores fora  submetidos, inicialmente, à análise de componentes principais (PCA) para redução de variáveis numerosas que apresentaram autocorrelação entre si. Posteriormente, as componentes principais foram submetidas à análise de correlação de Pearson com a incidência de hepatite A. Foi observado coeficiente de correlação de -0,32, ao nível de significância p < 0,05, entre as incidências acumuladas de hepatite A e a componente principal (PC3) formada por um conjunto de indicadores de qualidade da prestação dos serviços de abastecimento de água. Os indicadores que melhor descreveram a PC3, com cargas fatoriais variando de -0,88 a 0,70, foram aqueles relacionados: à hidrometração, a perdas de água e de faturamento, ao faturamento de água, à participação das economias residenciais de água, à micromedição relativa ao consumo, ao consumo de água e ao consumo médio de água por economia, à duração média das paralisações e à incidência das análises de coliformes totais fora do padrão. Desse modo, os resultados alcançados apontam para uma associação entre a qualidade da prestação dos serviços de abastecimento de água e a incidência de hepatite A, podendo indicar tanto falhas na eficiência do tratamento como na higienização., This article analyzes the relationship between incidences of hepatitis A — a water-borne disease that can also be transmitted by lack of hygiene — and quality indicators in the provision of water supply services, through secondary data extracted from the National Information Systems for Notifiable Diseases and on Sanitation, in the period between 2007 and 2018, for the municipalities of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The indicators were initially submitted to Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to reduce numerous variables that showed autocorrelation with each other. Subsequently, the principal components were submitted to Pearson’s correlation analysis with the incidence of hepatitis A. A correlation coefficient of -0.32 was observed, at the level of significance (p < 0.05) between the cumulative incidences of hepatitis A and the principal component (PC3) formed by a set of quality indicators for the provision of water supply services. The indicators that best described PC3, with factor loadings ranging from -0.88 to 0.70, were those related to: hydrometer, waterand revenue losses, water revenue, the participation of residential water savings, micro-measurement related to water consumption, water consumption and average water consumption per economy, average duration of outages, and the incidence of non-standard total coliform analyses. Thus, the observed results point to an association between the quality of water supply services and the incidence of hepatitis A, which may indicate both failures in treatment efficiency and lack of hygiene.

This article analyzes the relationship between incidences of hepatitis A — a water-borne disease that can also be transmitted by lack of hygiene — and quality indicators in the provision of water supply services, through secondary data extracted from the National Information Systems for Notifiable Diseases and on Sanitation, in the period between 2007 and 2018, for the municipalities of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The indicators were initially submitted to Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to reduce numerous variables that showed autocorrelation with each other. Subsequently, the principal components were submitted to Pearson’s correlation analysis with the incidence of hepatitis A. A correlation coefficient of -0.32 was observed, at the level of significance (p < 0.05) between the cumulative incidences of hepatitis A and the principal component (PC3) formed by a set of quality indicators for the provision of water supply services. The indicators that best described PC3, with factor loadings ranging from -0.88 to 0.70, were those related to: hydrometer, waterand revenue losses, water revenue, the participation of residential water savings, micro-measurement related to water consumption, water consumption and average water consumption per economy, average duration of outages, and the incidence of non-standard total coliform analyses. Thus, the observed results point to an association between the quality of water supply services and the incidence of hepatitis A, which may indicate both failures in treatment efficiency and lack of hygiene., Este artigo analisa a relação entre incidências de hepatite A — doença transmitida pela água ou falta de higiene — e indicadores de qualidade da prestação dos serviços de abastecimento de água por meio de dados secundários extraídos dos Sistemas Nacionais de Informação de Agravos de Notificação e sobre Saneamento, no período entre 2007 e 2018, para os municípios do estado do Rio de Janeiro. Os indicadores fora  submetidos, inicialmente, à análise de componentes principais (PCA) para redução de variáveis numerosas que apresentaram autocorrelação entre si. Posteriormente, as componentes principais foram submetidas à análise de correlação de Pearson com a incidência de hepatite A. Foi observado coeficiente de correlação de -0,32, ao nível de significância p < 0,05, entre as incidências acumuladas de hepatite A e a componente principal (PC3) formada por um conjunto de indicadores de qualidade da prestação dos serviços de abastecimento de água. Os indicadores que melhor descreveram a PC3, com cargas fatoriais variando de -0,88 a 0,70, foram aqueles relacionados: à hidrometração, a perdas de água e de faturamento, ao faturamento de água, à participação das economias residenciais de água, à micromedição relativa ao consumo, ao consumo de água e ao consumo médio de água por economia, à duração média das paralisações e à incidência das análises de coliformes totais fora do padrão. Desse modo, os resultados alcançados apontam para uma associação entre a qualidade da prestação dos serviços de abastecimento de água e a incidência de hepatite A, podendo indicar tanto falhas na eficiência do tratamento como na higienização.

In alpine environments facilitator species buffer environmental extremes while building up soil resources above that of open areas. These modulating effects are critical for the persistence of species out of their optimal range and contribute to increase community-level plant species richness and phylogenetic diversity. We analyzed the effects of seven potential facilitator species with contrasting morphologies on subordinate plant species along a crossed environmental gradient, linking such effects to canopy effects. We also used these patches consisting of multiple shrub species to evaluate the effects of the whole shrub community on species richness and phylogenetic diversity, and whether such shrub community effects differed along the gradient. We used ecological and phylogenetic data of alpine plant communities along two altitudinal gradients on opposing aspects of the Sierra Nevada Mountains (Spain). As expected, shrubs buffered harsh abiotic conditions by decreasing mean temperatures and increasing relative humidity with regard to open areas. Composition of subordinate plant communities differed among shrubs and among sites, and correlated with relative humidity along the gradient pointing to the dependence of subordinate species on micro-environments created by shrubs. There were a variety of shrub effects on overall plant abundance and richness depending on shrub identity. In the most extreme sites we recorded generally positive effects of the shrub community, which promoted whole-community species richness and phylogenetic diversity despite species-specific effects ranging from clearly negative to positive. Our data therefore show that the effect of different shrub species on plant community richness and phylogenetic diversity is not redundant, as every shrub species may host unique communities, thereby affecting the structure and composition of the whole community.