scholarly journals Modelling population persistence on islands: mammal introductions in the New Zealand archipelago

2006 ◽  
Vol 273 (1604) ◽  
pp. 2969-2975 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P Duncan ◽  
David M Forsyth

Islands are likely to differ in their susceptibility to colonization or invasion due to variation in factors that affect population persistence, including island area, climatic severity and habitat modification. We tested the importance of these factors in explaining the persistence of 164 introductions of six mammal species to 85 islands in the New Zealand archipelago using survival analysis and model selection techniques. As predicted by the theory of stochastic population growth, extinction risk was the greatest in the period immediately following introduction, declining rapidly to low probability by ca 25 years. This suggests that initially small populations were at greatest risk of extinction and that populations which survived for 25 years were likely to persist subsequently for much longer. Islands in the New Zealand archipelago become colder and windier with increasing latitude, and the probability of mammal populations persisting on islands declined steeply with increasing latitude. Hence, our results suggest that climatic suitability was an important determinant of the outcome of these invasions. The form of the relationship between latitude and persistence probability differed among species, emphasizing that the outcome of colonization attempts is species-environment specific.

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Speers ◽  
Allen Gale ◽  
Nancy Penney

This paper describes an international biosolids management initiative, known as the Australian and New Zealand Biosolids Partnership (ANZBP). The ANZBP - known formerly as the Australasian Biosolids Partnership – comprises 33 members dedicated to promoting the sustainable management of biosolids across the two nations. Two critical research projects are described, each of which contributes to the ANZBP goal of promoting the sustainable management of biosolids. The first is a review of community attitudes to biosolids management, the outcomes of which will be used to refine communication tools and methods of community consultation and which will provide input to policy development over time. The second is a review of regulations in place in Australia and New Zealand carried out to identify inconsistencies and improvements that could be made. An outcome of this initiative is potentially the development of a best practice manual. The relationship of the two projects to a sustainability framework adopted by the ANZBP is also described, as is the relationship of the two projects to each other.


Pathogens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 880
Author(s):  
Tuanyuan Shi ◽  
Xinlei Yan ◽  
Hongchao Sun ◽  
Yuan Fu ◽  
Lili Hao ◽  
...  

Cyniclomyces guttulatus is usually recognised as an inhabitant of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract in rabbits. However, large numbers of C. guttulatus are often detected in the faeces of diarrhoeic rabbits. The relationship of C. guttulatus with rabbit diarrhoea needs to be clearly identified. In this study, a C. guttulatus Zhejiang strain was isolated from a New Zealand White rabbit with severe diarrhoea and then inoculated into SPF New Zealand white rabbits alone or co-inoculated with Eimeriaintestinalis, another kind of pathogen in rabbits. Our results showed that the optimal culture medium pH and temperature for this yeast were pH 4.5 and 40–42 °C, respectively. The sequence lengths of the 18S and 26S ribosomal DNA fragments were 1559 bp and 632 bp, respectively, and showed 99.8% homology with the 18S ribosomal sequence of the NRRL Y-17561 isolate from dogs and 100% homology with the 26S ribosomal sequence of DPA-CGR1 and CGDPA-GP1 isolates from rabbits and guinea pigs, respectively. In animal experiments, the C. guttulatus Zhejiang strain was not pathogenic to healthy rabbits, even when 1 × 108 vegetative cells were used per rabbit. Surprisingly, rabbits inoculated with yeast showed a slightly better body weight gain and higher food intake. However, SPF rabbits co-inoculated with C. guttulatus and E. intestinalis developed more severe coccidiosis than rabbits inoculated with C. guttulatus or E. intestinalis alone. In addition, we surveyed the prevalence of C. guttulatus in rabbits and found that the positive rate was 83% in Zhejiang Province. In summary, the results indicated that C. guttulatus alone is not pathogenic to healthy rabbits, although might be an opportunistic pathogen when the digestive tract is damaged by other pathogens, such as coccidia.


Author(s):  
Leigh P. Fitzpatrick ◽  
Bianca Levkovich ◽  
Steve McGloughlin ◽  
Edward Litton ◽  
Allen C. Cheng ◽  
...  

Abstract Background ICU-specific tables of antimicrobial susceptibility for key microbial species (‘antibiograms’), antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programmes and routine rounds by infectious diseases (ID) physicians are processes aimed at improving patient care. Their impact on patient-centred outcomes in Australian and New Zealand ICUs is uncertain. Objectives To measure the association of these processes in ICU with in-hospital mortality. Methods The Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society (ANZICS) Adult Patient Database and Critical Care Resources registry were used to extract patient-level factors, ICU-level factors and the year in which each process took place. Descriptive statistics and hierarchical logistic regression were used to determine the relationship between each process and in-hospital mortality. Results The study included 799 901 adults admitted to 173 ICUs from July 2009 to June 2016. The proportion of patients exposed to each process of care was 38.7% (antibiograms), 77.5% (AMS programmes) and 74.0% (ID rounds). After adjusting for confounders, patients admitted to ICUs that used ICU-specific antibiograms had a lower risk of in-hospital mortality [OR 0.95 (99% CI 0.92–0.99), P = 0.001]. There was no association between the use of AMS programmes [OR 0.98 (99% CI 0.94–1.02), P = 0.16] or routine rounds with ID physicians [OR 0.96 (99% CI 0.09–1.02), P = 0.09] and in-hospital mortality. Conclusions Use of ICU-specific antibiograms was associated with lower in-hospital mortality for patients admitted to ICU. For hospitals that do not perform ICU-specific antibiograms, their implementation presents a low-risk infection management process that might improve patient outcomes.


2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare O'donnell ◽  
Christine Stephens

In recent years workplace stress has been seen as an important occupational health and safety problem and probation officers in New Zealand have been identified as suffering from increasing perceptions of stress. Accordingly, the present study was undertaken with a sample of 50 New Zealand Probation Officers in three offices to examine the relationship of individual, organisational and work stressors with work related strains. It was predicted that work stressors would be positively related to strains and that individual differences (e.g., age or gender) would have a moderating effect on the relationship between stressors and strains. The results showed that stressors caused by organisational problems, such as role boundary and overload, were related to strains, more strongly than job content problems, such as difficult clients. Secondly, age may have a curvilinear relationship to strains. Thirdly, the office, or place of work, moderates the stressor strain relationship.


2002 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Macdonald

Objective: This review examines how psychiatric clinical supervision is represented in the psychiatric literature and its relevance for Australasian psychiatry. Method: The literature was first identified then reviewed using Medline and Psychlit, manual searches of relevant journals and personal contact with some key workers in Australia and New Zealand. Results: The predominantly American literature written two to three decades ago reflected the conditions in which psychiatry was practised at that time, largely based in asylums or private offices and informed by the dominant psychoanalytic discourse of that era. These articles, frequently anecdotal and with little empirical support, conceptualized supervision as a developmental process, a syndrome, or a process of identification. They focused substantially on the nature of the relationship between the trainee and supervisor. More recent writers have included trainees’ perspectives. They have identified a number of problems with supervision, including role conflicts, uncertainty about boundaries, lack of supervisory training and lack of effective feedback, and have introduced the concepts of adult learning as highly relevant. These concerns, however, have led to little change to date. Conclusion: The implementation by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) of new training by-laws provides an opportunity to define the meaning of supervision in the current clinical context, to undertake research to clarify the key elements in the process, and to evaluate different techniques of supervision.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tula Brannelly ◽  
Amohia Boulton

Democratising methodologies often require research partnerships in practice. Research partnerships between indigenous and non-indigenous partners are commonplace, but there is unsatisfactory guidance available to non-indigene researchers about how to approach the relationship in a way that builds solidarity with the aims of the indigenous community. Worse still, non-indigenous researchers may circumvent indigenous communities to avoid causing offense, in effect silencing those voices. In this article, we argue that the ethics of care provides a framework that can guide ethical research practice, because it attends to the political positioning of the people involved, acknowledges inequalities and aims to address these in solidarity with the community. Drawing on our research partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand, we explain how the ethics of care intertwines with Māori values, creating a synergistic and dialogic approach.


Paleobiology ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Michelle M. Casey ◽  
Erin E. Saupe ◽  
Bruce S. Lieberman

Abstract Geographic range size and abundance are important determinants of extinction risk in fossil and extant taxa. However, the relationship between these variables and extinction risk has not been tested extensively during evolutionarily “quiescent” times of low extinction and speciation in the fossil record. Here we examine the influence of geographic range size and abundance on extinction risk during the late Paleozoic (Mississippian–Permian), a time of “sluggish” evolution when global rates of origination and extinction were roughly half those of other Paleozoic intervals. Analyses used spatiotemporal occurrences for 164 brachiopod species from the North American midcontinent. We found abundance to be a better predictor of extinction risk than measures of geographic range size. Moreover, species exhibited reductions in abundance before their extinction but did not display contractions in geographic range size. The weak relationship between geographic range size and extinction in this time and place may reflect the relative preponderance of larger-ranged taxa combined with the physiographic conditions of the region that allowed for easy habitat tracking that dampened both extinction and speciation. These conditions led to a prolonged period (19–25 Myr) during which standard macroevolutionary rules did not apply.


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