The road to the strategy on the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration – UN Environment

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The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 20212030 is expected to be a global call to action, drawing together political support, scientific research and financial muscle to massively scale up restoration. Everyone is invited to help shape the Decade.

Background and strategy

In March 2019, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring 20212030 the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. The coordination of the Decade is co-led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

The overall strategy for the Decade]which includes vision, objectives, roles and responsibilities of the organizations involved, monitoring of successful restoration and means of financing large-scale actionwas developed in consultation with many stakeholders between March 2019 and January 2020 through more than 25 workshops, numerous meetings, conference calls and engagements on the side of the Rio Convention meetings.

Participants included governments, United Nations agencies, international and local non-governmental organizations, the private sector, academia, youth groups, faith-based organizations and secretariats of the Rio Conventionsfor a total of over 150 individuals and 50 organizations.

All agreed that the Decade provides an unprecedented opportunity for restoration and conservation of ecosystems to significantly contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, namely ending poverty, conserving biodiversity, combating climate change and improving livelihoods for everyone, everywhere.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop/ Unsplash

There was also general consensus that major changes in societal mindsets are needed to mobilize the resources for restoring the hundreds of millions of hectares of degraded terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Such changes entail embracing a new ethical imperative to restore and conserve ecosystems to preserve healthy ecosystems, and the myriad benefits that flow from them, for future generations. If such an imperative were to become a societal norm globally, then decision makers in governments and the private sector would be have no choice but make substantial investments in preserving ecosystems.

The vision for the Decade is a world wherefor the health and well-being of all life on Earth now and in the futurethe relationship between humans and nature is restored, the area of healthy ecosystems increased, their loss and degradation brought to a halt. Underpinning this vision are two main goals:

Take action

Accomplishing this vision and the two accompanying goals will require the effort of the entire global community.

Governments are expected to commit national budgets to upscaling restoration efforts in their own countries.

Non-governmental organizations will need to increase their capacity-building of local communities and government technicians to embark on new restoration projects.

United Nations agencies will be tasked to coordinate all the stakeholders involved, and ensure that major inroads are made into activities like national accounting on restoration success and embedding restoration into school curricula.

Academics will be asked to steer their research towards honing restoration protocols and monitoring restoration success from on-the-ground data capture to remote sensing.

And indigenous peoples groups, womens groups, youth groups and civil society at large will be consulted and included in the roll-out of on-the-ground operations to upscale restoration efforts in specific ecosystems.

Although governments, United Nations agencies and international non-governmental organizations will support and guide the Decade, and lead many of its activities, small non-governmental organizations and hundreds of millions of individuals, from school children to the elderly, will be called on to develop and take ownership of the initiatives, ideas and imperatives catalysed within the Decade.

Individuals could, for example, be inspired to write, paint, draw, speak, philosophize, fund, analyse, plant, seed, cultivate, water, teach, vote, campaign, mobilize, raise awareness or collaborate. Their involvement could lead to activities such as: restoring local ecosystems; implementing agro-ecological farming; establishing ecosystem restoration plots in local parks, schools and universities; posting podcasts; painting murals; holding talks in community halls; conducting citizen science in restored ecosystems; forming local non-governmental organizations that focus on ecosystem restoration; and leading hikes to explore the restoration potential of a particular landscape. The sky is the limit!

The draft strategy is open for review and feedback until April 30, 2020 by anyone interested in contributing to planning for the Decade and related activities.

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The road to the strategy on the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - UN Environment

The particularities of the African ecommerce ecosystem – The Paypers

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The Paypers interviewed Sami Louali, EVP Financial Services at Jumia Group, to learn more about the particularities of the African ecommerce ecosystem

What is the story of Jumia and how do you differentiate among other online marketplaces?

Jumia is the leading African ecommerce platform, and we basically connect sellers and consumers of products and services across Africa. Jumia is built around a marketplace, a logistic platform, and a payment platform, JumiaPay. We started in 2012, in Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, and South Africa, and the purpose was to enable businesses to increase their online sales. For that reason, we have created a set of digital tools to allow them to sell nationwide. Before, small shops, restaurants had a very local reach and now, thanks to technology and the tools that we provide, they can sell across the nation and expand their businesses.

Moreover, through our marketplace we sell a wide range of both physical (such as electronics, home and living products, fashion items) and digital (paying for TV subscription, air time, bills) goods and services. We also offer on demand services, with food delivery being one of the key ones that we provide. And I think we also stand out among online marketplaces because we are solely focusing on Africa.

Since we are operating only in this region, we understand the unique characteristics of the African market, of the different countries, and thats what we have been focusing on over the past seven years. Therefore, we are really adapting to the local context.

How would you characterise the African ecommerce ecosystem and what impact do online marketplaces have on the African economy overall?

One of the main characteristics of the African ecommerce ecosystem is its freshness because it all started seven or eight years ago. It is a nascent ecosystem, so we are creating the market; and when we started doing this, we noticed that there was an inherited infrastructure that was not fully adapted to ecommerce. Therefore, we need to constantly be innovative and create solutions that can fill in this gap. The environment is quite challenging when it comes to payments and trust as well, so we continuously build this trust and aim to accelerate the shift from offline retail to online retail.

In Africa, the penetration of ecommerce as a percentage of the total retail market is approximately 1%, while this number is probably 13 or 14% in the US, and more than 20% in China so we are still at the very beginning of the journey and the potential is huge. However, when the ecosystem starts to be ready (when we have a payment ecosystem, when we can process payments, when there is a strong supply chain), then it can really take off. And I think we are reaching that point in Africa, with many of the markets really starting to be ready for ecommerce.

Besides actively building this ecosystem, another impact Jumia has on the African economy overall is the fact that we are creating thousands of jobs, both direct and indirect jobs, in all the countries in which we are present. In addition, we are creating new business opportunities for local entrepreneurs and businesses.

When it comes to cross-border ecommerce, what are the main challenges for African merchants trying to sell their products and services across borders?

Right now, the main challenges for cross-border ecommerce within Africa are probably the logistics costs, as well as the taxes, customs duties, and the regulations, which make it difficult for most countries to trade across borders. However, there is the African Continental Free Trade Area that is being implemented. And even if today a Kenyan seller cannot export to Algeria or Morocco because of the costs, I think in the next five or ten years this will be possible and it will open a huge opportunity for all businesses in Africa. The good thing with respect to our footprint is that Jumia will be greatly positioned to serve these needs because we have thousands of businesses selling in each market. Therefore, Jumia will be the platform that businesses will use to enhance their cross-border ecommerce strategy. And even if this is still the very beginning and a lot of changes with respect to the regulation and the trade market must happen, the signals that the authorities are sending are very positive.

How do you see the future of online marketplaces in Africa?

All the innovative platforms, like Jumia and many other players, will keep on empowering small businesses and consumers. Even if we are still at the very beginning of the journey when it comes to the penetration rate of ecommerce, the potential is huge, and there is no reason why it would all decelerate at some point and stop progressing. Therefore, I think the share of ecommerce will boom and it will most probably go even faster than it did in developed markets such as Europe or the US. This is because of the high rate of mobile phone penetration, with more customers now upgrading to a smartphone as a result of the progressive decrease of the average price of a smartphone. The cost of data is also reducing very fast: there are more players in the telco industry and the usage of data is rapidly growing, thus driving cost down. Not to mention that the population is very young and prone to use digital technologies this is another driver that will accelerate the penetration of ecommerce.

Additionally, Africa will keep attracting new entrepreneurs and I think that there will be more and more investors as well. We have many new venture capital firms investing in Africa, and this is a recent, positive trend for the ecommerce ecosystem.

All in all, we are very committed to changing the face of African ecommerce and I think the odds are in our favour.

This interview was first published in ourCross-Border Payments and Commerce Report 2019 2020, which provides a comprehensive overview of the major trends driving growth in cross-border payments, cross-border commerce, andmarketplaces.

About Sami Louali

Sami joined Jumia since its launch in 2012, where he served as co-CEO of Jumia Morocco, co-MD of Jumia Marketplace, and most recently as EVP Strategy & Investor Relations. Sami is a French-Moroccan national with a Master of Science from cole Nationale des Ponts et Chausses in Paris, and an MBA from Collge des Ingnieurs in Paris.

About Jumia

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The particularities of the African ecommerce ecosystem - The Paypers

The death of the Democratic Party ecosystem – Washington Examiner

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It is great to see President Trumps surging poll numbers. Public sentiment is gradually turning favorably in terms of the economy and America's preeminence in the world. Yet it pales in comparison to the implosion of the Democratic establishment.

For almost 70 years, the Democratic Party has brought diverse ideas, emotions, and liberal objectives into the big tent of political ideas. Often it has come away with a clear and unified path to victory.

Although the Democratic Partys perspective runs counter to my values, goals, and beliefs, I cant help but admit that they win, a lot, at all levels. They often control school boards, city councils, county, state and federal agencies, and governing boards. Democrats must be applauded for the harmony they have historically demonstrated. It has served them well in a large and politically diverse country.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party of the 21st century has little in common with the party I have known most of my life.

Warfare among the partys presidential candidates is escalating. The last two debates more resembled cage fights than forums of meaningful discourse. Multiple factions of the partys base, from environmentalists to union members, to minority communities, are at each others throats. Expect these conflicts to accelerate as the year moves forward, resulting in enormous fractures that could lead the party to a full-fledged meltdown.

The party of the past shared core visions and goals for this country, mostly disputing the best ways to achieve them. Not anymore. Onstage for the Feb. 25 debate were two white male billionaires, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg, in a party openly hostile to white male billionaires.

The partys rock star is avowed socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who praises a communist dictator and promises to end school choice. Theres a far-left white woman, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who faked minority status most of her adult life.

The difference between a Joe Biden or Bloomberg presidency, as opposed to a Sanders or Warren presidency, cannot be understated. These candidates are polar opposites of one another, though they ostensibly play for the same team.

This clash of starkly divergent visions for the country has fomented intraparty hostility, with members of the Democratic flock becoming vicious and spiteful toward each other. Tensions appear to intensify with each passing news cycle and debate.

The continuous animosity within the party is fueling the destruction of its long-standing and successful ecosystem.

If the trajectory continues into the fourth quarter of 2020, it could spell disaster for Democrats at all levels of government. The circus on the Left likely means a landslide victory for Trump in November. Republicans could control both chambers of Congress, the White House, and more state legislatures.

As a Republican, I could not be more thrilled. As an American, I can hardly believe what I am seeing: deceit, backbiting, and downright hatred rule the day for the Democratic Party.

Our country operates on a two-party system, but that could change in the wake of one partys swift deterioration. We may see a third party of socialists and left-wing labor activists rise up if Sanders falls short of the Democratic nomination.

Time and outcomes will tell whether Democratic Party leadership can manage this chaos and restore a semblance of unity and order. Recent events suggest they cannot.

Robert Blaha was chairman of Trump for Colorado in 2016.

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The death of the Democratic Party ecosystem - Washington Examiner

Individual behavior drives ecosystem function and the impacts of harvest – Science Advances

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Abstract

Current approaches for biodiversity conservation and management focus on sustaining high levels of diversity among species to maintain ecosystem function. We show that the diversity among individuals within a single population drives function at the ecosystem scale. Specifically, nutrient supply from individual fish differs from the population average >80% of the time, and accounting for this individual variation nearly doubles estimates of nutrients supplied to the ecosystem. We test how management (i.e., selective harvest regimes) can alter ecosystem function and find that strategies targeting more active individuals reduce nutrient supply to the ecosystem up to 69%, a greater effect than body sizeselective or nonselective harvest. Findings show that movement behavior at the scale of the individual can have crucial repercussions for the functioning of an entire ecosystem, proving an important challenge to the species-centric definition of biodiversity if the conservation and management of ecosystem function is a primary goal.

Global efforts to conserve biodiversity are motivated by evidence that trait variability among species promotes the functionality of ecosystems and the services they provide to society (1). However, trait variability exists at many levels of biological organization, challenging ecologists to identify the specific level of organization on which conservation efforts should focus. For example, the stability of fisheries yields has been attributed to trait diversity among populations of the same species (2). Although ecologists understand that trait variation among individuals can exceed that found across all other species within a community (Fig. 1A) (36) and can even lead to individual-level dominance of ecological processes [e.g., disease superspreaders; (7)], this individual-level trait variation has been largely ignored in traditional approaches to conservation and management of ecosystem function.

(A) Population-level measures of trait variation for different species (colors) in a community, illustrating that variation among individuals within a single population (e.g., blue line) can exceed that of the entire community. (B) Selective harvest (gray lines) may have differential effects on ecosystem processes (being resilient or sensitive to certain harvest techniques), depending on how and what traits are selected for relative to nonselective harvest (i.e., random removal; black line). Dashed line represents a harvest rate that could result in various consequences for ecosystem processes. (C) Map of Abaco Island, The Bahamas, and satellite image of study location, a mangrove-lined estuary (~11.5 ha; 255628N, 771626W). White lines indicate the maximum extent of high tide, red lines indicate the minimum extent of low tide, and green circles indicate acoustic receiver locations.

Species management often assumes that individuals within populations are roughly equivalent; thus, the loss of any given individual would have similar impacts on ecological processes. For example, in marine fisheries, a common goal is to harvest populations at exploitation rates to achieve maximum sustainable yield (MSY), maintaining population sizes at some fraction of the individuals in an unfished population (8). From this perspective, if trait variation among individuals within an exploited population was negligible (as is often assumed in population models) or if harvest does not select for individual traits, the impacts of fisheries on ecosystem processes would be proportional to harvest; e.g., at 50% of the unfished population size, ecosystem function would be reduced by 50% (Fig. 1B). However, trait variation among individuals is common (4, 9), and most harvest techniques select for specific individual attributes such as body size (10) or bold behavior (11, 12). This is relevant because fisheries management now emphasizes a need for ecosystem-based approaches to improve long-term productivity of multiple exploited species via the management of an entire ecosystem and its collection of ecological processes (13). However, trait variation is often not accounted for because of the inherent challenges associated with quantifying variation among individuals within populations. Here, we show how selective exploitation strategies interact with variation among individuals to alter ecosystem function, specifically nutrient cycling at an ecosystem scale.

We examined high-resolution movement of individuals within two populations of exploited tropical coastal marine fish species to quantify (i) the importance of individual-level movement behavior for ecosystem-scale nutrient dynamics and (ii) how harvest strategies that select for different traits affect these dynamics. In tropical coastal ecosystems, fish are an essential source of protein for millions of people (14). Fish also represent one of the largest sources of limiting nutrients for primary production via their excretion (15), fueling some of the most productive ecosystems on the planet. Fishing, largely through selective practices such as spearfishing and angling, can reduce ecosystem-scale nutrient supply from fishes in coral reefs (16) and mangroves (17). Consumer-mediated nutrient dynamics fundamentally drive nutrient dynamics and primary production in many ecosystems (1822) through variation both among (23, 24) and within species (2527). We take advantage of the integral link between fisheries and consumer-mediated nutrient dynamics in tropical coastal ecosystems as it provides an ideal scenario to understand the importance of individuals for ecosystem function via the mechanism of movement behavior and the associated nutrient translocation.

Our first objective was to quantify individual-level variation in movement behavior within the two populations. We used acoustic telemetry to monitor the movement of generalist species, gray snapper (Lutjanus griseus) and cubera snapper (Lutjanus cyanopterus), in a mangrove estuary in The Bahamas (Fig. 1C and Materials and Methods). The estuary is shallow (<1 m), tidally dominated (i.e., no riverine input) with nine refugia holes (3- to 5-m diameter by 1- to 3-m depththis accounted for all the areas in the estuary sufficiently large to provide shelter for fishes) in which stationary receivers were located (Fig. 1C). During low tide events, fishes were restricted to refugia holes, whereas during high tide cycles, fishes were able to move freely throughout the estuary to forage (Fig. 1C).

We measured two behavioral traits for each individual: the number of sites used per day and the activity rate per day (a measure of swimming and foraging time; Fig. 2A and Materials and Methods). A typical population-level approach would assume that the mean across all individuals for each day generally reflects individual-level traits. We tested this assumption by comparing the population-level distributions (i.e., sites used per day and activity rate per day averaged across individuals, representing the population-level mean) to each individual-level distribution (i.e., sites used per day and activity rate per day for a single individual) using t tests. Between 62 and 86% of individual-level distributions of per-day activity and site use differed from the population-level distributions (Fig. 2B). For comparison, simulated individuals (generated by sampling from normal distributions of activity and site use; Materials and Methods) only differed from population-level distributions 4 to 5% of the time. Neither attribute of behavior was well predicted by body size (Fig. 2C), a finding that is particularly unexpected given that it is commonly assumed that larger animals have a greater tendency for movement (28). These results demonstrate strong individual-level variation in two behavioral traits that are not otherwise well predicted by population-level means or a commonly used ecological covariate (body size). Similar findings in a variety of systems, including various freshwater species of fishes and zooplankton [see (4)] and herbivorous fishes on coral reefs (29), have stimulated interest in the integrative effects of behavioral traits for ecosystem-scale processes (4, 5).

(A) Histograms of raw data on site use per day and activity per day (time spent foraging) for both the gray and cubera snapper (blue and orange, respectively). Bars and associated dark lines indicate frequency of events within populations. (B) Individual-level site use per day and activity per day. Thin colored lines represent distributions of daily behavioral traits for each observed individual. Thick colored lines represent the population-level distribution (means across all individuals per day). Values associated with Means indicate the percentage of individual-level distributions that differ from the population-level means. These tests were run for the observed data (indicated by the colored text) and for simulated individuals that were generated by sampling randomly from normal distributions of site use per day and activity per day (indicated by gray text; distributions are not shown here for simplicity; Materials and Methods). (C) Site use and activity in relation to body size according to individual-level daily estimates (smaller transparent circles) and daily means across all individuals (larger circles with black outline). P values indicate the significance of the relationship between body size and mean behavioral trait. R2 is indicated when the relationship is significant.

Our second objective was to scale-up from basic movement attributes to quantify how individual-level variation in behavior influences ecosystem-scale nutrient dynamics. We developed models to energetically track individuals over time and estimate their total supply (net excretion) of nitrogen (N) and the extent to which they move N across the ecosystem (translocation). To do this, we constructed bioenergetics models for each individual fish using a genus-specific (Lutjanus) model that was parameterized for each individuals body size (30). These models were applied to time series of individual fish to estimate excretion rates at 20-min time steps for 30 days. At every time step, models were updated on the basis of physiological and environmental attributes that would influence an individuals metabolic rates: (i) the individuals current activity (foraging or within a refugium hole, i.e., increased or resting metabolism, respectively) and (ii) the temperature of the surrounding water given an individuals location (changing over time and space; Materials and Methods). We again used t tests to test how well population-level distributions (i.e., the population-level mean generated by averaging across all individuals for each day) were representative of individual-level trait distributions, this time for N supply and translocation. Between 81 and 95% of individual-level distributions differed from that of the population (Fig. 1, Materials and Methods, and fig. S1). Compared to the simple measures of behavior (site use per day and activity rate per day; 62 to 86%), these findings show that scaling additional physiological factors (metabolism and body size) to estimate the influence of individuals on ecosystem processes substantially magnifies the discrepancy between individuals and their population-level means. For context, we simulated individual fish with body sizes sampled from the distributions of the observed populations, and behavior being determined by sampling from normal distributions of activity (Materials and Methods). We found that 67 to 91% of simulated individuals differed from their population-level means for both N supply and translocation. These results extend our findings that individual-level behavioral traits are poorly captured at the population level and show that individual-level impacts on ecosystem function are even more pronounced because of the additional variation associated with individual-level physiological attributes.

Scaling individual-level processes to estimate population-level nutrient supply (Materials and Methods) showed that the gray and cubera snapper populations contributed 52 and 10.9 g N day1, 44 to 47% greater, respectively, than from simulated populations in which behavior was not accounted for (i.e., individual-level models were informed only by body size and not by movement-based metabolism) (Fig. 3). Even when accounting for behavior (i.e., individual-level models are informed by body size and movement-based metabolism; Materials and Methods), the simulated populations still underestimated N supply and translocation by 20 to 26% relative to the observed populations (Fig. 3), that is, relative to the estimates generated from models parameterized by observed movement and body size of individuals in the two populations. These findings are particularly notable considering the degree to which our simulations were informed by the observed population-level demographics (i.e., observed data) and captured similarly high levels of individual-level variation in N supply and translocation (67 to 91%) relative to the observed individuals (81 to 95%). Scaling-up ecological processes from the individual to the ecosystem is a widely used approach in ecology and is increasingly being applied to understand how anthropogenic changes may influence ecosystem-scale processes (31). Our results signal that interpreting results from this approach must be done cautiously, and where possible, empirical data should be used to inform individual distributions especially if the processes being scaled are influenced by behavioral or physiological traits.

(A and B) Distributions of the percent difference between observed estimates of population-level N supply per day (A) and N translocation per day (amount of N distributed across the estuary) (B) and populations simulated using models that are informed by the observed populations and incorporate behavior- and individual-level variation (Behavior + ind. var.black bars and text) and behavior-free models that are informed only by the body size distributions of the observed populations (Behavior freelight gray bars and text). Values associated with text represent median differences between observed and simulated data. (C) Primary sources of N (NH4+) supply (g day1) to the ecosystem: mass supplycalculated as the difference between net input and output from the system due to tidal flushing (Materials and Methods), deposition from rainfall, gray and cubera snapper, and the whole community (all species + gray and cubera snapper; Materials and Methods). Dashed portions of bars indicate estimated contribution of net supply due to behavior. Error bars associated with mass supply indicate the maximum (upper) and minimum (lower) estimates (see Materials and Methods). Error bars for population and community estimates represent 1 SD generated through bootstrapping procedures (Materials and Methods).

Placing our findings into the context of the whole ecosystem, we found that the observed gray and cubera snapper populations supplied ~97% of the mass supply of N to the estuary, including N supply from tidal flushing and N deposition (Fig. 3B and Materials and Methods). Scaling the behavior-inclusive estimates to the whole fish community reveals that fish can contribute up to two times the total mass supply of N to the system (Fig. 3B and Materials and Methods). Animals are widely recognized to contribute substantially to nutrient budgets in many ecosystems (18, 20, 21, 3234). However, in tropical coastal ecosystems where primary production is often limited by both N and phosphorus (P) (3537), the relevance of fish communitylevel nutrient supply rates compared to other sources has been uncertain, although estimated to be substantial (15). Here, we show that approaches that do not account for behavior-mediated changes in metabolism substantially underestimate the contribution by consumers to ecosystem nutrient budgets.

The importance of intraspecific variation in behavior for ecosystem function demonstrated here suggests that if ecosystem-based management is a priority, the ecological ramifications of harvesting strategies may need to be reconsidered. Gray snapper and cubera snapper support important commercial and subsistence fisheries throughout the Caribbean and are traditionally harvested via spearing and angling (38). These harvest techniques are used throughout coastal ecosystems globally and are typically selective for large body size [e.g., spearing (39)] and bolder or more active individuals [e.g., angling (40) and, to some extent, spearing (12)]. We tested how our findings are relevant for ecosystem-based management of these two fisheries under a range of conditions of harvesting at MSY, where populations are typically maintained between 30 and 70% of their unfished size (Materials and Methods and figs. S3 and S4). Simulated harvest of unexploited populations (such as those in our study) to 50% of their unfished abundance (e.g., Fig. 1B) reduced nutrient supply and translocation by as much as 69% for cubera and 74% for gray snapper (Fig. 4). In all cases, selective harvest strategies reduced N supply or translocation by 10 to 24% more compared to nonselective harvest, i.e., random removal of individuals (Fig. 4).

Reductions in population level of N supply and translocation for gray and cubera snapper (blue and orange, respectively) from selective and nonselective harvest of 50% of individuals from unfished populations. Asterisks (***) indicate all values are significantly different [P < 0.01; analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Tukey post hoc test]. Behavior selective and body size selective represent fishing that selects against active individuals and large individuals, respectively. We carried out simulated fishing by removing the top 50% of active and large individuals for angling and spearing, respectively. Nonselective is fishing with random removal (see Materials and Methods and figs. S3 and S4 for results for harvest at 30 to 70%).

A key result from this analysis is that behavior-selective harvest had the largest effect on nutrient supply in all cases with the exception of translocation of nutrients by cubera snapper. This finding underscores the importance of behavior, more than body size, for mediating nutrient dynamics in the presence of fishing. This is at first counterintuitive given the strong support for the importance of body size on nutrient supply in previous work (18, 23, 24) as well as in this study. For example, here we found that body size was the strongest predictor of individual-level nutrient supply across both populations (Materials and Methods and table S4), whereas activity was the second strongest predictor and synergistically interacted with body size (Materials and Methods and table S4). This positive interaction strongly influences the behavior-selective harvest of individuals because even though behavior-selective fishing selected more for medium-sized individuals (the largest individuals are not the most active; Fig. 2C), these individuals supply more nutrients, on average, because of their increased activity. Body size is a widely used metric for scaling ecological processes, but our findings show that additional individual-level traits should be considered in light of how they can interact to produce alternative outcomes for ecosystems.

While much of our focus has been on the net N supply to the system, the importance of N translocation is also important, especially in nutrient-poor tropical coastal ecosystems (41). For example, the translocation of nutrients by grunts (Haemulidae spp.) from seagrass beds to coral reefs can increase the growth rate of coral by 70% (42). Similarly, in our study system, an individual fish that moves frequently or far will disproportionately translocate nutrients relative to other individuals. This likely also has a disproportionate influence on primary production because the producers receiving the nutrients from this individual would otherwise receive very little due to low ambient availability in this system (35). The translocation of nutrients by animals, however, is a critical ecosystem function that extends well beyond nutrient-poor ecosystems, e.g., grasslands (43), lakes (20), and rivers (44); thus, selective removal of more mobile animals should be recognized as a cryptic consequence of exploitation in many ecosystems.

An ideal conservation scenario would be that nutrient supply is minimally reduced from harvesting to maintain MSY (Fig. 1B; resilient scenario). However, our study shows that the reduction in biomass and loss of individual-level behavioral characteristics due to fishing are greater than proportional, thus discouraging selective fishing, even when harvesting to maintain population sizes that are considered sustainable from an MSY perspective (Materials and Methods and figs. S3 and S4). These results pose an important challenge to conservation because fisheries are essential for the livelihoods of millions of people globally, and thus, only in limited cases is the cessation or reduction in fishing an option. More generally, our results challenge the species-centric definition of biodiversity and provide evidence that the role of individuals may need to be further reconciled in how we approach conservation and the maintenance of ecosystem function.

The research site was a mangrove-lined estuary located on Abaco Island, The Bahamas called Cross Harbour (255628N, 771626W). Food web structure and dynamics (4552), nutrient dynamics (17, 35, 5355), and movement of gray and schoolmaster snapper (56) have been previously studied by the authors in these systems. Bahamian mangrove-lined estuaries, locally called tidal creeks, are characterized by low physical relief and no riverine input, thus are completely tidally dominated. The study area represented ~11.5 km2 of the entire estuary, which was ~30 km2, estimated using Google Earth software. The study area was chosen on the basis of the availability of predator refugia holes (herein referred to as refugia holes) and was delineated on the basis of the extent of fish habitat determined from visual surveys conducted by the authors. Refugia holes are depressions in the shallow seascape (3 to 5 m in diameter and 1 to 3 m deep) in which fishes can shelter during low tide events when the majority of the estuary (i.e., areas other than the refugia) is devoid of water.

A total of 33 gray snapper and 25 cubera snapper were tagged with Vemco acoustic transmitters (V7 and V9) between July 2006 and February 2007 (not all fish were used in the subsequent analysissee the Supplementary Materials for detailed tagging procedures). Fish were caught with hook and line or traps. Standard length was recorded for each individual. Nine receivers (Vemco VR2W) were placed within each of the refugia holes throughout the study site. Receivers can detect acoustic transmissions that are unique to each transmitter placed inside of individual fish. The detection range of the transmitters is ~50 to 150 m, depending on water clarity, depth, and potential obstruction from objects, e.g., in this system, mangrove roots or seagrass (personal observation by J. E. Allgeier and C. A. Layman). Receivers were moored at the bottom of the refugium hole and had a detection range of ~0.5 to 5 m extending beyond the perimeter of the refugia. Our assumption, which was based on extensive visual surveys, hundreds of hours of personal observation, and prey fish tethering experiments conducted by J. E. Allgeier and C. A. Layman, was that when fish were not detected by our receivers, they were outside of the refugia holes and actively foraging. The ability of receivers to detect fish on the perimeters of the refugia holes suggests that if anything, our analysis is conservative as it underestimates the amount of time fishes were foraging (and thus increasing their individual effects on nutrient dynamics). Data from receivers were downloaded opportunistically by the authors.

We generated a full time series of data for each fish whereby a location (refugium hole) or the absence of detection (foraging) was recorded at every 20-min window of time for 30 days each. Thirty days was selected because it was the longest time frame for which we had continuous coverage of the largest number of our tagged fish (i.e., 31 and 21 for gray snapper and cubera snapper, respectively). All but six fish time series took place between January and February 2007. The other six took place between June and September 2007. In an ideal scenario, all fish movement data would have been from the exact same days, but idiosyncrasies in their behavior, e.g., fish at times left the entire estuary (often captured by additional receivers we had throughout the area), rendered this difficult and would have substantially reduced the number of days for which we had overlapping data for a maximum number of fish. Instead, for the purposes of this study, we felt it was optimal that fish had the same number of days (and as many as possible) of movement data for which basic parameters could be estimated.

Calculating the behavioral traits consisted of (i) counting the number of different sites visited by each individual fish for each day (site use; sites 1 to 9) and (ii) summing up the total amount of time that fish were either inactive (detected by a receiver in a given refugium hole) or active (not detected and thus assumed to be swimming and/or foraging outside of the refugia). Activity was binary (1 = not swimming in refugia or 2 = swimming outside of refugia), consistent with the activity parameter used in bioenergetics models (57, 58). A binary value for activity is an oversimplification of the true activity of a fish, but given this binary value was assigned for every 20-min window of time for 30 days, over greater time scales (e.g., 1 hour), this variable becomes a continuum between 1 and 2. Thus, we generated distributions of site use and activity per day for each individual to test the hypothesis that individual-level behavior was well described by the population-level means (mean daily activity or site use across individuals within a population). To do this, we used t tests to determine whether the means of each individual-level distribution differed from that of the population-level distributions (Fig. 2).

For purposes of comparison, we generated simulations whereby the same number of individuals for gray and cubera snapper populations (31 and 21, respectively) was created to test whether the observed individuals differed from null expectations that individuals are represented by population-level normal distributions of activity and site use. Specifically, time series were generated for each fish by randomly sampling from normal distributions of activity (12) and site use (19) for each day for each individual. This process was repeated such that we generated 100 simulated populations of gray snapper (with 31 individuals each) and cubera snapper (with 21 individuals each). For each simulated population, we tested how well the population-level distribution captured the individual-level traits (the same test as conducted on the observed data). We used t tests to quantify the proportion of individual-level distributions (activity or site use per day per individual) that differed from the population-level distributions (means across all individual per day). Results from these tests are reported in Fig. 2.

An important aspect of this research is to scale findings to the ecosystem. We estimated population sizes for gray and cubera snapper through visual surveys in two ways. First, repeated visual surveys were conducted in each refugia during low tide events using snorkel surveys in which all fish were exhaustively counted (surveys were not timed). Similar techniques have been used by the authors (J. E. Allgeier and C. A. Layman) on artificial reefs in nearby seagrass ecosystems (5961). Estimates were averaged across all dates and summed across all refugia holes to get a mean total number of fish (all species) within the refugia holes. Second, walking transects (50 m by 2 m) were conducted during low tide to estimate fish densities in regions of the estuary that were not within refugia, but that fish could access during low tide eventsi.e., the primary water channels. These estimates were averaged across sampling dates and scaled-up to the low tide area of the tidal creek to estimate the average number of fish (all species) outside of the refugia holes during low tide. In doing so, we were able to estimate fish densities at low tide in the only two habitat types that fish could possibly occupy. Estimates (mean densities in refugia at low tide + mean densities outside refugia at low tide) were summed to get a single population size estimate for each species. All surveys (n = 21) were conducted by C. A. Layman between 23 January 2006 and 21 September 2006. We are confident that these estimates are, if anything, conservative for two reasons: (i) Our estimates of fish density in each hole are most certainly underestimates versus overestimates, and (ii) for many species of fish, individuals will often emigrate into estuaries at high tide (62, 63). To understand potential error associated with our population-level estimates, we used a bootstrapping technique whereby we iterated through the data 1000 times, each time removing a single survey date (see error bars associated with Fig. 3) and then following the same procedure of averaging across all remaining dates and summing across the snorkel surveys and the walking transects. Surveys resulted in an estimate of 488 27 SD gray snapper and 68 4 SD cubera snapper for the upper portion of the estuary (Fig. 1). These estimates suggest that 6% of gray and 34% of cubera snapper populations were tagged for movement analysis.

To estimate the contribution of the entire community (i.e., all other species) for N supply to the system, we used the fish community survey data to estimate community-level biomass and supply of NH4+ (table S1). Specifically, using data previously collected from the system for past food web studies (64) and this study, we generated body size distributions (assumed to be log normal) for each species within our surveys. Sampling from these body size distributions, we generated 100 different populations for each species. These body sizes were converted to mass using published length-weight relationships (30, 65). We then estimated daily excretion rates of NH4+ for each individual based on the published relationships from Allgeier et al. (24) and aggregated to estimate the community-level NH4+ supply (table S1). To understand potential error associated with our population-level estimates, we again used a bootstrapping technique whereby we iterated through the data 1000 times, each time removing a single survey date (see error bars associated with Fig. 3). Mean fish community N supply over the 100 iterations was 79.8 5.9 SD g NH4+ day1not including the estimates for gray and cubera snapper generated from this studysee methods below.

We used a bioenergetics approach to energetically track individuals over time in our study system. This approach allowed us to combine knowledge about basic behavioral traits or attributes of individual fish with physiological parameters of those fish to estimate their combined effects on nutrient supply and translocation via excretion of waste products. Bioenergetics models (57, 58) were built based on previous models used to estimate excretion rates of N for Lutjanidae (61) and empirically parameterized by data from Allgeier et al. (24). To do this, we constructed individual specific bioenergetics models (the same base model but with each individuals body mass) that were serially updated every 20 min based on two primary factors. First, if a fish was assumed to be active (i.e., it was not detected in a refugium hole), the activity parameter was up-regulated from basal metabolism of 1 to active metabolism of 2 (58). Second, given the influence of temperature on metabolic processes (57, 58), we allowed water temperature to vary based on the fishs location in the estuary. To do this, we placed temperature loggers (Hobo brand) in six locations within the estuary for the extent of the study period: three in commonly used refugia holes and three in shallow areas that would vary in their degree of access due to different tidal stages. These data were then used to update the individual-specific models whereby when fish were detected within a refugia, we used refugia-specific temperature data when possible and average refugia temperature data when not. When fish were not detected by our receivers, model temperature was the average across the three temperature loggers in shallow sites. There were periods of time for which logger data were incomplete (e.g., when loggers were removed to change batteries, download, or if a logger failed). These time periods were often short (i.e., minutes to hours), but to assure a complete time series of temperatures, we generated correlations from the nearest logger and used linear coefficients to interpolate temperatures for the incomplete time periods. Statistical models testing for the most important factors explaining daily individual-level N show that temperature was third in parameter importance behind body size and activity (standardized parameter effect sizes: 0.74, 0.34, and 0.18, respectively), and thus, we expect the subtle variation caused by this approach had minimum influence on our findings.

Using this approach, we calculated both N supply and translocation (i.e., the movement of nutrients across the estuary when fish were not resting in refugia) by individuals to the ecosystem. Specifically, N supply was calculated as the sum of N excretion per individual over time. N translocation was quantified as the sum of N excretion per individual only during the time when the individual was foraging (i.e., when the fish was active).

Population-level abundance estimates based on our field surveys indicated that the gray and cubera snapper populations within our study area were 488 and 68, respectively. To scale up the individual-level processes to the whole population, we used a resampling method to generate 100 different populations (per species) whereby individuals were randomly selected with replacement from the observed individuals. These resampled populations were then used to estimate the extent to which individual-level variation influenced population-level N supply and translocation (Fig. 3 and fig. S1).

We used simulation to test how base assumptions of activity (i.e., that daily activity is normally distributed) determine the degree to which individuals deviate from their population-level means and, in turn, how this may affect ecosystem-scale processes of N supply and translocation. A goal of these simulations was to test how effective different assumptions about behavior were at predicting the observed behavior in our telemetry study. To do this, we generated simulations at two levels of realism: with and without including individual behavior, herein referred to as behavior inclusive and behavior free, respectively. For the behavior-free simulations, body size was the only factor that varied among individuals; all other parameters were constant across time under the assumption that individuals do not move at all (activity parameter = 1). For the behavior-inclusive simulations, individuals were differentiated by body size and activity. In these cases, models were updated at each 20-min time step (similar to how we modeled the observed individuals), but in this case, parameters for activity were randomly sampled from normal distributions (i.e., daily activity level is represented as a number between 1 and 2). Simulated individuals body size (i.e., 488 and 68, for gray and cubera snapper, respectively) was determined by drawing from the log-normal distribution of body sizes based on the population demographics of the respective observed population (i.e., using the real data for the gray and cubera snapper). In all cases, we used the same bioenergetics model framework to energetically track individuals through time. For simulations, we held water temperature constant at the mean temperature across the study time frame (24C)this is a generally conservative approach given that the mean temperature experienced by the observed individual fish was 25.5 0.79C SD.

To place our findings in the context of the entire ecosystem, we estimated the amount of N supplied to the system in two ways: (i) We estimated mass nutrient supply to the system driven by tidal flushing and (ii) N deposition. Detailed methods used to calculate sources of N to the ecosystem can be found in the Supplementary Materials. Bahamian islands have no freshwater rivers and streams due to their karst geology and flat topography (38). As such, Bahamian estuaries receive water primarily from the ocean via tidal oscillations, which occur twice daily, as well as through direct rainfall. They may also receive N from biological N fixation; however, we did not include this in our study because of the relative paucity of data on this source of N and findings that N fixation can at times be countered by denitrification in mangrove ecosystem sediments (thus, depending on this amount, our estimate of all other sources of N to the system could be an underestimate) (66). Our previous work has shown these Bahamian estuarine ecosystems to have extremely low availability of ambient nutrients in the water column (35, 53).

Both species were fished using simulation under three different scenarios: (i) behavior selective: removing individual fish in rank order from the most active to the least; (ii) body size selective: removing individual fish in rank order from the largest to the smallest; and (iii) nonselective: removing individuals randomly from the population. Accurately estimating the population size that produces MSY requires information (i.e., population-level growth rates or stock-recruitment relationships) beyond the scope of this study but generally falls between 30 and 70% of the unfished population size (67). As such, we fished all populations using simulations where we removed 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70% of individuals (not biomass) from the populations to provide a range of fishing pressure that likely encompasses most species (figs. S3 and S4), whereby the removal of individuals was either selective, removing the most active or largest, or random. On the basis of the recommendations of Punt et al. (67) for simplicity, in the main text, we only presented fishing where MSY occurred when removing 50% of the individuals. For each species and harvest technique, fishing was conducted iteratively on the 100 populations that were generated through resampling techniques described above (also used to estimate population-level contribution to supply and translocation), See figs. S3 and S4 for results from fishing where we removed 30, 40, 60, and 70% of the individuals.

We used linear mixed-effects models to test for the relative importance of body size, temperature, and activity for individual-level nutrient supply by both gray and cubera. The global model wasLog(NEXC)body mass+activity+body mass*activity+temperature+(1|species)+(1|fishID)+(1|date)

Whereby, excretion (NEXC) was the grams supplied per fish per day. We included species and fishID (a unique ID for each individual) and date as random effects, as we were most interested in the effect sizes of the fixed effects: body mass (log transformed), activity (mean per day), and temperature (mean per day). All values were standardized to allow direct comparisons among parameter estimates (table S4). The package lme4 in R (68) was used to run the model.

Supplementary material for this article is available at http://advances.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/6/9/eaax8329/DC1

Specific tagging procedures

Estimating additional sources of N to the ecosystem

Table S1. List of species and specific parameters used to scale population estimates.

Table S2. Time series of ambient availability of N from the mouth of a tidal creek in The Bahamas.

Table S3. N deposition rates.

Table S4. Model statistics for testing body size effects.

Fig. S1. Importance of individual behavior for ecosystem-level nutrient supply and translocation.

Fig. S2. Image of the study system.

Fig. S3. Selective harvest disproportionately reduces ecosystem-level nutrient supply.

Fig. S4. Selective harvest disproportionately reduces ecosystem-level nutrient translocation.

References (6976)

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.

R. H. Peters, The Ecological Implications of Body Size (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983).

D. L. DeAngelis, K. A. Rose, M. A. Huston, Individual-oriented approaches to modeling ecological populations and communities, in Frontiers in Mathematical Biology, S. A. Levin Ed. (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 1994), pp. 390410.

C. B. Schreck, P. B. Moyle, Methods For Fish Biology (American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, MD, 1990).

P. C. Hanson, T. B. Johnson, D. E. Schindle, J. F. Kitchell, Fish Bioenergetics 3.0 (University of Wisconsin System Sea Grant Institute, Madison, 1997).

F. S. Chapin III, Principles of Terrestrial Ecosystem Ecology (Springer Science, 2002).

Acknowledgments: We thank D. Haines, F. DeRosa, R. Appaldo, J. Richard, K. Rennirt, Friends of the Environment for logistical support in the field, and two anonymous reviewers for useful comments on the manuscript. Funding: Funding was provided to J.E.A. by an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship and to C.A.L. by NSF OCE no. 0746164. Author contributions: J.E.A. conceived of the initial project, and D.E.S., T.J.C., T.E.W. (equal contribution), and G.W. greatly contributed to the final product. J.E.A. led the analysis with important support from T.J.C., T.E.W., D.E.S., and G.W. J.E.A. and C.A.L. conducted the fieldwork. J.E.A. wrote the initial draft, and all authors contributed substantially to the subsequent drafts. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data related to this paper may be requested from the authors.

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Individual behavior drives ecosystem function and the impacts of harvest - Science Advances

COVID-19 threatens to test information ecosystem as misinformation goes viral – Macau Business

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The COVID-19 epidemic threatens to test global information ecosystem, as misinformation going viral on social media can amplify tensions and, as a result, breed a volatile political climate, an opinion piece in the New York Times has said.

In the event of widespread illness, well need to rely on accurate, vetted information to keep us safe, said the article titled Coronavirus Will Test Our New Way of Life on Monday.

While the internet has made distribution easier than ever before, the democratization of information has created platforms and advertising economies built to reward misinformation, it noted.

The spread of misinformation hoaxes and rumors about the outbreak in China have plagued popular social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook while adapting to new platforms, it said.

Unverified videos from Chinese social media are shared by local Twitter influencers, viral WhatsApp forwards warn users of government advisories that dont actually exist, and people share bogus cures for the virus, the author quoted U.S. website BuzzFeed News senior reporter Ryan Broderick as saying.

It has been made clear over the past few years that our social media ecosystem is easily hijacked to incentivize behavior from the worst actors, further amplifying existing tensions and disagreements, the article said.

The result of the problem is a volatile political climate, where news is weaponized for political gain, it noted, adding the state is further exacerbated by black-box algorithms protected as corporate secrets that dictate the information we see.

In the fallout, trust in what we see online decreases, and news fatigue grows more widespread, especially among the least engaged political-news consumers, it said.

Should the virus reach extreme levels of infection globally, it would very likely be the first true test of the 21st-century way of life defined by constant connectivity, it said.

Peoples way of life has shifted from individuals to markets, and from localized to globalized, the article explained, adding that so far this interconnectivity has largely been a strength.

However, much like a virus exploits a small vulnerability, creating a chain of reactions that allow it to weaken its host, a true global pandemic could work its way through the interconnected ecosystems that support our present way of life, it said.

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COVID-19 threatens to test information ecosystem as misinformation goes viral - Macau Business

Global Asset Tracking Market 2020-2025: Insights Into Technologies, Solutions, and the Ecosystem Including Major Players – GlobeNewswire

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Dublin, March 04, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Asset Tracking Market by Technology, Infrastructure, Connection Type, Mobility, Location Determination, Solution Type, and Industry Verticals 2020-2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report evaluates asset tracking technologies, solutions, and ecosystem including major players. The report assesses the impacts of various use case specific considerations in terms of asset technology and solution selection. The report also analyzes the market outlook for asset tracking globally, regionally, and by major country from 2020 through 2025.

Select Report Findings

The overall asset tracking market has witnessed substantial economies of scale improvements in recent years due to inexpensive connectivity and machine-to-machine communications equipment and services. Increased penetration and usage of advanced IoT solutions leveraging M2M and other supporting technologies enable anytime, anywhere, and any type of asset tracking.

In addition, improved economies of scale and advancements in miniaturization and communications have made low-value asset tracking more practical, expanding the range of potential industries and asset types. This is exemplified by the growing trend for RFID-based "slap-and-track" solutions for shipping, supply chain management, and enterprise logistics such as tracking low to medium-value assets such as business equipment and supplies.

There are substantial factors to consider when approaching the broader asset tracking market, which includes asset class, value, and degree of mobility. Whereas asset tracking has historically been largely fleet-focused (commercial trucks, trailers, vans, and cars), there is great potential for expansion towards non-vehicle related assets.

However, the market is currently constrained by the relatively low number of enterprise-connected assets across certain important asset classes. Leading asset tracking solution companies are focusing on the asset value to a business or governmental organization rather than the book value of the asset itself. A consultative marketing/sales approach is necessary to inform enterprise, first of the value of interconnecting business assets, and secondly, demonstrative asset tracking outcomes that bring value straight to the bottom line.

There are also opportunities for technology integration, such as leveraging Artificial Intelligence for enhanced decision making. There are many roles that AI may play, ranging from machine learning and analytics to improved cybersecurity for connected enterprise assets. By way of example, the Blackberry acquisition of Cylance represents a cybersecurity play that may be parlayed into an IoT device security offering combined with asset tracking solutions for greater overall enterprise security.

The report additionally provides the following:

Key Topics Covered

1. Executive Summary

2. Asset Tracking Market Segmentation2.1 Asset Tracking Application Types2.2 Asset Tracking Connection Types2.3 Asset Tracking in Industry Verticals2.4 Asset Tracking by Region2.5 Asset Tracking by IoT Deployment2.6 Artificial Intelligence in Asset Tracking2.7 Other Emerging Technologies in Support of Asset Tracking

3. Introduction3.1 Asset Tracking Overview3.1.1 Asset Tracking Functions3.1.2 Asset Tracking Systems3.2 Asset Types3.2.1 Fixed, Portable, and Mobile Assets3.2.2 High, Medium, and Low Assets3.3 Asset Tracking Market Segmentation3.4 Business Drivers for Asset Tracking3.4.1 Connected Devices3.4.1.1 Connected Consumer Devices3.4.1.2 Connected Enterprise Assets3.4.1.3 Connected Industrial Assets3.4.2 Optimizing Enterprise and Industrial Device Management3.4.3 Smart Cities, Buildings, and Workplaces3.5 Asset Tracking Technologies3.5.1 Mobility Management and Connectivity Technology3.5.2 5G and Multi-access Edge Computing3.5.3 Machine to Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT)3.5.4 Artificial Intelligence in Asset Tracking3.5.5 Advanced Data Analytics Support of Asset Tracking3.5.6 Blockchain Technology and Asset Tracking

4. Asset Tracking Solutions4.1 Solution Considerations4.1.1 Fixed vs. Portable vs. Mobile Assets4.1.2 Asset Value4.1.2.1 High Value4.1.2.2 Medium Value4.1.2.3 Low Value4.2 Solution Needs4.2.1 Inventory Management4.2.2 Asset Control and Redirection4.2.3 Asset Tracking vs. Asset Control4.2.3.1 Real-time vs. Non-real time Tracking and Location4.2.3.2 Asset Location Precision and Movement Frequency4.2.3.3 Alignment with Workforce (Human Assets)4.3 Specific Solutions4.3.1 Facility Management4.3.2 Vehicle Tracking4.3.3 Commercial Fleet Tracking4.3.4 Asset Tracking in Smart Workplaces4.3.5 Asset Tracking in Smart Cities4.4 Asset Tracking Infrastructure and Services4.4.1 Asset Tracking Software and Platforms4.4.2 Asset Tracking System Deployment and Services

5. Asset Tracking in Industry Verticals5.1 Aviation and Aerospace5.2 Automotive and Transportation Systems5.3 Healthcare5.4 Manufacturing and Industrial Automation5.5 Warehousing, Logistics, and Shipping5.6 Government (State and Local)5.7 Travel and Hospitality5.8 Consumer Electronics5.9 Agriculture and Livestock Management5.10 Extraction and Energy: Oil, Gas, Timber, and Mining5.11 Food and Beverages5.12 Education and Training5.13 Construction and Building Automation5.14 Robotics and Drones5.15 Financial Services5.16 Information and Communications Technology5.17 Energy Exploration and Distribution5.18 Textiles and Chemicals

6. Company Analysis6.1 Actsoft Inc.6.2 ASAP Systems6.3 AssetPanda6.4 AT&T6.5 CalAmp6.6 Fleet Complete6.7 GigaTrack6.8 Microsoft Corporation6.9 OnAsset Intelligence Inc.6.10 Oracle Corporation6.11 Spireon Inc.6.12 Sprint Corporation6.13 Tenna6.14 Trimble Inc.6.15 Verizon Wireless6.16 Zebra Technologies6.17 SAP SE6.18 Epicor Software Corporation6.19 JDA Software Group Inc.6.20 Stanley Black & Decker Inc.6.21 Honeywell International Inc.6.22 Ubisense Group PLC6.23 Topcon Corporation6.24 Datalogic S.p.A.6.25 Mojix Inc.6.26 Impinj Inc.6.27 Sato Holdings Corporation6.28 TomTom International B.V.6.29 IBM Corporation6.30 Telit6.31 Apptricity6.32 Entigral Systems Inc.6.33 NimbeLink6.34 Sierra Wireless Inc. (Numerex)6.35 ORBCOMM6.36 Particle6.37 PTC (ThingWorx)6.38 Sendum Wireless Corporation6.39 Senseaware (Fedex)6.40 Sensitech Inc.6.41 Sequans6.42 Starcom6.43 Telefonica6.44 TrackX6.45 Vodafone Limited6.46 Chekhra Business Solutions6.47 Lowry Solutions Inc.6.48 RedBeam Inc.6.49 TVL Inc. (WiseTrack)6.50 Wasp Barcode Technologies Inc.6.51 Jolly Technologies Inc.6.52 Windward Software6.53 Brilliant Info Systems Pvt. Ltd.6.54 Freshworks6.55 Sortly Inc.6.56 QBurst6.57 Northrop Grumman6.58 Targa Telematics S.p.A.6.59 Speedshield Technologies (Adaptalift Group)6.60 Smart Asset Manager Limited6.61 Quantum Aviation Solutions6.62 UpKeep Maintenance Management6.63 PcsInfinity6.64 Zerion Software Inc.6.65 Litum IoT6.66 Advantrack6.67 Alphabet6.68 ARI Fleet6.69 Arvento6.70 Azuga Fleet6.71 Blackberry (Radar, QNX)6.72 Carmalink6.73 ClearPath GPS6.74 DriveFactor (or CCC Drive)6.75 Estrack6.76 Fleet Safety Institute6.77 Fleetilla6.78 Fleetistics6.79 FleetManager6.80 FleetMind (Safe Fleet Holdings)6.81 Fleetup6.82 Geotab6.83 Globalstar6.84 Go Fleet6.85 GPS Insight6.86 GPS Trackit6.87 GSAttrack (Global Satellite Engineering)6.88 Gurtam6.89 Inseego6.90 IntouchGPS (GPSTrackit)6.91 Lojack6.92 Lytx6.93 M2M in Motion6.94 Mix Telematics6.95 Momentum IoT6.96 NexTraq (Michelin)6.97 Omnitracs6.98 Passtime6.99 Pedigree Technologies6.100 Raven Connected (KlashWerks Inc.)6.101 Rhino Fleet6.102 Roambee6.103 SafeFleet6.104 Samsara6.105 Skybitz6.106 Smart Path GPS6.107 Teltrac Navman6.108 T-Mobile6.109 Zonar Systems (Continental AG)6.110 Zubie6.111 Polte

7. Asset Tracking Market Forecasts 2020-20257.1 Aggregate Global Asset Tracking Market 2020-20257.2 Asset Tracking Market by Segment 2020-20257.3 Asset Tracking Market by Asset Type 2020-20257.4 Asset Tracking Market by Function 2020-20257.5 Asset Tracking Market by Application 2020-20257.6 Asset Tracking Market by Deployment Type 2020-20257.7 Asset Tracking Market by Mobility: Fixed, Portable, and Mobile 2020-20257.8 Asset Tracking Market by Wireless Device Type 2020-20257.9 Asset Tracking Market by Connectivity Type: Wired and Wireless 2020-20257.10 Asset Tracking Market by Enterprise Type7.11 Asset Tracking Market by Industry Vertical 2020-20257.12 Asset Tracking Market by Device Segmentation 2020-20257.13 Asset Tracking Market by Solution 2020-20257.14 Asset Tracking Market by Technology Components 2020-20257.15 Asset Tracking Market by Technology Support and Integration 2020-20257.16 Asset Tracking Market by Region 2020-20257.17 Asset Tracking Market by Unit Deployment 2020-20257.18 Video Safety in Asset Tracking 2020-2025

8. Conclusions and Recommendations8.1 Advertisers and Media Companies8.2 Artificial Intelligence Providers8.3 Automotive Companies8.4 Broadband Infrastructure Providers8.5 Communication Service Providers8.6 Computing Companies8.7 Data Analytics Providers8.8 Immersive Technology (AR, VR, and MR) Providers8.9 Equipment (Asset Tracking) Providers8.10 Networking Equipment Providers8.11 Networking Security Providers8.12 Semiconductor Companies8.13 IoT Suppliers and Service Providers8.14 Software Providers8.15 Smart City System Integrators8.16 Automation System Providers8.17 Social Media Companies8.18 Workplace Solution Providers8.19 Enterprise and Government

9. Appendix: Slap-And-Track Asset Tracking Solutions Market 2020-20259.1 Global Slap and Track Solutions 2020-20259.2 Slap and Track Solutions by Type 2020-20259.3 Slap and Track Tags by Installation Type 2020-20259.4 Slap and Track Tags by Asset Type 2020-20259.5 Slap and Track Tags by Industry Type 2020-20259.6 Slap and Track Tags by Region 2020-20259.7 Slap and Ship Labels by Type 2020-20259.8 Slap and Ship by Asset Type 2020-20259.9 Slap and Track by Industry Type 2020-20259.10 Slap and Ship Labels by Region 2020-2025

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/weaa7b

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

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Global Asset Tracking Market 2020-2025: Insights Into Technologies, Solutions, and the Ecosystem Including Major Players - GlobeNewswire

The function of fire in the ecosystem – The Community News

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Daniel Price from the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge will be the speaker at the March meeting of the Native Plant Societys Cross Timbers Chapter at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 12, at the Mount Pleasant School, 213 Raymond George Way in Weatherford.

Fire can be a tool as well as a terror in a native landscape. Prescribed burns, or controlled fires, are techniques that experts can use to keep an environment healthy in several ways.

Price is the natural resource manager at the Nature Center, which uses prescribed burns to manage its prairies. He will discuss fire history and how and why the Nature Center is using fire as a tool.

Price grew up on a small farm in Ennis and received a degree in wildlife management from Tarleton State University. He began learning about prescribed burns while working for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department at Huntsville State Park.

Later, as a TPWD county wildlife biologist, he worked with landowners in east Texas and helped other biologists conduct prescribed burns. He joined the Nature Center three years ago.

Visitors are welcome and light refreshments will be available.

The mission of the Cross Timbers Chapter is to promote the conservation, research and use of native plants and plant habitats in Texas through education, outreach, and example. For more information, visit http://npsot.org/wp/crosstimbers.

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The function of fire in the ecosystem - The Community News

New Research from Farnell Reveals Strong Adoption of Artificial Intelligence within the Internet of Things Ecosystem – IoT Business News

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Results from Farnells second IoT Survey also show increasing confidence in companies to lead IoT development.

AIoT is the major emerging trend from the survey, demonstrating the beginning of the process to build a true IoT ecosystem. Research showed that almost half (49%) of respondents already use AI in their IoT applications, with Machine Learning (ML) the most used technology (28%) followed by cloud-based AI (19%).

This adoption of AI within IoT design is coupled with a growing confidence to take the lead on IoT development and an increasing number of respondents seeing themselves as innovators. However, it is still evident that some engineers (51%) are hesitant to adopt AI due to being new to the technology or because they require specialized expertise in how to implement AI in IoT applications.

Other results from Farnells second Global IoT Survey show that security continues to be the biggest concern designers consider in IoT implementation. Although 40% cited security as their biggest concern in 2018 and this has reduced to 35% in 2019, it is still ranked significantly higher than connectivity and interoperability due to the type of data collected from things (machines) and humans, which can be very sensitive and personal. Businesses initiating new IoT projects treat IoT security as a top priority by implementing hardware and software security to protect for any kind of potential threat. Ownership of collected data is another important aspect of security, with 70% of respondents preferring to own the data collected by an edge device as opposed to it being owned by the IoT solution provider.

The survey also shows that although many engineers (46%) still prefer to design a complete edge-to-cloud and security solution themselves, openness to integrate production ready solutions, such as SmartEdge Agile, SmartEdge IIoT Gateway, which offer a complete end-to-end IoT Solution, has increased. 12% more respondents confirmed that they would consider third party devices in 2019 than 2018, particularly if in-house expertise is limited or time to market is critical.

A key trend from last years survey results has continued in 2019 and survey results suggest that the growing range of hardware available to support IoT development continues to present new opportunities. More respondents than ever are seeing innovation coming from start-ups (33%, up from 26%), who benefit from the wide availability of modular solutions and single board computers available on the market. The number of respondents adopting off-the-shelf hardware has also increased to 54% from 50% in 2018.

Cliff Ortmeyer, Global Head of Technical Marketing for Farnell says:

Opportunities within the Internet of Things and AI continue to grow, fueled by access to an increasing number of hardware and software solutions which enable developers to bring products to market more quickly than ever before, and without the need for specialized expertise.

This is opening up IoT to new entrants, and giving more developers the opportunity to innovate to improve lives. Farnell provides access to an extensive range of development tools for IoT and AI which provide off-the-shelf solutions to common challenges.

Despite the swift integration of smart devices such as Amazons Alexa and Google Home into daily life, evidencing a widespread adoption of IoT in the consumer space, in 2019 we saw a slight shift in focus away from home automation with the number of respondents who considered it to be the most impactful application in IoT in the next 5 years reducing from 27% to 22%. Industrial automation and smart cities both gained, at 22% and 16% respectively, underpinned by a growing understanding of the value that IoT data can bring to operations (rising from 44% in 2018 to 50% in 2019). This trend is witnessed in industry where more manufacturing facilities are converting to full or semi-automation in robotic manufacturing and increasing investment in predictive maintenance to reduce production down times.

The survey was conducted between September and December 2019 with 2,015 respondents participating from 67 countries in Europe, North America and APAC. Responses were predominantly from engineers working on IoT solutions (59%), as well as buyers of components related to IoT solutions, Hobbyists and Makers.

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New Research from Farnell Reveals Strong Adoption of Artificial Intelligence within the Internet of Things Ecosystem - IoT Business News

Johnson fast-tracks bid to solve Australia’s player pathway crisis – SBS – The World Game

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Johnson is beating the same drum as Socceroos coach Graham Arnold in the knowledge that a generation ofplayers face falling by the wayside unless they can be given the match minutes to compete with their counterparts in Asia and Europe.

Despite the Olyroos qualification to this years Olympic Games, performances of Australias national youth teams have fallen well short of expectations in recent times.And Johnson, who was a member of the 1999 Joeys squad, believes creating a connected and interlinked football eco-system is part of the answer.

His sentiments were reinforced during a Sydney FC Business Lunch by keynote speaker Richard Scudamore, who has been engaged by the A-League clubs to provide guidance throughout the unbundling process of the A-League from the FFA.What we must begin to appreciate is that Australian football is made up of a number of constituent parts and these parts are all interconnected, similar to an ecosystem, said Johnson.

In its simplest form, our game is made up of grassroots football, organised football, elite football, and all of the actors which help deliver the game at these levels players, coaches, administrators, referees and the like.

As a member of FIFA and the AFC, we also operate within a broader global regulatory framework and there are decisions being made at regional and global levels which will impact the game domestically.

He believes that the FFAs past focus on growing the A-League has, as a byproduct,left a void in the middle tier of Australian football which has impacted on vital player development pathways.

I just dont think that five national level games per week cuts it, he added.

If you look at the UK, its night and day. They have a four-tier professional system with 20 plus teams in each tier, playing one or two games every week.

Just do the math and it shows how much of a gap there is in terms of the games were playing at the elite level.

Part of what the FFA needs to do is to connect all levels of football in Australia.

This would encompass incentivising clubs to invest in youth development and the imposition of a national transfer system.

If we want to compete with the best countries in the world, we need to provide opportunities for young players to play and our competitions structures are integral to this.

Referencing the much-discussed national second division, Johnson commended the work of the FFA working group chaired by board member Remo Nogarotto - and will fast-track ongoing studies into Australias competition structures in an effort to outline a path forward.Theres been some good work done by the working group. I dont think we need to complicate things, its just working out the right vehicle to play outside of the A-League, he said.

The next step will be to test the market and see if theres a real appetite from a group of clubs to fund it.

If there is significant interest I dont see why we cant do it, we should do it.

We need to ensure that whatever path we take is in pursuit of legitimate objectives such as player development, encouraging clubs to invest in youth development and rewarding them for this investment.

We want to create a system that maximises opportunities for our players to play more often at the highest standard possible.

Ultimately, we want the benefit of this system to flow back into our clubs and the further success of our national teams.

Johnson also recognised the rich history of Australian football and how it has shaped the football ecosystem today.Australias football ecosystem is as complex, multi-layered and multi-dimensional, he added.

Our role as the governing body, is to protect this ecosystem so that it can flourish and thrive. In order to do so, we must understand that none of these parts can operate in isolation and we must find the right balance.

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Johnson fast-tracks bid to solve Australia's player pathway crisis - SBS - The World Game

Switzerland based AMNIS Partners with Ripple to Create an Ecosystem First – TWJ News

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Ripples efforts in cryptocurrency space have been largely skewed toward creating global partnerships and tie-ups. This has allowed the company to apply its technology to regions that are just entering the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries.

The Brad Garlinghouse led organization recently partnered with Switzerland based AMNIS to create a more blockchain inclusive financial ecosystem.

Through the partnership, AMNIS is the first payment service provider in Switzerland to offer blockchain solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises. This applies to companies that employ fewer than 250 people.

The organization added that technology would make transactions faster and more cost-effective.AMNIS will utilize Ripples interconnected network of SMEs to create a much more holistic environment for companies to utilize blockchain technology. The organization has clearly stated Ripple was the preferred choice over the SWIFT mode of capital transfer. According to the AMNIS:

Ripple has established itself as a major challenger to the current system in recent years. Ripple turns the SWIFT payment system upside down. The removal of middlemen (in the form of local correspondent banks) makes international money transfers significantly cheaper and more efficient.Ripple sees itself as a payment network and now supports almost all currencies.

AMNIS also pointed out how blockchain technology developed from Bitcoin and later moved to other cryptocurrencies. Ripple uses its On Demand Liquidity[ ODL] feature to move capital around the globe. Partner companies also use the RippleNet, a global network of interconnected partners.

The distributed ledger technology used by Ripple paved the way for organizations such as AMNIS to create a decentralized ecosystem in Switzerland. AMNIS customers will be able to send funds to Mexico, the Philippines and Thailand using RippleNet. The business has announced that users will be able to submit to more countries.

There were three main reasons why AMNIS chose Ripple, according to the official release. The first was to increase the speed of international payments, more specifically their settlement time. Transparency was also of utmost importance in the partnership. Due to the protocol created by AMNIS, the costs are known only when the payment gets initiated.

AMNIS added that Ripples technology allows them to cut costs in the transactions fees department. Sources have said that Ripples tech allows AMNIS to reduce fees in the 50 percent to 60 percent range.

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Binghamton University research highlights ecosystem problems, can it be managed? – WBNG-TV

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VESTAL (WBNG) -- Binghamton University's Nature Preserve has been the location of an interesting study focusing on wetland ecosystems.

Wetlands in particular can be susceptible to human-caused disturbances and chemical contamination too," Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies George Meindl. "What we focus on are the impacts of road salt runoff and also the impacts of invasive species," he says.

How have these changes in ecosystem chemistry impacted amphibians?

"We found that invasive species plant chemistry, or at least solutions that mimicked invasive species plant chemistry, more negatively impacted our native frogs compared to the non-native frogs. This was particularly true when we exposed frogs to both invasive plant chemistry and also road salts," said Meindl.

Though invasive species are an issue, a large portion of the problem comes from road salt. Finding alternatives to salt, like beet juice, is a start.

With human population still on the rise, road salt is likely not the only human-caused impact to ecosystems, a problem we face moving forward.

"So in all likelihood negative impacts are going to get worse before they can get better. So we need to change the ways that we're interacting with natural landscapes to limit the damage," said Meindl.

Which is why Meindl will continue his research to look for solutions in an ever-changing world.

"Climate is changing, road salts are being introduced into environments, excessive pesticides, herbicide and fertilizer use, and agricultural landscapes are impacting native communities. So increasing the complexity of studies are really important. Understanding how multiple stressers can interact to effect natural ecosystems," said Meindl.

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Binghamton University research highlights ecosystem problems, can it be managed? - WBNG-TV

Help shape the strategy for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration – Landscape News

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A worldwhere for the health and wellbeing of all life on earth and that of futuregenerations we have restored the relationship between humans and nature, byincreasing the area of healthy ecosystems, and by putting a stop to their lossand degradation. Vision andtheory of change for the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (20212030)

On 1 March 2019, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution for 2021 to 2030 to be the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, focusing ten years on massively increasing efforts to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide. (For the full background on the Decade, read here.)

But how will this happen? With the 2020s being deemed as the imperativeClimate Decade, how will restoration-focused Decade turn from a pipedreaminto an actual planet-transforming success?

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which are the organizational leads of this Decade, have, along with partners, developed a draft strategy for the Decades implementation built upon a series of consultations with governments, practitioners, civil society, youth, and private sector. The strategy, centered on three pathways to be carried out in tandem, is currently being circulated publicly for people to offer commentary and feedback until 30 April 2020. Should you wish to take part in the consultation, or should you just be curious about what such a strategy entails, here is a short digest of what it says.

Pathway I: Building a global movement

The Decade will develop a global movement ofindividuals and organizations through the following means.

Pathway II: Generating political support

Pathway III: Building technical capacity

Management arrangements

Along with implementing on-the-ground ecosystem restoration initiativesand establishing a small team focused solely on the Decade, the two leadagencies UNEP and FAO are mandated to:

The Decade will be further designed, overseen and carried out by aStrategy Group, Advisory Boards for technical guidance and Working groups onspecific themes.

Funding will be overseen by a special task force, anda Multi-Partner Trust Fund will be established within the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)to provide funding to the Decades coreteam. All Member States and other interested partners are invited to contributeto the Trust Fund. The Fund can accept contributions from non-state actors aswell, in line with United Nations Rules, but it will not accept contributionsfrom the fossil fuel industry. The Decade will work closely with existingpublic funds such as the Land Degradation Neutrality Fund and coalitions suchas Climate Action 100+.

Monitoring progress utilize existing reportingsystems (e.g. the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the United Nations Strategic Planfor Forests 20172030) as well as the newpost-2020 biodiversity framework, collating data from these systems that relateback to ecosystem restoration. A joint evaluation of the Decades progress will be undertaken in 2025and 2028 by the UNEP and FAOEvaluation Offices.

If you are a young person, learn how to take restoration action now by joining the Youth in Landscapes Initiative. To provide feedback on the draft strategy, please visit the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration website until 30 April 2020.

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Houston needs to overcome its lack of density to continue to develop as an innovation ecosystem, says expert – InnovationMap

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From the front porch of Houston, Texas, we solve some of humanity's hardest challenges. We're the ones who put humans on the Moon and rovers on Mars, go subsea in search of hydrocarbons, and are discovering a cure for cancer. We solve complex challenges, because of a characteristic seemingly embedded deep within our DNA we are all explorers of the unknown.

Today, a new challenge is rallying our attention, inspiring us to push the boundaries yet again. And, that's the hard challenge of population density. Houston is fourth in population in the country, and yet 89th in the number of people per unit of area.

Why is this an issue, one might ask? Houston, like many other cities around the world, is racing to become a hub for innovation, a critical catalyst fueling the next generation of growth and economic prosperity. And, density is a key component of innovation it brings divergent mindsets together to look at challenges from multiple perspectives and creates an environment that brings big bold ideas to life.

However, the nature of our geography has created silos that are not easily broken down and separates us by industries, communities, interests, mindsets, and access to transportation, among other things.

But, let's not underestimate our true spirit and our ability to explore the unexpected, push the boundaries and tackle the challenges the world throws at us.

If I learned anything from living here my entire life, Houston has grit, imagination, and motivation and knows what it means to be a trailblazer. Houston is the most diverse city in the United States. Our culinary landscape is constantly pushing the boundaries of creativity and imagination. Local graffiti and modern art installations are reshaping the visual identity of our community. Our sports and performing arts "rockstars" consistently deliver real-time experiential immersion.

We need to recognize and embrace how these colors of Houston connect us all regardless of our geographic silos and push innovation forward. Said another way, we have all the colors; we just need to converge and paint the canvas together.

True to our nature, some of our Houstonian friends have begun chipping away at this challenge already. Central Houston is attracting world-renowned incubators and accelerators like MassChallenge and Gener8tor and this scene alone is ever-expanding. The Cannon, The Ion, Impact Hub, Launchpad, Headquarters, and other players are creating environments that bring people together and meet the needs of an ever-evolving workforce through experiential community. We even have a dedicated publication for all things innovation Innovation Map sharing resources across our vast city and ensuring no great story is left untold.

Our rich diversity means we have access to human beings from a multitude of backgrounds, which in itself is a force to be reckoned with. By interacting with a variety of human beings, we become more empathetic, understanding, and celebratory of new ideas. This is fundamental to continuous innovation how we interact and approach challenges, engage in new experiences, and become an inspirational leader in life and work. So, break down the silos and access the diversity of thinking that's already outside the door.

At the same time, the challenge of density must be tackled not only physically but also digitally. By converging the physical and digital ecosystem through a neural network, we can intelligently connect the activity with centralized access to start-ups, corporations, nonprofits, free-lancers, incubators, accelerators, maker-spaces, academia, local influencers, and public partners. Digitally bridging all of us can make one of the largest and most spread-out cities in the U.S. feel like a small Texas town with big ideas and an ever-stronger dimension of inclusivity.

So, join the movement, strike up a conversation, grab your metaphorical spray paint and converge with all the vibrant colors of Houston as we energize the future of humanity, navigate to Mars and back safely, and annihilate the existence of cancer.

As Steve Jobs said: "The people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do." Are we ready?

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Brad Rossacci is creative director at Accenture's Innovation Hub in Houston.

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Fishing targets the ‘super-urinators’ that ecosystems need – Futurity: Research News

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Highly active individuals deemed super-urinators are key to maintaining ecosystem health, research in Bahamian mangrove estuaries finds.

The study finds that the individual gray and cubera snappers that spent the most time swimming and foraging for food also spread the highest levels of the essential nutrient nitrogen throughout the estuary in their urine.

The excretory contributions of the most active individuals nearly doubled the total amount of nitrogen that would otherwise be present in the ecosystem. That extra fertilizer means more plant growth and more food at the base of the food web.

In any population, the behavior of key individuals can have outsized impacts on their ecosystemthink Steve Jobs, says marine ecologist Jacob Allgeier, assistant professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan. Quantifying the behavior of key individuals in wild populations is an emerging frontier in ecology, with the potential to upend how we define biodiversity and our attempts to conserve it.

Allgeier is the lead author of a paper in Science Advances that reports the findings of a study that radio-tracked 33 gray snappers and 25 cuberas in a mangrove-lined estuary on Abaco Island in the Bahamas in 2006 and 2007.

A larger study will radio-track about 500 Abaco Island fish to learn more about their feeding behavior.

The big-picture goal of that research is to understand how an unlikely but renewable source of fertilizerfish excretioncan be used to stimulate fish production and improve food security for people living in tropical ecosystems.

In Science Advances, Allgeier and his colleagues report that while the most active snappers had an outsized impact on ecosystem health, they were also the most likely to be caught by anglers, who prize their bold behavior and fight.

Gray and cubera snapper support important commercial and subsistence fisheries throughout the Caribbean and are traditionally harvested by spearfishing and angling with hook and line. Spearfishing typically targets fish with large body size, while angling tends to select for bolder or more active individuals.

Allgeier and his colleagues used computer models to simulate the harvest of various types of individuals and found that the selective removal of the most active snappers reduced the nitrogen supply in the ecosystem by up to 69%.

Our results challenge the species-centric definition of biodiversity and provide evidence that the role of individuals may need to be further reconciled in how we approach conservation and the maintenance of ecosystem function, Allgeier and his coauthors write.

For the study, the researchers surgically implanted transmitters into fish body cavities, and nine receivers were scattered throughout the study site. The researchers used acoustic telemetry data and mathematical models to estimate the amount of nitrogen individual fish supplied and the extent to which they spread the nutrient across the ecosystem.

They found that the amount of nitrogen supplied by the two snapper populationsexcreted through their gills as ammoniumwas roughly equivalent to all other nitrogen sources combined. And the most active fish contributed the most nitrogen.

In the mangrove estuaries that we studied, we show that there is roughly double the amount of fertilizer in the ecosystem due to individuals that are disproportionate fertilizers, Allgeier says. We then show that fishing specifically selects for these extra-important individuals, which in turn has disproportionately negative effects on the ecosystem.

In the study of infectious diseases, individuals who demonstrate a high ability to infect othersthink Typhoid Maryare called super-spreaders. Before this concept emerged, it had long been assumed that all infected individuals had equal chances of transmitting an infection to others.

Similarly, in the management of fish and game populations, it was long assumed that individuals within populations are roughly equivalent and that the loss of any single individual has similar impacts on the ecosystem, Allgeier says. But the diversity among individuals within a single population is now a topic of growing research interest.

Allgeier refers to the overachieving fish in the Bahamian mangrove estuaries as disproportionate fertilizers. For simplicitys sake, you can think of them as super-urinators.

Over the past decade, Allgeier and his colleagues have glued together thousands of cinder blocks to create 38 artificial reefs in a shallow bay on Abaco Island in the northern Bahamas, where the research takes place.

Coauthors of the paper are from the University of Michigan, Utah State University, Eco Logical Research Inc., North Carolina State University, and the University of Washington.

Funding for the work came from the National Science Foundation. A grant from the Packard Foundation will support future research on super-urinators and their ecosystems.

Source: University of Michigan

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Pulse42: Mumbai’s Tech Ecosystem’s Break From The Hustle To Unwind – Inc42 Media

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Pulse42 was held in Estella in Mumbai on February 27 and saw over 90 attendees from the citys startup ecosystem

Among those in attendance were names such as Sanjay Mehta, 100x.VC, Clevertap cofounder Anand Jain, LogiNext founders Dhruvil Sanghvi and Manisha Raisinghani among others

The event was supported by ekincare and our sponsorsTimes Internet, AWS, Paytm, WebEngage and NetApp Excellerator

Meeting old friends, fellow founders and the investor community is always great, but its the vibe at Pulse42 that makes all the difference. Anand Jain, cofounder, Clevertap

To bring the tech startup ecosystem closer, we have made it a mission to not only provide networking platforms but also help the stakeholders relax and unwind while connecting with each other. And on February 27, at Estella in Juhu, Mumbai, the citys glittering startup ecosystem witnessed it first hand with Pulse42, the most happening tech party, where a gathering of over 90 stalwarts from the tech startup ecosystem in India came together.

Among those in attendance were names such as:

Known as the financial capital of India, Mumbai is the third-largest startup hub in India in terms of funding and startups. The city witnessed a slowdown in 2019 with the number of unique startups funded going down, as per Indian Tech Startup Funding Report Q3 2019, by Inc42 DataLabs.

But with big funding in the new year for startups such as LogiNext, InCred and more, it is perhaps a sign of things taking a turn.

With the breathtaking view of the Juhu Beach and light evening breeze, those at Pulse42 got a break from the day-to-day work and earned a well-deserved break. As they focussed on relaxing, the conversations kept flowing along with some great cocktails and sumptuous food. With such an easygoing vibe, networking became much easy even for those who were at their first Pulse42.

This is the only way we can take a break from working and meet the other people who are also in the same industry as us. We cannot attend conferences for networking because of our schedule, but events like Pulse42 condense the same experience in a few hours, said Testbook cofounder Ashutosh Kumar.

At Inc42, we have always focussed on not only covering the ecosystem in-depth but also contributing to this ecosystem in every way we can. Our events such as Pulse42, Mixer by Inc42 and more, all aim to help the enablers as well as the entrepreneurs relax and unwind and help them initiate conversations and talks which otherwise require a lot of appointments and more. This also makes it easier for the attendees to forge bonds, collaborations and partnerships that go beyond professional needs and requirements.

The event turned out to be a huge success, with the support of ekincare and our sponsorsTimes Internet, AWS, Paytm, WebEngage and NetApp Excellerator. Stay updated with more such upcoming events and initiatives by Inc42, and keep following us to know whats coming next. To check out all the fun of Pulse42 in Mumbai, click here.

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Pulse42: Mumbai's Tech Ecosystem's Break From The Hustle To Unwind - Inc42 Media

Alt Code Bengaluru is bringing together the healthcare ecosystem to solve India’s biggest challenge – healthca – YourStory

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One important topic that received attention at the 50th World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting was the growing inability of health systems to cope with the myriad of threats, outbreaks of infectious diseases and ever-rising costs. Healthcare providers are relentlessly in pursuit of ways to save costs, increase efficiency and improve patient care quality, and this growing need calls for multidisciplinary innovation.

For innovation in healthcare to be sustained, it has to be a collaborative effort which requires looking outside your internal silos for new ideas, innovations, and expertise from other players in the market. As the recent coronavirus spreads, no one system can solve the crisis alone. It is imperative that not just health tech startups, but state governments, the centre, and private players work in tandem to prevent the outbreak in the country. Collaborations like these have already demonstrated their promise in accelerating and humanising healthcare innovation.

In other words, to solve one of India's pressing issue - healthcare for all, multidisciplinary innovation in healthcare is the need of the hour and one of the first events in the country to facilitate this is Alt Code. The event will bring together entrepreneurs, inventors, policymakers, investors, government delegates, academicians and leaders of the MedTech startup ecosystem, to share their experiences, thoughts and innovations on making quality healthcare accessible to all.

Alt Code 2020 will take place on March 13, 2020, at Bengaluru Marriott Hotel Whitefield. The objective of the event is to create a collaborative ecosystem to drive innovation through which India's biggest challenge - facilitating health for all and all for health - is solved.

Alt Code, as an event, is breaking the silos across diverse fields and uniting them by promoting the convergence of ideas, academic knowledge and groundbreaking entrepreneurial efforts. The organisers hope that this will facilitate upcoming startups to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to innovation, while amplifying scalability and efficacy of their solutions.

The exclusive event will showcase a bunch of interesting keynotes and panels with the who's who across the healthcare industry including Rohit Kr. Pandey, CEO, SigTuple; Geetha Manjunath, CEO, Niramai; Barath Shankar Subramanian, Partner, Accel; Ranjith Menon, Executive Director, Chiratae Ventures; Dr. Taslimarif Saiyed, Director, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms; Prasad Kompalli, CEO, mfine; Anjana Sasidharan, Principal, Sequoia Capital; and Anoop Polavaram, Director, Aspada Investments, among others.

They will delve on topics like epidemiology, Artificial Intelligence, medicine, social work, policymaking, data science and entrepreneurship. The panels and keynotes will focus on why MedTech innovations cannot exist and evolve without hardware, the real roadblocks on the delivery of health for all, how to chalk the course of the advancement of healthcare innovation in Indias future, and more.

Don't miss out on the pitch sessions which will feature innovative early MedTech startups in the industry. Three deserving startups will be given the opportunity to showcase their innovations and collaborate with leaders in the industry. Click here to participate in the competition.

So, what are you waiting for? Hurry up, register for Alt Code 2020 for a participation fee ofRs 1,499.

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Alt Code Bengaluru is bringing together the healthcare ecosystem to solve India's biggest challenge - healthca - YourStory

Senet and T-Systems Partner to Deliver Ready-to-Use IoT Solution Bundles – IoT Business News

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Collaboration Simplifies the Deployment and Management of Intelligent Sensors and Controls for Commercial and Industrial Applications.

T-Systems currently offers several solution bundles including LoRaWAN sensors, gateways, Senet network connectivity plans, and integration with T-Systems Cloud of Things IoT platform for application management and expansion. Supporting both indoor and outdoor vertical applications, these IoT bundles provide useful data in real-time, enabling enterprises across industries to make crucial business decisions. All-inclusive monthly pricing makes it easy for customers to start small and scale fast. Bundles include:

Alex Martinez, Head of Emerging Technologies for T-Systems, says:

End to end solutions in a fragmented Internet of Things universe is what T-Systems offers to not only innovate, but add value to customers across all industries. Our ability to provide accurate and repeatable valuable data and selecting the best ecosystem partners, like Senet, delivers a win-win for our mutual end-customers.

These fully integrated solutions ensure interoperability and ease of deployment, providing greater productivity at lower cost. Flexible network deployment models, access to a rich set of cloud-based tools for application management, and world-class professional services and support allow customers to scale their deployments and implement additional IoT solutions on the same LoRaWAN network as their business needs expand.

Our partnership with T-Systems is an example of how the LoRaWAN ecosystem has rapidly matured to provide fully integrated solutions and tangible benefits to customers across markets, said Bruce Chatterley, CEO at Senet. With fewer steps to acquire, deploy, and scale end-to-end IoT solutions, were creating new opportunities for innovation by helping connect devices and data to applications and action.

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Senet and T-Systems Partner to Deliver Ready-to-Use IoT Solution Bundles - IoT Business News

Health Care Behind Bars Is Already Abysmal. Are Prison Officials Prepared for the Coronavirus? – Mother Jones

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On any given day, 2.3 million people in the United States are in prison or jail. With about 40 percent of inmates suffering from a chronic health condition, the overall health profile of incarcerated people is abysmal. Without access to consistent health care, many inmates with health conditions do not have their medical needs met, and many others develop medical problems after being incarcerated in unhygienic facilities. To complicate matters, prisons and jails are often overcrowded, making it easier for contagious illnesses to spread faster.

Add to that reality the appearance of the new coronavirus, which since its first appearance in the Wuhan region of China, has infected more than 90,000 people worldwide and killed over 3,000including nine people in the United States. We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare in the expectation that this could be bad, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the Centers for Disease Controls National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a press briefing last week. The CDC has also warned about daily disruption for the general public. But what does disruption look like for the millions of people currently in US prisons and jails, in a system already unable to cope with basic health needs?

[The coronavirus] will remind us of a central hypocrisy in our approach to health behind bars, Dr. Homer Venters, former chief medical officer of New York Citys jail system, wrote in an op-ed for The Hill. Weve built the worlds largest collection of jails and prisons, and kept the health services in these places remarkably separate from the rest of our national health systems.

Although the nature and the intensity of how the coronavirus will play out is unknown, there are several examples of how correctional institutions have handled epidemics in the past. During the 2009 swine flu pandemic, which infected about 60 million people and killed more than 12,000 in the United States alone, the California prison system saw nearly 800 cases; three deaths were reported. Across the country, correctional officials tried to minimize the spread by quarantining inmates and suspending visitation.

Though the coronavirus is different from the flu, prison and jail officials are preparing for its outbreak in much the same way. The Sonoma County, California, jail, which houses up to 1,000 people, has come up with protocols likely to be replicated throughout the corrections system. First, new inmates are screened for coronavirus before being booked in the facility. If the individual has any of the symptoms, including fever, cough, or shortness of breath, officials will ask if the person has traveled to China within two weeks of the symptoms developing or if they had close contact with anyone exposed to the coronavirus. If the answer is yes to any of these questions, the correctional officers immediately wear gloves and place a mask on the suspected patient, then place them in an isolation cell to await transfer to a hospital, where further testing is handled by medical professionals. The county has already declared a state of emergency as it deals with at least two cases of the disease. In Washington state, where all of the US deathsso far have occurred, local jail officials are following a similar procedure.

Some lessons might be learned from how the coronavirus has already affected prisons and jails in other countries. In China, government officials reported 555 coronavirus cases in five prisons across three provinces. In Iran, which has seen 2,336 cases and 77 deaths, government officials temporarily released 54,000 low-level inmates to combat the spread of the disease.

In the United States, the lack of quality health care in prisons and jails could spell trouble for incarcerated people, according toDr. Venters: Management of this pandemic will be harder and less effective for incarcerated people, their families, and staff in these institutions.

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Health Care Behind Bars Is Already Abysmal. Are Prison Officials Prepared for the Coronavirus? - Mother Jones

Panic buying of masks puts health care workers lives at risk, WHO says – The Verge

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A shortage of masks, gloves, and other protective gear is putting lives at risk from the new coronavirus and other infectious diseases warned the World Health Organization (WHO) in a statement on Tuesday. A frightened public has been buying up masks and other equipment, leaving limited supplies for health care workers who need the gear the most.

Masks can be useful for people who are sick with a respiratory virus to keep them from spreading the illness to others. They are most useful for health care workers who come face to face with disease every day.

Health experts, including those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), do not currently recommend that people who are well wear masks as protection against diseases like the new coronavirus. People have bought them anyway, in such huge amounts that the WHO is worried that the people who need them the most wont be able to get them. Supplies are dwindling. The price of surgical gowns has doubled; the price of surgical masks is now six times higher than it was at the start of the outbreak.

Without secure supply chains, the risk to healthcare workers around the world is real, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. Industry and governments must act quickly to boost supply, ease export restrictions and put measures in place to stop speculation and hoarding. We cant stop COVID-19 without protecting health workers first.

The surgeon general recently made a similar appeal over Twitter begging people to stop buying masks. He also warned that improperly wearing masks could actually increase the spread of the disease.

The WHO is asking manufacturers to increase production by 40 percent. They estimate that 89 million masks will be needed by health care workers every month, along with 76 million gloves and 1.6 million goggles.

TV manufacturer Sharp recently announced that they would start making masks in one of their Japanese factories this month, in order to deal with the growing shortage of the products. Amazon has warned sellers against price gouging items like masks. The company has also scrubbed a million products making misleading claims about curing or preventing COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

More than 90,000 cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed globally, and more than 3,000 people have died. Health officials recommend that people protect themselves from the disease by staying home when sick, covering their mouths when they sneeze, and washing their hands thoroughly and frequently.

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Panic buying of masks puts health care workers lives at risk, WHO says - The Verge

These startups are innovating the future of health care – The Hill

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One of the largest areas for startups and technology is focused on medicine and health care. But besides developing new therapies and treatments for diseases, theres also been a push to provide better care to people in everyday situations.

There are several problems too many to name here that people face when it comes to their health care. For one, most people dont know what their personal data is or how to track it. Emergency departments are perpetually overwhelmed; doctors only see their patients for an average of about 17 minutes. These are a handful of companies that are working out solutions to some of these issues and are changing the way patients can receive care.

Monitoring your health

Ready to feel like youve been transported into the future? Get your body scanned.

Companies like Higi and mPort are putting body scanning stations or booths in malls and other publicly accessible areas. Higis tagline on their website reads, Know your numbers. Own your health. In an age where our data is everywhere but not necessarily in our possession, these companies are putting our data back in our hands.

The scanners can measure your weight, body fat percentage and blood pressure. You could make it part of your regular routine, like going for a scan every time you go food shopping at your local grocery. Both companies have apps that help users keep track of their numbers. Now what you do with the data, that is up to you.

Getting urgent care

If you live in New York or New Jersey and youve got a nasty cut, you dont need to go to a hospitals emergency room to get help anymore; you can head to the nearest CityMD to get patched up instead.

Urgent care has become a separate category of service outside of hospitals. Although these clinics may not be equipped for bigger emergencies like people who suffer serious physical injuries from accidents or violence, they can ease the burden on emergency departments of hospitals by taking care of people who have the flu, minor cuts or other non-life-threatening health issues.

The first CityMD clinic opened in 2010 with the goal of making health care more inclusive by serving people in their communities where they live and work. No one should be an outsider when it comes to health care, says founder and CEO Richard Park on the website.

CityMD accepts most insurance, and unlike emergency departments, they offer aftercare and a wide range of services like pediatric care, X-rays, vaccinations and others. The average wait time is 8 minutes, clinics are open every day and no appointments are needed, according to the website. With more than 100 locations and counting, CityMD has become a regular sight in New York.

Seeing your GP

Going to see your primary care provider or general practitioner can be a lengthy ordeal. You make an appointment, arrive on time or even early and are still made to wait a long time before you can get seen. Long waits are a hallmark of our health care system, but the startup Forward doesnt think it has to be this way.

Forward is a modern, technology-assisted approach to going to see your doctor. Their mission is to deliver complete, preventive primary care by combining best-in-class doctors with advanced medical technology, says Robert Sebastian, co-founder of Forward, in an email to Changing America.

Forward clinic with body scanner on the left. Photo courtesy of Forward.

In the virtual tour video on their website, one of the doctors explains theres no waiting room because theres no waiting. You check in on an iPad and walk over to an in-house designed body scanner. In the exam room, the doctor shows an infrared scanner that helps them find the vein in your arm to draw blood. The in-house laboratory can process that blood sample in 12 minutes so the doctor and patient can go over the results on the same visit. In addition to general assessment of health and medical history, Forward health providers also go through genetic analysis and put together preventive plans with their patients.

Infrared scanner being used to find veins. Photo courtesy of Forward.

Forward charges a monthly membership fee, and this was partly because health insurance isnt working from their point of view. We started by asking, Can you build a truly great product while answering to insurance companies, rather than to the patient you intend to serve? says Sebastian.

They decided the answer was no, and their current membership fees are $149 per month. But for 30 percent of their members who are uninsured, this is a good way to get health care, says Sebastian. Members can also pay the fees using a health savings account (HSA) or flexible savings account (FSA).

Inspired by his grandfather who came to the U.S. from the Philippines to be a doctor, Sebastian says, My grandfather told me not to go into medicine. It was too hard to practice the way that he had for 50 years. Forwards strength is making technology work for the patient. Theyve automated repetitive work that inflates costs in the traditional system, Sebastian tells Changing America.

The guiding thought is, How might we make a system so good, that my grandfather would tell me to go into medicine? says Sebastian. We focus on offering proactive care, not waiting to react and treat the symptom. On maximizing our members time with their doctor and care team. On the needs of our members, not insurance.

Women-focused gynecology, health check-ups and guidance

After struggling with figuring out her health insurance and where to get care while at a job at Google, Tia CEO Carolyn Witte decided that there had to be a better way to get health care. To Witte, this means an integrated approach that assesses a persons health in a holistic way. Even with health insurance, it was too difficult to get care, especially going from one specialist to another.

Tia started as an online platform for women to get information about health topics like their menstrual cycle or anxiety. In 2019, Tia opened their first in-person clinic for women in New York. They provide gynecological services as well as overall health assessments, acupuncture and seminars. Unlike Forward, they do take insurance, although becoming a member costs $150 annually. They do waive the membership fee for those who are financially unable to cover that cost, and for International Womens Day are donating 100 memberships and hosting a free day of care on Mar. 8.

Tia clinic exam room. Photo credit: Kezi Ban @ Blonde Artists courtesy of Rockwell Group.

Walking into the bright and airy clinic, youre greeted by friendly staff who make sure each visit goes smoothly. Afterwards, the nurse practitioners and medical assistants communicate with patients through their chat function on the website or app and can send digital copies of test results through the system.

Although Witte says that they are hoping to be able to serve a membership of 4,000 women in the near future, its unclear whether this model for providing services will be able to scale up to serve even more women. Additional brick-and-mortar locations would increase costs even more and whether the clinics can be financially sustainable even if they accept most insurance plans is unknown.

Tia, while aiming to become a full care platform, cant solve every health care problem, so they are working on building bridges. That means deciding with what your expertise is and what you are really innovating on and then choosing how and where to partner, says Witte. We really think about our streams as innovating on technology and experience connected to care delivery. They empower providers to deliver better quality experience to patients, and at lower costs to boot. This allows them to aim at moving those core levers in our healthcare system that make it so expensive, adds Witte. We need to also make it actually drive better outcomes and reduce the cost of care and...it's really about changing care delivery itself.

The health care of tomorrow?

Its unlikely that any of these models will solve all health care problems, and they are not designed to do that. Each have a vision and fulfill a specific purpose for a specific audience, and perhaps thats the point. What well find out with the success or failure of these startups is whether focusing on the manner in which care is delivered can be a viable and sustainable way to provide health care for a wider range of people.

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These startups are innovating the future of health care - The Hill