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We are providing resources for Island Research working as a Virtual Research Environment (VRE). This project was partially funded by FCT-PTDC/BIA-BIC/119255/2010 – “Biodiversity on oceanic islands: towards a unified theory” and is an initiative of the Thematic Line of cE3c - Island Ecology & Environmental Risks (http://ce3c.ciencias.ulisboa.pt/) leaded by Azorean Biodiversity Group (cE3c) (http://www.gba.uac.pt/)
Research :
Research Group:
Register in the ISLAND BIOLOGY Conference - Aeolian Islands (3-7 July in Lipari) The ISLAND BIOLOGY CONFERENCE 2023 (3rd – 7th July 2023) The(...)
Malumbres-Olarte, J., Rigal, F., Girardello, M., Cardoso, P., Crespo, L.C. , Amorim, I.R., Arnedo, M., Boieiro, M., Carvalho, J.C., Carvalho, R.,(...)
Islands contribute disproportionally to global biodiversity. Not even covering 7% of the global surface area, islands harbor around 20% of the plant(...)
The diversity of exotic species of insects, spiders and other arthropods on islands worldwide is increasing. This may contribute to aggravating the(...)
FEATURED
Funding Institution:
Science and Technology Foundation (PTDC/BIA-BIC/1013/2014)
The main objective of this proposal is the study of two ecologically important plant-animal interactions – pollination and herbivory – in pristine and invaded areas of the different islands of Madeira archipelago, aiming to: 1) identify what species play key roles in ecosystem functioning in several habitats of the different islands, 2) assess the vulnerability of threatened endemic specialists and 3) evaluate the impacts of invasive species on community structure and composition, and on native species interactions.
The new version of the the Azores Bioportal is already Online. This new version was supported by the Project ATLANTIS-MAR funded by the Azorean Government DRCT- M2.1.2/I/027/2011 - Mapping coastal and marine biodiversity of the Azores (2012-2015).
This project will be funded in the next five years (2016-2020) by the FCT Infraestructures (Research Infrastructures 2013 Call) within the project PORBIOTA.
The goal of the Azorean BioPortal (ABP) is to promote knowledge and conservation of Azorean biodiversity through the maintenance and enhancement of an integrated digital portal. This region is an important biodiversity hotspot and these data are fundamentally important to many areas of science and policy, and particularly to environmental conservation under conditions of climate change. This portal combines various biodiversity data sources and links these to a small number of international activities (e.g. GBIF and NATURDATA). The project has a single institutional partner but is spread across three research units (Azorean Biodiversity Group - cE3c; CIBIO-Azores; IMAR-DOP / MARE).
Co-Chairs: Vicky Kindemba, Paulo BorgesContact: Vicky Kindemba, vicky.kindemba@buglife.org.uk, Paulo Borges, pborges@uac.pt
Red List Authority Coordinator: David Pryce,buglife.project@shnt.org.uk
Summary:
The Mid Atlantic Islands are a geographically discrete grouping, where there is a keen interest and enthusiasm for form a group of people interested in furthering invertebrate conservation. The group would cover the following islands: Gough, Tristan, St Helena, Ascension, Cape Verdes, Canaries, Madeira, Azores, and São Tomé and Príncipe. Most of these islands have a high level of invertebrate endemism and numerous species of conservation concern. The issues facing these islands are similar: habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation, invasive species, climate change; and also limited data and lack of resources or resolve to undertake research and conservation. This also provides a manageable and realistic grouping for the coordinating and administration of a Specialist Group, and so no other islands will be included at this stage.
It is understood, that the proposed group would become the Red List Authority (RLA) for species in the remit of the group, and one of its first tasks will be to agree the appointment of a suitable RLA Coordinator in consultation with the SSC Chair. David Pryce, currently the Invertebrate Coordinator on St Helena (with the Darwin Project) and, over the last year, has been Red Listing the invertebrates of the island, is keen to take on this role.
Science and Technology Foundation (PTDC/BIABIC/0054/2014) (2015-2018)
Focusing on local scales, MACDIV intends to dissect the taxonomic, evolutionary and functional basis of spatial heterogeneity in diversity, providing opportunities to understand some of the key processes that have led to the great diversification of life in Macaronesia. Further, given that the ‘biodiversity crisis’ is nowhere more apparent and need of urgent actions on oceanic islands [5], we expect that MACDIV will provide part of the basis for the development of future conservation strategies for this unique ecosystem. In the course of this project, we will be able to pursue the following specific objectives:
1) Characterize cross-scale variations of TD, FD and PD from plots to archipelago scales.
2) Identity spatial, historical and environmental factors that may influence TD, FD and PD patterns.
3) Determine trophic differentiation between species to quantify the importance of ecological interactions within communities in driving local diversity patterns.
Science and Technology Foundation (FCT-PTDC/BIA-BIC/5558/2014)
We use the species abundance distribution (SAD) to describe species relative abundance in a community. A SAD contains
information on the number of species, the number of individuals (or other measure abundance) and how these are distributedamong species. However, because we are interested in the description of the SADs at several scales, we need to develop methods todescribe how the distributions change as function of sample size. Here, we use the moments of the distributions (hence theacronym MOMENTOS); the first moment is the average and the second relates to the variance. Although the research proposed inthis project is original, it builds on theoretical and empirical research already published [3], thus its methods have already beentested and stand on firm ground. It is clear from our previous work, however, that much remains to be done, and it is the objectiveof this project to fill in those gaps.
We organize this project into three (scientific) tasks, each centred on a question:1 - Which patterns do the SAD moments exhibit as a function of sample size and how can they be used to reconstruct SAD at largescales?2 - What is the role of dispersal ability in the scaling properties of the SADs?3 - What is the relationship between the scaling of functional diversity metrics with sample size and that of SADs?
