Science Enabled by Specimen Data
Sungur, S. 2024. Species distribution models of Türkiye’s endemic genus: Seminemacheilus Banarescu & Nalbant, 1995 (Cypriniformes: Nemacheilidae). Oceanological and Hydrobiological Studies 53: 177–185. https://doi.org/10.26881/oahs-2024.2.08
Climate change is having a major impact on species distribution and habitat loss, especially for species with restricted ranges. The genus Seminemacheilus is endemic to Türkiye and includes six species. This study investigated the current distribution of the genus Seminemacheilus and its possible distribution in 2050 and 2070 using the Wallace platform, a Maxent modeling method. Simulations of future projections indicated that bioclimatically suitable habitats of Seminemacheilus spp. will be limited in 2050 and nearly extinct in 2070. The model is primarily affected by temperature and precipitation, which are directly associated with the phenomenon of global warming. It has been established that conservation strategies must be developed to protect the species of the genus and avoid habitat deterioration.
Sánchez, C. A., H. Li, K. L. Phelps, C. Zambrana-Torrelio, L.-F. Wang, P. Zhou, Z.-L. Shi, et al. 2022. A strategy to assess spillover risk of bat SARS-related coronaviruses in Southeast Asia. Nature Communications 13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31860-w
Emerging diseases caused by coronaviruses of likely bat origin (e.g., SARS, MERS, SADS, COVID-19) have disrupted global health and economies for two decades. Evidence suggests that some bat SARS-related coronaviruses (SARSr-CoVs) could infect people directly, and that their spillover is more frequent than previously recognized. Each zoonotic spillover of a novel virus represents an opportunity for evolutionary adaptation and further spread; therefore, quantifying the extent of this spillover may help target prevention programs. We derive current range distributions for known bat SARSr-CoV hosts and quantify their overlap with human populations. We then use probabilistic risk assessment and data on human-bat contact, human viral seroprevalence, and antibody duration to estimate that a median of 66,280 people (95% CI: 65,351–67,131) are infected with SARSr-CoVs annually in Southeast Asia. These data on the geography and scale of spillover can be used to target surveillance and prevention programs for potential future bat-CoV emergence. Coronaviruses may spill over from bats to humans. This study uses epidemiological data, species distribution models, and probabilistic risk assessment to map overlap among people and SARSr-CoV bat hosts and estimate how many people are infected with bat-origin SARSr-CoVs in Southeast Asia annually.
McGowan, N. E., N. Roche, T. Aughney, J. Flanagan, P. Nolan, F. Marnell, and N. Reid. 2021. Testing consistency of modelled predictions of the impact of climate change on bats. Climate Change Ecology 2: 100011. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecochg.2021.100011
Species Distribution Models (SDMs) are a cornerstone of climate change conservation research but temporal extrapolations into future climate scenarios cannot be verified until later this century. One way of assessing the robustness of projections is to compare their consistency between different mod…
Cooper, N., A. L. Bond, J. L. Davis, R. Portela Miguez, L. Tomsett, and K. M. Helgen. 2019. Sex biases in bird and mammal natural history collections. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 286: 20192025. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.2025
Natural history specimens are widely used across ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation. Although biological sex may influence all of these areas, it is often overlooked in large-scale studies using museum specimens. If collections are biased towards one sex, studies may not be representativ…
Uludag, A., N. Aksoy, A. Yazlık, Z. F. Arslan, E. Yazmış, I. Uremis, T. A. Cossu, et al. 2017. Alien flora of Turkey: checklist, taxonomic composition and ecological attributes. NeoBiota 35: 61–85. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.35.12460
The paper provides an updated checklist of the alien flora of Turkey with information on its structure. The alien flora of Turkey comprises 340 taxa, among which there are 321 angiosperms, 17 gymnosperms and two ferns. Of the total number of taxa, 228 (68%) are naturalized and 112 (32%) are casual. …