Lorises (family Lorisidae) are primates of the suborder Strepsirrhini. They belong to the infraorder Lorisiformes, together with their sister group, the Galagidae – galagos from sub-Saharan Africa. The systematics of the family Lorisidae have been long debated. Currently two subfamilies are recognised: Perodicticinae, including the two African genera Arctocebus (angwantibos) and Perodicticus (pottos), and Lorisinae, including the two Asian genera Loris (slender lorises) and Nycticebus (slow lorises) (Mittermeier et al., 2013; Rasmussen and Nekaris, 1998; Rowe and Myers, 2016) (1971) based on a series of craniodental features, and, more recently, supported by a cladistic analysis by Rasmussen and Nekaris (1998). Simpson (1967), however, identified several similarities between the two robust forms, Nycticebus and Perodicticus, and the two small-bodied, slender forms, Loris and Arctocebus. A cladistic analysis on craniodental data by Schwartz and Tattersall (1985) supported these two reciprocal monophyletic clades, but other morphological studies failed to identify a clade including both Perodicticus and Nycticebus (Masters and Brothers, 2002). To further complicate the taxonomy of this primate group, karyological studies conducted in the 1970s identified two alternative groups based on the number of chromosomes: Perodicticus and Loris share a diploid number of 2n = 62, while Arctocebus and Nycticebus exhibit a diploid number of 2n = 52 (although some populations of Nycticebus have 2n = 50) (de Boer, 1973; Masters et al., 2005).
Sixteen patients under the age of 13 with Crohn's disease have presented to a large paediatric centre in the past 18 years. The mean age for diagnosis was 9 years and the time from onset of symptoms to diagnosis was 1 year 4 months. The pattern and course of the disease was extremely varied with growth failure as a prominent feature. A wide range of medical treatment was used and 9 patients required surgery either as an emergency or electively at an average of 3 years after onset of symptoms. After a mean duration of follow-up of 4 years, 2 patients had died, 3 were chronically unwell, 9 had controlled symptoms but only 2 were symptom free.
Over a lifetime of commitment to conservation, Eleanor Jane Sterling tirelessly dedicated her time, expertise, and brilliant mind to sustaining biodiversity and people's relationships with nature. Eleanor's work transcended disciplines and had a profound impact on biological and social sciences, field research, and community engagement and collaboration around the globe, with direct application to conservation action. She pioneered new ways of achieving just, equitable, and effective conservation, emphasizing the need to place Indigenous knowledge and cultural norms, traditions, and customs at the heart of conservation practice. Her passion for inclusive communication, education, and mentoring and her catalyzing role in collaborations among researchers, practitioners, and community members across the world have been instrumental in bridging ways of knowing. Her pioneering work on advancing biocultural approaches to biodiversity conservation, placing cultural concerns at the forefront of engagement with local actors, in particular in British Columbia, Hawaiˈi, and Solomon Islands, led to influential publications on well-being, the importance of connections between people and place, and how to integrate this new understanding into environmental policy tools and metrics, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Her outstanding efforts were recognized through her numerous awards and prestigious appointments, including the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) Distinguished Service Award (2013), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy inaugural Meritorious Research Award (2016), and most recently, the IUCN Fred M. Packard International Parks Merit Award (2023). Ever modest, Eleanor often preferred to highlight the contributions of her collaborators and colleagues rather than the success of her own endeavors. Active on the SCB board for many years, Eleanor placed a high priority on advancing more inclusive, equitable, and diverse conservation workplaces, professional societies, and networks. She was a founding member of the Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity (EID) Committee at SCB, and the committee itself was formed in direct response to activities she convened at SCB conferences and a paper she published with colleagues in this journal (Foster et al., 2014). Eleanor facilitated key initiatives at the highest levels of SCB based on high-impact and data-driven evaluation and training to inform the society's decisions and approaches related to diversity, equity, inclusivity, and belonging. The new governance structure and Vision 2026 of SCB reflect many of the tenets that Eleanor advocated tirelessly, including creating more localized, diverse, equitable, and distributed leadership and decision-making structures. Through these efforts, and throughout her life, Eleanor worked to better recognize her own privilege and leverage it to advocate for change and center those with less power in the spaces where change is made. Eleanor launched her career at Yale University, in a joint doctoral program between the Department of Anthropology and the School of the Environment. Her doctoral research focused on the ecology and behavior of the aye-aye, a reclusive nocturnal lemur that was once thought to be extinct. This research entailed following aye-ayes through the rainforest at night with a team of Malagasy research assistants on Nosy Mangabe, a small, uninhabited island in the Bay of Antongil. She went on to study the distribution patterns of biodiversity in tropical regions, leading behavioral and ecological studies of primates, whales, and sea turtles and of many other species in many different landscapes. She coauthored the monograph Vietnam: A Natural History, the first comprehensive natural history of Vietnam, and contributed to research on the ecosystem engineering of Galapagos tortoises. For more than 20 years, Eleanor was a generous and visionary leader at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), guiding and growing the conservation programs of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC). She became well known as a science communicator and made powerful use of the museum's platform for public outreach through exhibits and events. Eleanor curated landmark traveling exhibits that advanced public understanding of the environment, including Water H20 = Life (November 2007 to May 2008), Our Global Kitchen (November 2012 to August 2013), and Yellowstone to Yukon (July 2006 to March 2007). She also spearheaded an influential, annual conservation symposium for over a decade and the Living with Nature series, a set of public events and freely available materials relating to everyday actions that citizens can take to reduce their impact on the environment. In 2022, Eleanor and her husband, Kevin Frey, moved to the island of Oahu, where Eleanor was the director of the University of Hawaiˈi at Mānoa Hawaiˈi Institute of Marine Biology. She was only in the position for a year, but her contributions to sustainable funding and strategic planning were instrumental to the long-term success of the institute, centering on place-based research and building relationships with the local community. Through affiliations with higher education institutions in New York, Hawaiˈi, and beyond, Eleanor contributed to the training and mentoring of (quite literally) thousands of emerging conservationists across the United States through direct supervision as a thesis sponsor, committee member, or professor and through the establishment of the Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners (NCEP). NCEP works to make conservation training and education more effective and accessible by developing teaching and learning materials and professional development programs. It has reached close to 5000 educators and practitioners in over 20 countries, increasing conservation capacity worldwide. Eleanor challenged our discipline to grapple with the complexity of conservation science as one that was prefaced on unacknowledged histories, subject to ongoing identity-based biases and riddled with unintended consequences. She advocated for a bolder transformative vision for the study and practice of conservation. She continued to recast her recommendations to create meaningful change as she deepened her appreciation of the ways systemic and structural forces affect conservation and broader society. Eleanor will be deeply missed by her colleagues and friends in conservation. Her extraordinary and creative mind, tireless and visionary efforts to broker collaboration and catalyze action, and advancement of equity and inclusion will continue to inspire us, always. Photo by Michael Appleton.
Wildlife trade represents a major threat to endangered-species populations, especially in Southeast Asia, where trade continues at high levels despite increased efforts to control illegal activities. To identify management strategies that better mitigate the threat of this trade, research must address knowledge gaps about the complexity of established trade networks. This requires a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach that integrates biological, anthropological, socioeconomic, and other kinds of data and involves multiple stakeholders across sectors. We present here an interdisciplinary research framework for developing such an approach. Our integrative framework, based on the social–ecological systems framework by Ostrom, can be used to explore and untangle complex wildlife trade dynamics across scales and test hypotheses derived from different disciplines to provide robust recommendations for trade management. We also discuss the need for developing databases for trade-targeted species and outline steps to build and strengthen technical and interdisciplinary capacity to support the integrative framework.
Abstract Under the threat of ongoing and projected climate change, communities in the Pacific Islands face challenges of adapting culture and lifestyle to accommodate a changing landscape. Few models can effectively predict how biocultural livelihoods might be impacted. Here, we examine how environmental and anthropogenic factors influence an ecological niche model ( ENM ) for the realized niche of cultivated taro ( Colocasia esculenta ) in Hawaii. We created and tuned two sets of ENM s: one using only environmental variables, and one using both environmental and cultural characteristics of Hawaii. These models were projected under two different Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) Representative Concentration Pathways ( RCP s) for 2070. Models were selected and evaluated using average omission rate and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve ( AUC ). We compared optimal model predictions by comparing the percentage of taro plots predicted present and measured ENM overlap using Schoener's D statistic. The model including only environmental variables consisted of 19 Worldclim bioclimatic variables, in addition to slope, altitude, distance to perennial streams, soil evaporation, and soil moisture. The optimal model with environmental variables plus anthropogenic features also included a road density variable (which we assumed as a proxy for urbanization) and a variable indicating agricultural lands of importance to the state of Hawaii. The model including anthropogenic features performed better than the environment‐only model based on omission rate, AUC , and review of spatial projections. The two models also differed in spatial projections for taro under anticipated future climate change. Our results demonstrate how ENM s including anthropogenic features can predict which areas might be best suited to plant cultivated species in the future, and how these areas could change under various climate projections. These predictions might inform biocultural conservation priorities and initiatives. In addition, we discuss the incongruences that arise when traditional ENM theory is applied to species whose distribution has been significantly impacted by human intervention, particularly at a fine scale relevant to biocultural conservation initiatives.
Models that predict distributions of species by combining known occurrence records with digital layers of environmental variables have much potential for application in conservation. Through using this module, teachers will enable students to develop species distribution models, to apply the models across a series of analyses, and to interpret predictions accurately. In addition to its original components, this module features an updated and condensed synthesis document ("A Brief Introduction to Species Distribution Modeling for Conservation Educators and Practitioners," which provides theoretical and practical guidance for the expanding field of species distribution modeling. The synthesis is supplemented by a new exercise where learners create and optimize species distribution models using Wallace, an R-based GUI (Graphical User Interface) application for ecological modeling that currently focuses on building, evaluating, and visualizing models of species niches and distributions. Additionally, there are four new PowerPoint presentations on species distribution models (the history and theory, data and algorithms, and evaluating SDMs), as well as a presentation on how to use Wallace. The original Synthesis, "Species' Distribution Modeling for Conservation Educators and Practitioners," introduces learners to the modeling approach, outlines key concepts and terminology, and describes questions that may be addressed using the approach. A theoretical framework that is fundamental to ensuring that students understand the uses and limitations of the models is then described. Additionally, it details the main steps in building and testing a distribution model, and describes three case studies that illustrate applications of the models. This module is targeted at a level suitable for teaching graduate students and conservation professionals.
