Bat boxes in urban non-native forests: a popular practice that should be reconsidered

Impact mitigation practices are currently one of the hottest topics in conservation and regarded as priorities worldwide. Forest bat populations are known to provide important ecosystem services such as pest control and bat boxes have become one of the most popular management options for counteracting the loss of roosts. However, bat boxes tend to be employed in non-native forests near highly humanized areas where human disturbance is higher. The aim of this study was to evaluate how the surrounding landscape composition affects bat box occupancy in urban non-native forests along the Mediterranean corridor in the Northeastern Iberian Peninsula. Two hundred wooden bat boxes were monitored in young non-native forests in the period 2004–2012. The influence of land cover on occupancy rate of bat boxes was analysed at the landscape level in a 5 km buffer around bat-box stations. In total, 1659 inspections were carried out, in which a 15 % occupancy rate was detected. Bat boxes hosted three different species (Pipistrellus pygmaeus, Pipistrellus kuhlii and Nyctalus leisleri). More than 70 % of the occupancy can be explained by habitat and spatial composition. The presence of urban areas around bat boxes tends to have a negative impact on bat occupation rates; by contrast, forest coverage has a positive effect, especially for the tree-dwelling bats. These patterns could be associated with the large number of available roosts in buildings, microhabitat or phylopatry. Thus, to increase success, we suggest that landscape composition should be considered when using bat boxes for conservation.     

Influence of urbanization on the occurrence and activity of aerial insectivorous bats

Activity and species-specific responses of insectivorous bats in different urban-forest conditions provides a general perspective on the adaptability and vulnerability of bat species towards urbanization intensity. Here we evaluated species richness and activity patterns of aerial insectivorous bats across an urbanized landscape in the highlands of Chiapas, in Mexico. Acoustic monitoring of echolocation calls was conducted for 27 nights over a period of four months. Species richness and relative activity of insectivorous bats were estimated in a landscape with different conditions of urbanization intensity: urban areas, non-urban and forest areas. We identified a total of 14 bat species and three phonotypes. Bat species richness and relative activity was similar (X² = 0.568, gl = 2, p > 0.05), but species composition differed among conditions. We observed a significant higher occurrence of Bauerus dubiaquercus, Eptesicus brasiliensis and Myotis californicus in forest sites. Urban sites presented higher occurrence of Molossus rufus and phonotype Molossidae 2, while non-urban sites presented a higher occurrence of Eptesicus furinalis and phonotype Molossidae 2. We were able to identify bat species according to their relative activity in relation todifferent landscape conditions. Species of the Molossidae family presented the highest activity in urban sites, which was positively affected by the number of streetlights, while species of the Vespertilionidae presented the highest activity in forest sites, which was positively related totree density. While urbanization tends to diminish native biodiversity and alter faunal communities, our results show a similar richness and relative activity of aerial insectivorous bats along the urban ecosystem. The effect of urbanization intensity becomes more apparent in species-specific bat activity; the response of species towards particular habitat conditions depends on local habitat quality and characteristics (i.e., presence of streetlights, vegetation cover and tree density).     

Life pattern of urban trees: A growth-modelling approach

Urban afforestation improves life quality in urban centers providing social and environmental benefits. Understanding growth of urban trees exposed to air pollution will support planning, managing and expanding urban areas. This approach intends to determine growth patterns of urban trees to support future urban planning. Non-destructive samples were collected from trees of Araucaria angustifolia (Bertol.) Kuntze in Araucaria city, Parana State, Brazil. Growth rings were related to pollutant concentrations and meteorological series. Growth reduction was observed except in the border areas of the city. Trees established during or after the period of industrialization incentives were most affected by air pollution, indicating that immature plants are more vulnerable. Sulphur dioxide and nitric oxide significantly affected growth of smaller trees. Those greater than 60 cm dbh did not demonstrate significant correlation with any identified pollutant. As the trees established before accentuated urbanization were less affected by air pollution, it is reinforced the importance of preserving remaining urban trees. We suggest that planning urban afforestation should precede industries placing. When urban planning is impossible, new planted trees should not be expected to grow as in free pollution areas, but they will still present satisfactory diameter increment, contributing to improve local urban environment.     

Usability and Feasibility Study of a Remote Cognitive Behavioral Therapy System with Long-Term Unemployed Women

We present the results of the use of a cognitive behavioral therapeutic intervention tool to improve the mental, physical, and social health of a group of long-term unemployed women in Spain. Method: We sent automated text messages (SMS) to the mobile phones of long-term unemployed women selected at random from public social services. During a 28-day intervention period, women received four daily automated text messages on her mobile phone on a predetermined hourly schedule. We measured depression symptoms at the start and end of the intervention and we analyzed qualitative data to determine the acceptability of a remote SMS program. Results: Depression symptoms using the Personal Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), went from an average of 13.8 at baseline to 4.9 at the end of 28 days (p?=?0.89). One hundred percent of the women reported that they liked receiving the text messages and most found them helpful.     

Evaluation from a Gender+ Perspective as a Key Element for (Re)gendering the Policymaking Process

ABSTRACT

Feminist scholars have challenged the neutrality of policymaking processes and the outputs resulting from these processes. However, some elements of policymaking have not been studied as well as others. In this article I explore the concept of evaluation from a gender+ perspective as an essential step for a complete gender mainstreaming strategy, which can help to identify gender issues that should be integrated into the content of evaluated policies and to ensure gender does not get lost in the policymaking process. This exploration is carried out by relying on feminist policy and evaluation studies.     

Fertility patterns in the Roma population of Spain

The Spanish Roma population have co-existed with the broader population of Spain, under the same laws and regulations for more than 500 years, but they exhibit very different fertility patterns. The aim of this paper is to determine whether there are factors other than income or education that can explain the larger number of children in Spanish Roma families. Our analysis reveals that the existence of a family business, which is highly labor-demanding, appears to be associated with parental decisions concerning the number of children. Since parental authority, in Roma families, holds sway over children even after their own marriage, the future labor contributions of children are particularly beneficial to the family business.     

Adaptive multiple importance sampling for Gaussian processes

In applications of Gaussian processes (GPs) where quantification of uncertainty is a strict requirement, it is necessary to accurately characterize the posterior distribution over Gaussian process covariance parameters. This is normally done by means of standard Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, which require repeated expensive calculations involving the marginal likelihood. Motivated by the desire to avoid the inefficiencies of MCMC algorithms rejecting a considerable amount of expensive proposals, this paper develops an alternative inference framework based on adaptive multiple importance sampling (AMIS). In particular, this paper studies the application of AMIS for GPs in the case of a Gaussian likelihood, and proposes a novel pseudo-marginal-based AMIS algorithm for non-Gaussian likelihoods, where the marginal likelihood is unbiasedly estimated. The results suggest that the proposed framework outperforms MCMC-based inference of covariance parameters in a wide range of scenarios.     

Copulas related to piecewise monotone functions of the interval and associated processes

In this work, we derive the copulas related to vectors obtained from the so-called chaotic stochastic processes. These are defined by the iteration of certain piecewise monotone functions of the interval [0, 1] to some initial random variable. We study some of its properties and present some examples. Since often these types of copulas do not have closed formulas, we provide a general approximation method which converges uniformly to the true copula. Our results cover a wide class of processes, including the so-called Manneville–Pomeau processes. The general theory is applied to the parametric estimation in certain chaotic processes. A Monte Carlo simulation study is also presented.     

Multivariate log-Birnbaum–Saunders regression models

In this paper, we present a multivariate version of the skewed log-Birnbaum–Saunders regression model. This new family of distributions holds good properties such as marginal variables following univariate skewed log-Birnbaum–Saunders distributions, besides presenting the usual log-Birnbaum–Saunders distribution as a particular case. Furthermore, the model parameters are estimated through maximum-likelihood methods, a closed-form expression for the Fisher’s information matrix is presented, and testing hypothesis for model parameters is performed. Two real datasets are analyzed and results are discussed.     

Fourier–type tests involving martingale difference processes

We develop testing procedures which detect if the observed time series is a martingale difference sequence. Furthermore, tests are developed that detect change–points in the conditional expectation of the series given its past. The test statistics are formulated following the approach of Fourier–type conditional expectations first proposed by Bierens (1982 Bierens, H. J. (1982). Consistent model speci?cation tests. J. Econometr. 20:105–134.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and have the advantage of computational simplicity. The limit behavior of the test statistics is investigated under the null hypothesis as well as under alternatives. Since the asymptotic null distribution contains unknown parameters, a bootstrap procedure is proposed in order to actually perform the test. The performance of the bootstrap version of the test is compared in finite samples with other methods for the same problem. A real–data application is also included.