THE IMPORTANCE OF BIOLOGICAL INTERACTIONS IN THE STUDY OF BIODIVERSITY Edited by Jordi López-Pujol The Importance of Biological Interactions in the Study of Biodiversity Edited by Jordi López-Pujol Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2011 InTech All chapters are Open Access articles distributed under the Creative Commons Non Commercial Share Alike Attribution 3.0 license, which permits to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work in any medium, so long as the original work is properly cited. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published articles. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Dragana Manestar Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer Jan Hyrat Image Copyright sextoacto, 2011. Used under license from Shutterstock.com First published September, 2011 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechweb.org The Importance of Biological Interactions in the Study of Biodiversity, Edited by Jordi López-Pujol p. cm. ISBN 978-953-307-751-2 free online editions of InTech Books and Journals can be found at www.intechopen.com Contents Preface IX Part 1 Interactions Between Living Organisms 1 Chapter 1 Bacterial Biodiversity in Natural Environments 3 Ricardo C. Guerrero-Ferreira and Michele K. Nishiguchi Chapter 2 Host-Plant Specialisation and Diurnal Dynamics of the Arthropod Community Within Muhlenbergia robusta (Poaceae) 15 Víctor López-Gómez and Zenón Cano-Santana Chapter 3 Global Impact of Mosquito Biodiversity, Human Vector-Borne Diseases and Environmental Change 27 Sylvie Manguin and Christophe Boëte Chapter 4 Exotic Insects in Italy: An Overview on Their Environmental Impact 51 Costanza Jucker and Daniela Lupi Chapter 5 Invasion, Evenness, and Species Diversity in Human-Dominated Ecosystems 75 Eyal Shochat and Ofer Ovadia Part 2 Interactions Between Living Organisms and Humans 89 Chapter 6 Change in Bacterial Diversity After Oil Spill in Argentina 91 Graciela Pucci, María Cecilia Tiedemann, Adrián Acuña and Oscar Pucci Chapter 7 Human Impacts on Marine Biodiversity: Macrobenthos in Bahrain, Arabian Gulf 109 Humood Naser VI Contents Chapter 8 People, Plants, and Pollinators: The Conservation of Beargrass Ecosystem Diversity in the Western United States 127 Susan Charnley and Susan Hummel Chapter 9 Sown Wildflower Strips – A Strategy to Enhance Biodiversity and Amenity in Intensively Used Agricultural Areas 155 Christine Haaland and Mats Gyllin Chapter 10 Combining Historical and Ecological Knowledge to Optimise Biodiversity Conservation in Semi-Natural Grasslands 173 Eva Gustavsson, Anna Dahlström, Marie Emanuelsson, Jörgen Wissman and Tommy Lennartsson Chapter 11 Landowners’ Participation Behavior on the Payment for Environmental Service (PES) 197 Wan-Yu Liu Chapter 12 Impact of Charcoal Production on Biodiversity in Togo (West Africa) 215 Jérémie Kokou Fontodji, Honam Atsri, Kossi Adjonou, Aboudou Raoufou Radji, Adzo Dzifa Kokutse, Yaovi Nuto and Kouami Kokou Chapter 13 Infectious Diseases, Biodiversity and Global Changes: How the Biodiversity Sciences May Help 231 Serge Morand Chapter 14 Protected Areas: Conservation Cornerstones or Paradoxes? Insights from Human-Wildlife Conflicts in Africa and Southeastern Europe 255 Brandon P. Anthony and Alina Szabo Chapter 15 Human Wildlife Conflicts in Southern Africa: Riding the Whirl Wind in Mozambique and in Zimbabwe 283 Sébastien Le Bel, Amon Murwira, Billy Mukamuri, René Czudek, Russell Taylor and Mike La Grange Chapter 16 The Cultural Weight of Nature: The Intra and Inter-Institutional Conflicts About Biodiversity and Ethnicity in Chile and Mexico 323 E. Silva Rivera, B. Contreras-Ruiz Esparza and E. Parraguez-Vergara Chapter 17 Biodiversity and the Human Factor – The Need to Overcome Humankind’s Addiction to Growth 339 Philip Lawn Chapter 18 Mobilizing Community Capitals to Support Biodiversity 355 Cornelia Butler Flora Contents VII Part 3 Interactions Between Living Organisms and Abiotic Factors 365 Chapter 19 Biodiversity on Stone Artifacts 367 Oana Adriana Cuzman, Piero Tiano, Stefano Ventura and Piero Frediani Preface The term ‘biodiversity’ was coined in the middle 1980s but became popularized in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (held in Rio de Janeiro). According to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which came into force one year and half after the Rio summit, biodiversity is defined as “the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems” (UNEP, 1992). This definition, as also occurs with many other older or more modern, clearly states that the term biodiversity comprises all the variety of life, in all its manifestations, at all its levels of organization, and including their complex interactions. The biological interactions are, thus, a central aspect of the biological diversity. For example, it has no much sense to study a single species without taking into account the rest of the species occurring in that habitat and how they interact. However, interactions should be studied in its broadest sense, i.e. considering not only the relationships between living organisms but also those between living organisms and the abiotic elements of the environment (e.g. soils, water, climate). Following an amplified definition of biodiversity (e.g. Harrison et al., 2002), the concept of interactions should also be expanded to include those which occurred in the past (which are sometimes traceable in the fossil record) and also those between any living organism and the humans. The biological interactions are extremely complex and varied by definition. Besides their beneficial effects (mainly the so-called ‘ecosystem services’, e.g. pollination, water purification, soil formation), some interactions, in contrast, can have extremely pervasive effects on biodiversity itself. For example, the interactions between biodiversity and humans often produce severe losses to the former (e.g. by habitat fragmentation or climate change). Another kind of interactions, those occurring between the native living organisms and the alien ones, are considered by many as the second most serious threat to biodiversity (after habitat fragmentation), which in turn produce serious economic losses and negative impacts on the human health. This volume contains several contributions that illustrate the state of the art of the academic research in the field of biological interactions in its widest sense. The book X Preface has been divided in three sections correponding to the three main kinds of biological interactions: interactions between living organisms (Section 1), interactions between living organisms and humans (Section 2), and interactions between living organisms and abiotic factors (Section 3). We should be aware, however, that this arrangement of chapters follows criteria of practicality, as the three kinds of interactions are often intermingled; for example, it is acknowledged that most of the interactions between native an alien invasive species have their origin in (or are enhanced by) the human activities. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Natalia Reinić and Dragana Manestar for their invaluable technical assistance in book publishing. I also thank to all the authors for their contributions. I hope that the book will be an useful tool for students, reseachers, natural resources managers or, simply, those interested in biodiversity. Jordi López-Pujol Botanic Institute of Barcelona (CSIC-ICUB) Barcelona, Spain References Harrison, I.J.; Laverty, M.F. & Sterling, E.J. (2002). What is biodiversity?, In: Life on Earth – An encyclopedia of biodiversity, ecology, and evolution, N. Eldredge (Ed.), pp. 1-30, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) (1992). Convention on biological diversity, United Nations Environment Programme, Environmental Law and Institutions Program Activity Centre, Nairobi [...]... specialisation in the use of their habitats at the community level (i.e., species that carry out all of their activities on the host plant) Descriptions of arthropod 16 The Importance of Biological Interactions in the Study of Biodiversity communities on host plants assume that all species have the same level of specialisation in the use of their habitat To address this theoretical problem, only the most... selection in an environment such as a biofilm leads to the evolution of unequal interactions Specific mutations in the genome of one species lead to adaptation to the presence of the other The resulting community proved to be more successful in stability and productivity, than the ancestral community This indicates that simple mutations due to the interactions in the biofilm generated a more intimate... (2004) it was determined that prophages are particularly abundant in the genomes of bacterial pathogens As expected, the authors confirmed that 8 The Importance of Biological Interactions in the Study of Biodiversity the presence of these prophages was in most cases responsible for encoding virulence genes and that the phenotypic characteristics that allow a strain its “uniqueness” within a bacterial consortia... role of gene transfer processes between 4 The Importance of Biological Interactions in the Study of Biodiversity various bacterial species, and whether this influences microbial biodiversity in a variety of ecological niches in natural environments Fig 1 Modified from Thomas & Nielsen (2005) This figure outlines the steps that take place during transfer of DNA from a donor to a recipient bacterium The. .. abundant taxa of the community have been studied Previous studies about the ratio of arthropods with high specialisation in the use of their habitats are difficult to find This kind of research could provide important data about the dynamics of the arthropod community on their host plant and about the possible main flows of matter and energy within arthropod-plant ecosystems The main goals of this study are... limitations in their interpretation because of the difficulty in comparing these arthropod communities from different habitats when different trapping techniques were used However, this study provides an approach to determining the level of specialisation of the arthropod community to a host plant and shows the diurnal dynamics of the whole arthropod community within a plant; both of these aspects of arthropod... example, as toxins or in feeding deterrents that kill insects or slow their rates of development (Lill & Marquis, 2001; Schowalter, 2006) The noxious effects of secondary compounds on insects are crucial to the preferences of feeding insects, and therefore, the ranges of the host plants of phytophagous insects (Bernays & Graham, 1988; Cates, 1980) Natural enemies can influence the host ranges of phytophagous... among the bacteriophages involved Trends in Microbiology, Vol 10, No 11, pp 521-529 Boyd, E F., Davis, B M., & Hochhut, B (2001) Bacteriophage-bacteriophage interactions in the evolution of pathogenic bacteria Trends in Microbiology, Vol 9, No 3, pp 137144 12 The Importance of Biological Interactions in the Study of Biodiversity Brussow, H., Canchaya, C., & Hardt, W D (2004) Phages and the evolution of. .. trapping technique on each of the treatments, if possible 5 Conclusions We conclude that the ratio of arthropod species with a high level of specialisation in the use of the M robusta host plant was very low (4.3%) Furthermore, the structure of the arthropod community (richness, abundance, and index of diversity) in the grass was constant throughout the day, although the diurnal variation in the community... have an effect on the physiological state of the bacteria, mostly by changes in pH within the matrix (Stewart & Franklin 2008) One important aspect affecting the success of a multi-species biofilm community is the ability of each member of the consortium to adapt to the presence of a second species In a two-species community (Acinetobacter sp (strain C6) and Pseudomonas putida (strain KT2440)), Hansen . THE IMPORTANCE OF BIOLOGICAL INTERACTIONS IN THE STUDY OF BIODIVERSITY Edited by Jordi López-Pujol The Importance of Biological Interactions in the Study of. research in the field of biological interactions in its widest sense. The book X Preface has been divided in three sections correponding to the three main kinds of biological interactions: interactions. abundant in the genomes of bacterial pathogens. As expected, the authors confirmed that The Importance of Biological Interactions in the Study of Biodiversity 8 the presence of these prophages