Search

Statice maurocordatae Schweinf. & Volk. was published from "Burka" region near the "Dagatto" river in eastern Ethiopia on the basis of a now destroyed collection by Ghika-Comanesti in B (Schweinfurth & Volkens 1897). The combination Limonium maurocordatae (Schweinf. & Volk.) Cufod. was published by Cufodontis (1969), and this name has been used since then, for example by Lebrun & Stork (1997). Engler (1902), who had access to the type, cited Riva 979 from "Ueb Karanle" and Riva 1465 from

We studied foraging habitat use of Wood Storks (Mycteria americana) from three coastal colonies using United States Fish and Wildlife Service National Wetlands Inventory data within a geographic information system (GIS). Observers followed storks from breeding colonies to foraging sites in a fixed-winged aircraft. The main objectives of the study were to estimate the foraging range of each Wood Stork colony, determine what wetland types were used in relation to their availability and spatial distribution, and determine how foraging habitat use was related to tidal stage. Storks foraged in tidal creeks during lower tide levels when prey were concentrated in shallower water, and foraged more in palustrine (freshwater) wetlands when tide levels were high. Predictability of foraging habitat use based on habitat distribution varied among colonies and depended on how wetland types were aggregated. Foraging locations were spatially clustered, in some cases by habitat type (estuarine vs. palustrine). These spatial clusterings may be explained by the proximity of a foraging location to the colony and by the habitat types around the colony. Storks also flew longer distances to forage in palustrine sites than in estuarine sites. Received 29 July 1997, accepted 1 January 1998.

Foreword Preface Acknowledgements Executive summary 1. Introduction V. H. Heywood and I. Baste 2. Characterization of biodiversity F. A. Bisby 3. Magnitude and distribution of biodiversity D. L. Hawkesworth and M. T. Kalin-Arroyo 4. Generation, maintenance and loss of biodiversity R. Barbault and S. D. Sastrapradja 5. Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: basic principles H. A. Mooney, J. Lubchenco, R. Dirzo and O. E. Sala 6. Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: ecosystem analyses H. A. Mooney, J. Lubchenco, R. Dirzo and O. E. Sala 7. Inventorying and monitoring of biodiversity N. E. Stork and M. J. Samways 8. The resource base for biodiversity assessments D. L. Hawkesworth 9. Data and information management and communication S. Olivieri, J. Harrison and J. R. Busby 10. Biotechnology B. Barlow and G. T. Tzotzos 11. Human influences on biodiversity J. A. McNeely, M Gadgil, C Leveque, C Padoch and K Redford 12. Economic values of biodiversity C. Perrings 13. Measures for conservation of biodiversity and sustainable use of its components K. Miller, M. H. Allegretti, N. Johnson and B. Jonsson Annex 1. Organization of the Global Biodiversity Assessment Annex 2. Institutions and staff involved in the GBA project Annex 3. Venues, dates and participants in GBA meetings and workshops Annex 4. Contributors to the GBA Annex 5. List of peer reviewers of the GBA Annex 6. Glossary Annex 7. List of acronyms.

Museums and herbaria in industrialized countries hold a huge amount of data in the form of labels associated with specimens collected in developing countries. These data represent a significant part of the existing information on biodiversity available for most developing countries. In this paper we first discuss the usefulness of the label information, providing some examples from Mexico. Acquiring and updating the information requires international cooperation, including the agreement of common policies for ownership and use of the data. Beneficiaries of such efforts will be not only the countries that assemble the databases from foreign museums, but the international scientific ommunity as well, due to the increased scientific value that large databases coupled with modern computer technologies provide. Surveying the biological diversity of a nation involves the inventorying, cataloging, and mapping of ecosystems, species, populations, and genes. It may also include research on the dynamic aspects of population biology, community and ecosystems ecology, and human uses of the different components of biodiversity. The task of biological surveying is among the oldest that biologists have faced (Badiano, 1552; Hernandez, 1790). However, the increasing rate of ecosystem destruction with its associated species extinction and genetic erosion (McNeely et al., 1990; Wilson, 1992; Ehrlich, 1995; Whitmore & Sayer, 1992), and the realization that perhaps 90% of the species on the planet remain to be named, not to mention mapped or understood (May, 1990; Groombridge, 1992; Stork, 1988), have added urgency to the problem. To address this urgency, new methods of documenting biodiversity are currently being developed-such as Rapid Assessment Programs (RAPs) (Conservation International, 1991, 1992, 1993a-c), the division of labor and information management methods of Costa Rica's Instituto Nacional deBiodiversidad (INBio) (Janzen et al., 1993), All Taxa Biotic Inventories (Janzen, 1993), new sampling methods including the so-called BioRaps (Margules & Austin, 1995), where extrapolations of distributions are obtained prior to the sampling (Margules & Redhead, 1995), and advanced methods using sensors and pattern recognition software. The reasons different societies and cultures may have for cataloging biodiversity run the spectrum from the strictly utilitarian to the philosophical and religious (Norton, 1987; Wilson, 1992). In countries like Mexico, which has a large, diverse rural population (Sarukhain et al., 1996), utilitarian reasons are very important. Indeed, in Mexico more than 3000 species are used as medicinal plants (Argueta et al., 1994), many other species have industrial applications (Sarukhain & Dirzo, 1992), such as jojoba for high-grade oil, and there are hundreds of varieties of corn, beans, chile, and other species that are used for food. Still, non-utilitarian reasons for preserving biological diversity are expressed very forcefully by different segments of the public, such as outcries for protecting the monarch butterfly [Secretarfa de Desarrollo Social (SEDESOL), 1993], waterfowl [Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), 1995], marine mammals (Salinas & Ladron de Guevara, 1993), and other conspicuous species. A good example in plants is the recently discovered Lacandonia schismatica (Martifnez & Ramos, 1989), which despite being apparently useless and inconspicuous has been protected by the Chole Indian community of San Javier, Chiapas, at the cost of not clearing the remaining patch'We thank Peter Raven and the organizers of the Symposium for the invitation to participate. Many ideas presented here have been discussed extensively with Alejandro Pelaez, whose involvement we gratefully acknowledge. We also thank Mary Carmen Navarro and Rafael Caballero for the GIS work and species accumulation curves analyses, and Lupita Bermejo for helping with the references. Exequiel Ezcurra developed the algorithms for spatial analysis of collecting points. We are grateful to Amy Scheuler McPherson for very detailed and kind editorial work. 2 Comisi6n Nacional Para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO) Ferndndez Leal 43, Coyoacdn, Mexico D.F. 04020, Mexico. 3 Centro de Ecologfa, UNAM. Apdo. Postal 70-275, Mexico 04510, Mexico. 4 Museo de Zoologfa "Alfonso L. Herrera," Fac. Ciencias, UNAM. Apdo. Postal 70-399, Mexico D.F. 04510, Mexico. ANN. MISSOURI BOT. GARD. 83: 562-573. 1996. Volume 83, Number 4 Sober6n et al. 563 1996 International View

Estimates of wood stork (Mycteria americana) nests from fixed-wing aircraft in Florida colonies were calibrated using ground counts to evaluate bias and uncertainty. Inferences were based on linear regressions of log-transformed aerial estimates on log-transformed ground counts. Canopy cover at stork colonies had no effect (P = 0.737) on the relationship between aerial estimates and ground counts. Whereas no difference between ground counts and the expected value of aerial estimates was detected for colonies with a low proportion of other white-plumaged nesting birds (P = 0.241), aerial estimates underestimated (P 109 nests) stork colonies containing a high proportion of other white-plumaged nesting birds. Variability of aerial estimates was large. An approximate 95% confidence interval for the 1993 statewide nesting population, based on the statewide aerial survey, was 3,807-12,653 nests. Recommendations for improving future aerial surveys of colonial waterbirds include incorporating ground counts at selected colonies, training observers in presurvey flights, and replicating counts for each colony.

The stork family (Ciconiidae) includes 17-19 species, depending upon which classification is followed. They are widely distributed, mainly in the Old World Tropics. Being large, conspicuous, and easily observed, storks are well known birds throughout their range. Several populations are threatened or en- dangered. The family has three distinct subdivisions or tribes. The wood stork/openbill group contains six medium-sized members that have generalized courtship but specialized feeding behavior. The five to seven species of "typical" storks are all somewhat similar, with mainly black-and-white plumage and straight bills. The "giant" storks comprise six species with impressive stature and massive bills. This account will illustrate and briefly describe the various species, based on the author's eleven-year field study of the group on a worldwide basis.

Patterns of co-occurrence of 11 species of nesting colonial Ciconiiformes in estuarine areas of the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida were examined using Reciprocal Averaging (RA) and Detrended Correspondence Analyses (DCA). The first RA ordination axis categorized the species into two groups: species of large birds that often nest in the tops of large trees, and species of smaller birds that usually nest lower down in trees, bushes, or on the ground. The Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) showed the largest positive ordination score on this axis, followed by the Wood Stork (Mycteria americana) and the Great Egret (Casmerodius albus). The other 8 species were clumped on the first ordination axis and showed little separation. The second RA axis showed an ordering of relative species abundances along an apparent north-south gradient. There were no consistent similarities of ordination scores of any species pairs or groups on all the major axes, suggesting that no consistent similarities in relative abundances of 2or 3-species "assemblages" were found throughout the entire Atlantic Coastal Plain. Received 8 March 1988, accepted 28 December 1988.

I should begin with the Land of Lakes, the place where Thomas lived. For a long time this part of Europe was covered with glaciers, and the landscape has much of the severity of the north. The soil is sandy and rocky and suitable only for raising potatoes, rye, oats, and flax. This explains why such care was taken not to spoil the forests, which helped to soften the climate and offered protection against the Baltic winds. The forests are predominantly of pine and spruce, though birch, oak, and hornbeam are also in abundance, whereas the beech is something completely foreign, the border of its domain running farther to the south. Here you can wander for long hours without tiring of the scenery, for, like human cities, the tree communities have their own distinct peculiarities, form islands, zones, archipelagoes, and are set off from one another by a sandy rut, a forester's cottage, or by an old wood-distillery with dilapidated furnaces overgrown with weeds. From a hilltop, at any given moment, you can catch a view of a blue expanse of lake with a white, barely perceptible patch of grebe and a string of ducks threading through the reeds. The marshlands abound in every species of waterfowl, and in spring the grayish sky is filled with the persistent whirring of snipe a whew-whew-whew sound created by the wind passing through their feathery rudders as they perform their monotonous acrobatics signifying love. The faint whir of the snipe, the babble of grouse so much like a bubbling somewhere on the horizon and the croaking of myriad frogs in the meadows (the number of which will determine how many storks nest on the rooftops of cottages and barns) : These are sounds signaling that time of year when a sudden thaw gives way to the blossoming of cowslips and daphne tiny pink and lilac blossoms on bushes as yet without leaves. The two seasons most appropriate to this land are spring and autumn a long and sunny autumn, heavy with the smell of rainsoaked flax, the clatter of swingles, and the sounds of distant echoes. That's when the geese show signs of restlessness and leap clumsily into the air in an attempt to fly after their wild brethren summoning them from on high; when someone would bring home a stork with a broken wing a creature spared the sort of death by pecking which is meted out by those guardians of the law on those not fit for the trip to the Nile; when word would get around that a wolf had made off with someone's baby pig; and the woods would hear the music of the hounds always a soprano, a bass, and a baritone barking on the run in pursuit of wild game, their pitch being a sign of whether they were on the track of a hare or a roe.

Potential foraging sites for an endangered species, the wood stork, were identified using Landsat thematic mapper data for a section of north central Georgia and the Savannah River floodplain swamp in South Carolina. This was accomplished using innovative clustering techniques applied to known wood stork foraging sites around the Birdsville Colony in Georgia. The signatures for known sites were then geographically extended to a 1520-square-kilometer region surrounding the Birdsville Colony. Thematic maps were produced and foraging area acreages computed providing a regional assessment of existing and potential wood stork foraging sites. Approximately 1744 hectarea of potential shallow water and macrophyte foraging habitat were identified in the area surroundings the Birdsville Colony. 14 refs., 3 figs.

White Stork (Ciconia c. ciconia) numbers have been decreasing in the western part of Europe for at least 100 years. We investigated the main causes of this decrease by analysis of national and international stork census data and 19th century reports. Rainfall in the wintering areas (eastern and western Africa), taken as a relative measure for the winter food supplies, was positively correlated with the annual relative changes in number of pairs with nests in Oldenburg/Lower Saxony (Federal Republic of Germany) (1928-1984) and in Alsace (France) (1948-1970). During years with a high winter rainfall, storks arrived earlier in the breeding area and more pairs produced fledged young. The food link suggested by these data is supported by statistics on plagues of locusts and armyworms in Africa. Dates of arrival at the breeding area suggest that climatic changes have been an important cause of the initial decrease of the storks wintering in western Africa. Important causes of the decrease in the past decades were a decreased supply of locusts and drought in the wintering areas and, regionally, a deterioration of the habitat in the breeding area. We consider habitat change to be the main cause of the regional decrease of the storks wintering in eastern Africa.

In the course of investigating the relationships of flamingos (Phoenicopteridae), it became increasingly apparent to me that the order Ciconiiformes is probably an entirely artificial assemblage consisting of various long-legged, long-necked, altricial waterbirds having little else in common. The charadriiform affinities of flamingos are being documented in some detail elsewhere (Olson and Feduccia, MS) and I shall attempt here only a summary of the evidence assembled so far in that regard. I would like to use this opportunity to put on record some preliminary ideas concerning the possible relationships of the remaining five families of Ciconiiformes (storks, Ciconiidae; shoebill stork, Balaenicipitidae; hammerhead, Scopidae; ibises and spoonbills, Threskiornithidae; herons, Ardeidae).

Sex education is an integral part of total education for living which begins at birth and proceeds throughout every phase of growth. The basic patterns of the childs future sex attitudes and behavior are set in the formative first five years of his life. Factual knowledge is not enough. Our sex lives are but a part of our total lives and accordingly our primary task is to teach the young and the not-so-young the art of living of which sex is only a part. We must try to make the parents of the present and the future realize that it is not enough for them to aim at giving their children economic social and educational benefits. Far more fundamental is their rejection of the unfounded fears and superstitions which have been perpetuated by being passed on from one generation to another. The fairy tales about the doctors bag and the stork which parents tell their children when they ask about the facts of life the arbitrary and senseless distinctions between some natural functions which are described as "dirty" and others which are not the superstitions and racial and religious prejudices bequeathed by one generation to another--all have effects which persist even after the heirs have matured enough to toss out some or all of the trash. (excerpt)