Search

Agricultural intensification and associated loss of high-quality habitats are key drivers of insect pollinator declines. With the aim of decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture, the 2014 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) defined a set of habitat and landscape features (Ecological Focus Areas: EFAs) farmers could select from as a requirement to receive basic farm payments. To inform the post-2020 CAP, we performed a European-scale evaluation to determine how different EFA options vary in their potential to support insect pollinators under standard and pollinator-friendly management, as well as the extent of farmer uptake.A structured Delphi elicitation process engaged 22 experts from 18 European countries to evaluate EFAs options. By considering life cycle requirements of key pollinating taxa (i.e. bumble bees, solitary bees and hoverflies), each option was evaluated for its potential to provide forage, bee nesting sites and hoverfly larval resources.EFA options varied substantially in the resources they were perceived to provide and their effectiveness varied geographically and temporally. For example, field margins provide relatively good forage throughout the season in Southern and Eastern Europe but lacked early-season forage in Northern and Western Europe. Under standard management, no single EFA option achieved high scores across resource categories and a scarcity of late season forage was perceived.Experts identified substantial opportunities to improve habitat quality by adopting pollinator-friendly management. Improving management alone was, however, unlikely to ensure that all pollinator resource requirements were met. Our analyses suggest that a combination of poor management, differences in the inherent pollinator habitat quality and uptake bias towards catch crops and nitrogen-fixing crops severely limit the potential of EFAs to support pollinators in European agricultural landscapes.Policy Implications. To conserve pollinators and help protect pollination services, our expert elicitation highlights the need to create a variety of interconnected, well-managed habitats that complement each other in the resources they offer. To achieve this the Common Agricultural Policy post-2020 should take a holistic view to implementation that integrates the different delivery vehicles aimed at protecting biodiversity (e.g. enhanced conditionality, eco-schemes and agri-environment and climate measures). To improve habitat quality we recommend an effective monitoring framework with target-orientated indicators and to facilitate the spatial targeting of options collaboration between land managers should be incentivised.

Momenteel is er veel aandacht voor de achteruitgang van insecten. Met uitzondering van vlinders en libellen worden insecten in Nederland vrijwel niet systematisch gemonitord. Om ook meer inzicht te krijgen in trends van andere groepen insecten, is er behoefte aan aanvullende monitoringsprogramma’s. De vraag is echter wat de beste vangstmethode is om deze gevarieerde soortengroep betrouwbaar te monitoren. Dit artikel doet een aanzet om daar meer duidelijkheid over te krijgen door bestaande gegevens te analyseren van insecten die met drie verschillende valtypen zijn gevangen in Nederlandse laagveenmoerassen.

There is widespread concern regarding declines in bee populations given their importance for the functioning of both natural and managed ecosystems. An increasing number of studies find negative relations between bee species richness and simplification of agricultural landscapes, but the role of land-use intensity and its relative importance compared to landscape simplification remain less clear. We compared the relative effects of nitrogen inputs, as a proxy for land-use intensity, and proportion of natural and semi-natural habitat, as a measure of landscape complexity on total bee species richness, rare species richness and dominant crop-visiting species richness. We used data from 282 grasslands across five countries, covering the entire range of low intensity, no-input systems, to high-input sites (>400 kg N/ha/year). We found consistent negative impacts of increasing land-use intensity at a regional scale on total bee species richness and dominant crop-visiting species across Europe, but no such effects of landscape complexity. In contrast, the richness of rare bee species was not significantly related to increasing land-use intensity. Nevertheless, based on species accumulation curves, grasslands with no nitrogen inputs had higher total bee richness and higher shares of rare species compared with sites with high nitrogen inputs (>125 kg N/ha/year). Our results highlight the importance of retaining grasslands characterised by low land-use intensity across agricultural landscapes to promote bee diversity.

De laatste tijd is er veel aandacht voor de achteruitgang van bijen. Er zijn inmiddels veel initiatieven om wilde bijen een handje te helpen, meestal door het inzaaien van bloemenmengsels. Maar profiteren wilde bijen hier wel van? Welke soorten hebben daar het meest baat bij? Bevordert dit ook de bestuiving van naastgelegen gewassen? En waar moet rekening mee gehouden worden bij het aanleggen en beheren van een goede bloemenstrook? Aan de hand van literatuuronderzoek is naar antwoorden gezocht.

Growing interest in extracellular vesicles (EVs, including exosomes and microvesicles) as therapeutic entities, particularly in stem cell-related approaches, has underlined the need for standardization and coordination of development efforts. Members of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles and the Society for Clinical Research and Translation of Extracellular Vesicles Singapore convened a Workshop on this topic to discuss the opportunities and challenges associated with development of EV-based therapeutics at the preclinical and clinical levels. This review outlines topic-specific action items that, if addressed, will enhance the development of best-practice models for EV therapies.

Introduction: Adverse left ventricle remodeling can be measured as a reduction in ejection fraction after myocardial infarction. Left ventricle remodeling leads to congestive heart failure and is a main determinant of mortality and morbidity after myocardial infarction. Berberine is an isoquinoline alkaloid extracted from barberry that has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant activities. Pretreatment with long-term administration of high doses of berberine has shown beneficial effects in experimental diabetes and cardiac ischemia reperfusion injury. However, the poor solubility and the short half-life in the circulation have impeded the clinical use of berberine. Purpose: To examine whether encapsulation of berberine into long-circulating liposomes could improve its therapeutic availability and efficacy to protect cardiac function in vivo. Methods: Berberine was loaded into liposomes at a concentration of 0.3 mg/ml. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) activated mouse macrophages RAW 264.7 were treated with free berberine or liposome-encapsulated berberine (Lipo-Berb) and analyzed for cell viability, reactive oxygen species production and cytokine secretion. C57BL/6J male mice (10-12 week old) subjected to myocardial infarction (MI) via permanent ligation of the left anterior descending artery were blindly selected for intravenous injection of empty liposomes, free berberine or lipo-Berb (1.5 mg/kg). Three doses were administered at the onset of MI, and at 3 and 6 days after MI. Ejection fraction was assessed by echocardiography at baseline, 7 and 28 days after MI. Results: Free berberine improved the viability of LPS-insulted macrophages, reduced production of reactive oxygen species and inhibited the secretion of inflammatory mediators including IL-6 and TNFα. As expected these protective effects of berberine in vitro were diminished upon encapsulation into liposomes. In vivo, however, the liposome-encapsulated berberine significantly preserved ejection fraction after 28 days of MI while free berberine did not show any preservation of ejection fraction (29.5±1.9 for lipo-Berb, 18.2±3.2 for free berberine and 18.0±3.1 for empty liposomes; n=6-10; p

Ecological intensification aims to enhance important ecosystem processes that contribute to the delivery of the ecosystem services that underpin agricultural production allowing us to reduce our reliance on synthetic inputs. The potential of ecological intensification will depend on many factors, among the most important of which are off-field management and landscape context. These factors, and importantly the interaction between them, are likely to vary across regions and countries.Identifying off-field management approaches that are successful in enhancing ecosystem services will require assessing a range of strategies. The empirical work carried out in task 3.2 provided Original data on the effectiveness of three off-field interventions (hedgerow, set- aside and flower strips) onthe delivery of biocontrol and yield in winter cereals across different European countries. For hedgerows we found that the quality of the hedgerow (flower diversity) generally increased biodiversity of several beneficial groups of insects (e.g. butterflies, tachinids, carabids, spiders), while the delivery of ecosystems services such as pollination and pest control tended to respond more tolandscape factors (proportion of hedgerows or semi-natural habitats in general in the surrounding).For set-aside we found that this intervention increased locally the biodiversity of several beneficial insect groups (literature) but the spillover to winter wheat fields was small with no apparent benefit on the delivery of aphid biocontrol. Finally, we found that wildflower strips helped to reduce aphid pests in winter wheat fields, which, in turn, enhanced crop yield. However, this potential may only be reached in case strips are properly managed, in a way that optimizes floral diversity, and may only be relevant in agricultural landscapes with a low availability of habitat area for natural enemies.Irrespective of the intensity of the agricultural systems, the two most promising interventions to foster biocontrol and support yield in winter wheats are hedgerows and flower strips, but their effect appeared to be stronger in landscapes with low cover of existing semi-natural habitats.

Akkervogels zijn de afgelopen decennia in West-Europa sterk in aantal afgenomen. Een van de belangrijkste oorzaken is de intensivering van de landbouw. Toegenomen gebruik van pesticiden en meststoffen, verandering van gewasrotaties, efficiëntere oogstmethoden en schaalvergroting leiden tot gebrek aan voedsel en nestgelegenheid, en als gevolg daarvan tot een afname van overleving en reproductie (Chamberlain et al., 2000: Donald et., 2001: Newton, 2004). Vooral zaad etende akkervogels, zoals Ringmus (Passer montanus), Kneu (Carduelis cannabina), Veldleeuwerik (Alauda arvensis) en Grauwe gors (Emberiza calandra), die grotendeels afhankelijk zijn van het boerenland voor voedsel en dekking (Bijlsma et al., 2001) hebben het zwaar.

In moderne cultuurlandschappen wordt het voor wilde bijen steeds moeilijker om de benodigde hulpbronnen, zoals bloemen en nestgelegenheid te bemachtigen. Wij willen nagaan of de aanleg van meerjarige bloemenvelden de achteruitgang van wilde bijen in deze landschappen kan tegengaan. De resultaten laten zien dat het verhogen van het aanbod van bloemen kan leiden tot een soortenrijkere gemeenschap van wilde bestuivers, niet alleen in de bloemenvelden zelf maar ook in het omliggende landschap.

An important goal of ecological compensation areas (ECAs) is to increase biodiversity in adjacent intensively managed farmland and the agricultural landscape at large. We tested whether this goal can be achieved in the case of the agri-environmental restoration scheme implemented for Swiss grassland using five large arthropod taxa (bees, true bugs, orthopterans, ground beetles and spiders) representing different ecological and functional groups. The species richness and abundance of all groups and species, respectively, was measured along 100 m transects from ECA-meadows into the adjacent intensively managed grassland at 24 sites. Species richness of all arthropod taxa except ground beetles, and the abundance of 63% of the 234 arthropod species sampled with at least five individuals were higher in ECA-meadows than in their surroundings, while the total abundance of spiders and ground beetles was higher in intensively managed meadows. The abundance of 8% of these species were only increased in the ECA-meadows themselves (“stenotopic” species) but 40% had increased abundance both in the ECA-meadows and the adjacent grassland, declining exponentially with increasing distance from ECA-meadows (“edge species”). The 90%-decay distances for these edge species differed among taxonomic groups (117 ± 18 m for true bugs, 137 ± 24 m for spiders, 152 ± 34 m for bees, 167 ± 5.7 m for orthopterans, 185 ± 34 m for ground beetles; mean ±1 standard error) and independent of taxonomic group were larger for large-sized or predacious species than for small-sized or phytophagous species. Because the average distance between neighbouring ECA-meadows in Swiss grassland is only 73 ± 4 m, the current agri-environment scheme very likely enhances arthropod diversity and possibly associated ecosystem services in the Swiss agricultural landscape at large.

Tools, technical platforms and methods need to be wisely utilized to aid target identification and validation in translational processes. Amongst these, several -omics sciences have been established and constitute nowadays fields of their own. Such is the case of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, which address the genome, RNA, proteome and metabolome, respectively. Biobanks represent essential sources of information and pharmacogenetics helps to personalize drug developments early on. From such repositories and -omics research, valuable biomarkers can be derived, and consortial approaches are being used to facilitate this process. Modern biomedical research with the aim of translating research findings into novel therapies to benefit patients relies to a large extent on animal models of human pathophysiology. Ultimately, early human trials further humanize and corroborate drug targets and allow for translatability scoring to predict final success of translation.