The ecological niche of a species is defined by an array of biotic and abiotic requirements that allow organisms to live and reproduce in a geographic region. Abiotic data from the ecological niche in combination with occurrence data can be used to predict the potential geographic distribution of a species in different regions. Potential geographic distributions are useful in predicting the ext...

Rainforest frogs are classified into nine ecological guilds based on features of reproduction, habitat use, temporal activity, microhabitat and body size. The largest ecological differences are between the microhylid frogs and the rest of the frog species. Within the non-microhylids, there are two primary groups consisting of (i) regionally endemic rainforest specialists, and (ii) a more ecolog...

We present a new method for ecologically sustainable land use planning within multiple land use schemes. Our aims were (1) to develop a method that can be used to locate important areas based on their ecological values; (2) to evaluate the quality, quantity, availability, and usability of existing ecological data sets; and (3) to demonstrate the use of the method in Eastern Finland, where there...

1. The ecological niche is a fundamental biological concept. Modelling species’ niches is central to numerous ecological applications, including predicting species invasions, identifying reservoirs for disease, nature reserve design and forecasting the effects of anthropogenic and natural climate change on species’ ranges. 2. A computational analogue of Hutchinson’s ecological niche concept (th...

Objective:  Presents a business goal-driven requirements engineering approach for IT to better understand system requirements, as requirements are generated from the business goals and provide assistance for analyzing business goals quickly.

Requirements Engineering (RE) contains many different practices to elicit, communicate and document customer requirements. Developers need to understand these requirements properly in order to achieve project success by fulfilling them [1]. A prerequisite for developers’ understanding of relevant requirements and their meaning is successful requirements communication [2]. Therefore, the selecte...

I wish to inform you of the release of the draft 'Western Rock Lobster Fishery Ecological Risk Assessment 2005 Report – July 2005' for a three-week public consultation period. Please find attached the report for your consideration. This report provides background on the western rock lobster fishery, its governance, the reporting requirements for the Ecologically Sustainable Development process ...

In this paper, an optimisation problem for calculating the best energy bids of a set of hydro power plants in a basin is proposed. The model is applied to a real Spanish basin for the short-term (24-hour) planning of the operation. The algorithm considers the ecological flows and social consumptions required for the actual operation. One of the hydro plants is fluent, without direct-control abi...

External asymmetry found in diverse animals bears critical functions to fulfil ecological requirements. Some snail-eating arthropods exhibit directional asymmetry in their feeding apparatus for foraging efficiency because dextral (clockwise) species are overwhelmingly predominant in snails. Here, we show convergence of directional asymmetry in the dentition of snail-eating vertebrates. We found...

To face current socio-economic adverse conditions enterprises must increase their efficiency and evolve to the requirements of customization and sustainability. Modern production systems need to deal with instability of markets and resource scarcity regarding an economical, ecological and social concern. The Evolvable Production Systems (EPS) has aimed at developing such technological solutions...