Journal of Wildlife and Biodiversity
Volume:3 Issue: 1, Winter and Spring 2019

A growing number of ecological studies suggest ratio-dependence may be common in many predator-prey systems. I assessed Eberhardt’s ratio-dependent wolf-ungulate model using 22 years of wolf (Canis lupus) and elk (Cervus elaphus) survey data, and 28 years of elk hunter harvest data from the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, USA. This model required estimation of eight parameters, of which four were determined from other studies and four were evaluated by statistical model fitting. Modelled trends in wolf and elk abundance were correlated with survey estimates, and modelled trends in wolf predation rates were correlated with empirical estimates. The equilibrium ratio of wolves to elk was 0.0063 and the equilibrium ratio of elk to habitat carrying capacity was 0.680. While this simple model provided a realistic portrait of wolf-elk dynamics in a complex predator-prey system, the performance of the model could be improved by including the sex and age structure of the elk population, a wolf functional response, and temporal variation in wolf and elk demographic rates. This model provides additional support for ratio-dependence in large mammal predator-prey systems.

Land cover maps are regarded one of the main inputs for land use planning and environmental modeling. One of the main reasons of unsuitable spatial array of the urban areas can be related to the rural communities' emigration, which in turn cause complete degradation of the farmlands and rural structures. Such event can be regards as a factor which is responsible for demolishing of the Haft Barm area an important recreational and touristic areas in the vicinity of Shiraz metropolis. Therefore, recognizing the natural conditions of the area, preparing resource maps like land use and land cover, and monitoring their changes during the time is critical issue in the environmental planning and management. To this aim, WorldView 2 images with eight bands were used and mentioned maps were produced. The mapping analysis way was relied on an object-based classification methodology and using a decision tree which was applied in the WorldView 2 images categorization. The process shall be as the following: a) segmentation, b) terrain selecting, c) creating a decision tree for images' classification, and d) ultimate classification and evaluation of the accuracy. The area was divided into 10 user classes. The results indicated successful classes categorization with overall accuracy of 87.45%. The highest accuracy of classification was obtained for water, forest, product, building classes respectively. Planted forests patches as well as natural forests were identified and classified using OBC approach (object-based method) while additional coastal bands were used to distinguishing among barren and covered lands. Distance to tree and shadow play an important role in identifying buildings.

Asiatic Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), as the most charismatic mammalian species of Iran, is faced with a high probability of extinction (CR category) throughout the country. In this study, the species preferred feeding items were investigated based on collected scats across the extra-arid habitats of central Iran. The scat samples were collected during 2015-2016 from Dareh-Anjir wildlife refuge located in Yazd province. All collected samples were examined based on standard protocols and all their animal remaining such as hairs were used to the identification of the prey items which used by the species. Our findings based on scats analysis indicated that Jebeer Gazelles (Gazella bennettii), constitute the main preferred feeding item of the Cheetah's population. With regard to the low abundance of this Gazelles in the study area, it looks that lowering prey items induced from poor habitat management during recent decades can be regarded as one the main cause of Cheetahs sever population declining. It seems that large herbivores extirpation from the study area will doom the Cheetahs toward the extinction.

Chironomidae flies (Insecta: Diptera) are known for their ecological importance; they are bio-indicator of aquatic ecosystems and play important roles in different levels of food chain. Although they serve as food supply for fish and others aquatic organisms, they are good predators of many Arthropoda species. The present study was conducted to investigate the chironomid variation in Lar River (Lar and Polour), eastern part of Tehran province, Iran through spring and summer 2014 in several replications. Shannon-Wiener and Simpson diversity indices were calculated for the sampling station separately. Sorenson`s coefficient was calculated to assess the similarity between the sampling areas. The results showed that there were a great variety of Chironomidae in Lar River composed of two sub-families and 6 different genus; Chironominae (Chironomus, Stictochironomus, Polypedilum, Endochironomus, Hyporhygma(andTanypodinae (Brundiniella) which 2 of them are recorded for the first time for Iranian fauna. Among the collected genera, Polypedilum was the most abundant genus especially in Lar station rather than Polour. According to the diversity indices, genera diversity in Polour station was higher than Lar.

In the present study intraspecific differences of the Meriones persicus populations were investigated based on traditional morphometry using the external and cranial characters in the south central of Iran. Totally 89 specimens of M. persicus were collected in three regions of the area (Geno protected area, Minab county, and Anjerk prohibited hunting area). Five external and 15 cranial characters were measured. In order to represent the significant differences in sizes observed among the three populations, the one-way ANOVA was applied. Our results demonstrated that nine out of 20 measured morphological characters of the populations in the study areas are significantly different (P<0.05). The results of MANOVA showed statistically significant differences among the populations of the three regions based on the morphometric characters (F=15.968, P<0.001; Wilk's Λ = 0.039, partial η2 = 0.802). The principal component analysis (PCA) on the cranial parameters showed that two first components can justify 54.3% and 23.1% of total variance respectively. For the external parameters, the first two principal component axes (PC1 and PC2) explained 83.6% (55.2% and 28.4%, respectively) of the variation in size among the populations. Discriminant function analysis correctly classified the populations to regions with a high degree of reliability (97.8%). This study confirms the possibility of the presence of intraspecific variations among the populations of the three regions.

Moringa oleifera Lam. belong the family Moringaceae is introduced and recorded for the first time in the flora of Libya, this record is add a new family as well because the family Moringaceae was not recorded in the flora of Libya. The plants of M. oleifera were seen in petroleum clinic garden in Tripoli in the North West part of Libyan, and Ghat hospital garden in the south-west of the country were seen few trees of Moringa oleifera in both hospitals, these trees were introduced by Indian physicians who were worked at these hospitals in the past, they introduced Moringa tree for its medicinal and nutritional value. This species was also introduced in the last four years and cultivated in many parts of the country for the purpose of nutritional and medicinal value. Morphological description is provided to facilitate further identification of this species and to warrant its future detection as well.