Publications by authors named "Ismael Soto"

Assessing actual and potential impacts of non-native species is necessary for prioritising their management. Traditional assessments often occur at the species level, potentially overlooking differences among populations. The recently developed Dispersal-Origin-Status-Impact (DOSI) assessment scheme addresses this by treating biological invasions as population-level phenomena, incorporating the complexities affecting populations of non-native species.

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Background: Biological invasions are a major threat to global biodiversity, with freshwater ecosystems being among the most susceptible to the successful establishment of non-native species and their respective potential impacts. In Poland, the introduction and spreading of non-native fish has led to biodiversity loss and ecosystem homogenisation.

Methods: Our study applies the Dispersal-Origin-Status-Impact (DOSI) assessment scheme, which is a population-level specific assessment that integrates multiple factors, including dispersal mechanisms, origin, status, and impacts, providing a nuanced framework for assessing invasion risks at local and regional levels.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A new online portal has been developed to provide up-to-date global distribution data for crayfish and their pathogens, improving accessibility and management decisions.
  • * This database is publicly available, allowing users to easily view, embed, and download data, aiming to enhance conservation planning and biodiversity management in the future.
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Biological invasions pose a major threat to biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and human well-being. Non-native species can have severe ecological impacts that are transformative, affecting ecosystems across both short-term and long-term timescales. However, few studies have determined the temporal dynamics of impact between these scales, impeding future predictions as invasion rates continue to rise.

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In the current anthropogenic era characterised by human-induced environmental changes, long-term biomonitoring has become a crucial component for understanding ecological patterns and detecting shifts in biodiversity. However, spatiotemporal inconsistencies in biomonitoring efforts hinder transboundary progress in understanding and mitigating global environmental change effectively. The International Long-Term Ecosystem Research (ILTER) network is one of the largest standardised biomonitoring initiatives worldwide, encompassing 44 countries globally, including 26 European countries that are part of the European Long-Term Ecosystem Research network (eLTER).

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In today's ever-evolving scientific landscape, invasion science faces a plethora of challenges, such as terminological inconsistency and the rapidly growing literature corpus with few or incomplete syntheses of knowledge, which may be perceived as a stagnation in scientific progress. We explore the concept of 'competency', which is extensively debated across disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, and linguistics. Traditionally, it is associated with attributes that enable superior performance and continuous ingenuity.

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Biological invasions pose a rapidly expanding threat to the persistence, functioning and service provisioning of ecosystems globally, and to socio-economic interests. The stages of successful invasions are driven by the same mechanism that underlies adaptive changes across species in general-via natural selection on intraspecific variation in traits that influence survival and reproductive performance (i.e.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Biological invasions are a big problem for ecosystems and economies, and Türkiye is especially at risk due to its trade connections and location between Europe and Asia.
  • - Researchers analyzed the economic costs of invasive species in Türkiye and found it added up to about $4.1 billion from 1960 to 2022, mostly affecting agriculture and fisheries.
  • - The yearly costs of these invasive species are increasing and could reach $504 million a year soon, highlighting the need for better tracking of these costs and better management strategies to deal with them.
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Standardised terminology in science is important for clarity of interpretation and communication. In invasion science - a dynamic and rapidly evolving discipline - the proliferation of technical terminology has lacked a standardised framework for its development. The result is a convoluted and inconsistent usage of terminology, with various discrepancies in descriptions of damage and interventions.

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  • Non-native species like the Eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) can disrupt local ecosystems and reduce species diversity.
  • A study in Türkiye surveyed 130 locations to identify the ecological preferences of G. holbrooki, finding it commonly in shallow waters with rocks and influenced mainly by pH, current velocity, and substrate type.
  • The findings underscore the mosquitofish's ecological versatility and potential for invasion across diverse freshwater ecosystems, highlighting the need for targeted management of invasive species.
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Phytosanitary threats can pose substantial risks to global agriculture and ecological systems, affecting biodiversity, human well-being, and food security. Meanwhile, global warming is projected to exacerbate these threats in the future. One in Europe already widely distributed potential phytosanitary threat that may benefit from global warming is the house cricket Acheta domesticus.

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A dominant syndrome of the Anthropocene is the rapid worldwide spread of invasive species with devastating environmental and socio-economic impacts. However, the dynamics underlying the impacts of biological invasions remain contested. A hypothesis posits that the richness of impactful invasive species increases proportionally with the richness of non-native species more generally.

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Article Synopsis
  • Invasive non-native species, particularly feral domesticated animals, have caused significant economic harm globally, with total costs reaching $141.95 billion from just 18 species.
  • Feral livestock alone accounted for $90.03 billion in damages, with agriculture being the most affected sector ($80.79 billion), while regions like Oceania, North America, and Europe experienced the largest financial burdens.
  • Effective management strategies, including better regulations and public awareness, are essential to mitigate the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of these invasive feral populations.
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Despite the potential ecological and economic impacts of invasive species, there is a dearth of data on the presence, impacts, and management implications of potentially invasive Orthoptera species. This lack of research and inconsistent data, including risk screenings and impact assessments, is especially evident in Europe. Consequently, assessing the status, distribution, and potential threats of nonnative Orthoptera in Europe remains challenging, impeding the development of effective management strategies.

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Non-native species introductions have been acknowledged as one of the main drivers of freshwater biodiversity decline worldwide, compromising provided ecosystem services and functioning. Despite growing introduction numbers of non-native species, their impacts in conjunction with anthropogenic stressors remain poorly documented. To fill this gap, we studied temporal changes in α (local scale) and γ (regional scale), as well as β (ratio between γ and α) diversity of non-native freshwater macroinvertebrate species in three European countries (the Netherlands, England and Hungary) using long-term time series data of up to 17 years (2003-2019).

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Biological invasions are a global challenge that has received insufficient attention. Recently available cost syntheses have provided policy- and decision makers with reliable and up-to-date information on the economic impacts of biological invasions, aiming to motivate effective management. The resultant database is now publicly and freely accessible and enables rapid extraction of monetary cost information.

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Multisensory stimuli provide organisms with information to assess the threat present in the surroundings. Olfactory cues show dominance over other sensory modalities in the aquatic environment. The impact of chemical predator cues combined with experiences gained (learning) in species without previous contact is not fully understood.

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Background: Biological invasions threaten the functioning of ecosystems, biodiversity, and human well-being by degrading ecosystem services and eliciting massive economic costs. The European Union has historically been a hub for cultural development and global trade, and thus, has extensive opportunities for the introduction and spread of alien species. While reported costs of biological invasions to some member states have been recently assessed, ongoing knowledge gaps in taxonomic and spatio-temporal data suggest that these costs were considerably underestimated.

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This paper presents a systematic approach for solving complex prediction problems with a focus on energy efficiency. The approach involves using neural networks, specifically recurrent and sequential networks, as the main tool for prediction. In order to test the methodology, a case study was conducted in the telecommunications industry to address the problem of energy efficiency in data centers.

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Pharmaceutically active compounds are common and increasing in the aquatic environment. Evidence suggests they have adverse effects on non-target organisms, and they are classified as emerging pollutants for a variety of aquatic organisms. To determine the effects of environmentally relevant levels of psychoactive compounds on non-target organisms, we analyzed cardiac and locomotory activity in early developmental stages of marbled crayfish Procambarus virginalis.

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Article Synopsis
  • Rates of biological invasions have increased over time and are expected to keep rising; however, there’s a lack of long-term data to analyze trends in the abundance of non-native species across various environments and taxonomic groups.
  • Analysis of 180 biological time series from Europe reveals that a majority have been invaded by non-native species, with trends showing local abundance being highly variable, particularly showing declines in marine and freshwater species despite reports of increasing invasions.
  • Local climate conditions, such as temperature and precipitation, significantly influence these abundance trends, indicating that understanding biological invasions requires local data, as impacts are mostly felt locally even though the issue spans larger scales.
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  • Scientists have struggled to identify common patterns in the impacts of biological invasions, but a new model called the impact curve may help predict these effects over time.
  • The study tested the impact curve's applicability to 13 different aquatic invasive species in Europe using long-term monitoring data, finding strong support for the curve in all but one species (the killer shrimp).
  • The findings suggest that impacts of invasive species can grow quickly before leveling off, highlighting the need for better monitoring to effectively manage invasions and inform intervention timing.
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This article proposes a novel method for detecting coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in an underground channel using visible light communication (VLC) and machine learning (ML). We present mathematical models of COVID-19 Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (DNA) gene transfer in regular square constellations using a CSK/QAM-based VLC system. ML algorithms are used to classify the bands present in each electrophoresis sample according to whether the band corresponds to a positive, negative, or ladder sample during the search for the optimal model.

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Europe has experienced a substantial increase in non-indigenous crayfish species (NICS) since the mid-20th century due to their extensive use in fisheries, aquaculture and, more recently, pet trade. Despite relatively long invasion histories of some NICS and negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, large spatio-temporal analyses of their occurrences are lacking. Here, we used a large freshwater macroinvertebrate database to evaluate what information on NICS can be obtained from widely applied biomonitoring approaches and how usable such data is for descriptions of trends in identified NICS species.

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Alien fish substantially impact aquatic communities. However, their effects on trait composition remain poorly understood, especially at large spatiotemporal scales. Here, we used long-term biomonitoring data (1984-2018) from 31 fish communities of the Rhine river in Germany to investigate compositional and functional changes over time.

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