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Tropical Islands (tropical + island)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Life Sciences	80%

Selected Abstracts

Von der Werfthalle des CargoLifter zum Tropical Island Resort: Klima- und Energiekonzept für den weltweit größten überdachten tropischen Freizeitpark

BAUPHYSIK, Issue 6 2004
Heinrich Post Dr.-Ing.
Für die Umplanung der ehemaligen CargoLifter-Halle zum "Tropical Island Resort" werden die wesentlichen Schritte des Climaengineering im Rahmen der Vorplanung beschrieben. Zunächst werden die Klimakonzepte für den winterlichen- und sommerlichen Betriebsfall vorgestellt, die sich nach der Analyse von Baukörper, Nutzungsanforderungen und Außenklima und der Optimierung der technischen Anlagenparameter im Rahmen von komplexen, dynamischen Gebäude- und Raumströmungssimulationen ergaben. Abschließend wird das Energiekonzept des Tropical Island Resort beschrieben. From CargoLifter hangar to Tropical Island Resort ndash; climate and energy design for the world's largest covered tropical amusement park. For the redesign of the former hangar of CargoLifter into "Tropical Island Resort" the basic steps of climate engineering during preliminary planning stage are specified. First of all the indoor climate concepts for winter and summer conditions are presented, resulting from complex, dynamical building and airfluid simulations regarding building analysis, usage demands, outdoor climate and optimization of technical equipment. Finaly energie strategy of Tropical Island Resort is characterized. [source]

Land-cover and land-use change and its contribution to the large-scale organization of Puerto Rico's bird assemblages

DIVERSITY AND DISTRIBUTIONS, Issue 1 2008
Miguel A. Acevedo
ABSTRACT Global biodiversity is changing rapidly driven by human alteration of habitat, and nowhere this is more dramatic than in insular habitats. Yet land-cover change is a complex phenomenon that not only involves habitat destruction but also forest recovery over different time scales. Therefore, we might expect species to respond in diverse ways with likely consequences for the reorganization of regional assemblages. These changes, however, may be different in tropical islands because of their low species richness, generalist habits and high proportion of endemics. Here, we focus on the island of Puerto Rico and ask how island-wide changes in land cover and land use has influenced the large-scale organization of bird assemblages. To address this question, we combined in a Geographical Information System (GIS) the first 6 years (1997,2002) of the Puerto Rican Breeding Bird Survey (PR-BBS) with land-cover and land-use data extracted from a published digital map derived from the classification of Landsat images. A Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMS) ordination based on the composition and abundance of birds, and percentage land-use types showed that land use followed by climate could explain most of the variation observed among routes in terms of species composition and abundance. Moreover, endemic and exotic species were widely distributed throughout the island, but the proportion of endemic species is higher in closed forests while exotic species are more abundant in open habitats. However, historical accounts from the early 1900s indicate that endemic species were distributed across the entire island. Today, most of the land cover transformation in Puerto Rico occurs in the lowlands which may explain the high abundance of endemic species in cloud forests and the high abundance of exotic species in open habitats in the lowlands. [source]

Breaking taboos in the tropics: incest promotes colonization by wood-boring beetles

GLOBAL ECOLOGY, Issue 4 2001
Bjarte H. Jordal
Abstract 1,Inbreeding and parthenogenesis are especially frequent in colonizing species of plants and animals, and inbreeding in wood-boring species in the weevil families Scolytinae and Platypodidae is especially common on small islands. In order to study the relationship between colonization success, island attributes and mating system in these beetles, we analysed the relative proportions of inbreeders and outbreeders for 45 Pacific and Old World tropical islands plus two adjacent mainland sites, and scored islands for size, distance from nearest source population, and maximum altitude. 2,The numbers of wood-borer species decreased with decreasing island size, as expected; the degree of isolation and maximum island altitude had negligible effects on total species numbers. 3,Numbers of outbreeding species decreased more rapidly with island size than did those of inbreeders. Comparing species with similar ecology (e.g. ambrosia beetles) showed that this difference was best explained by differential success in colonization, rather than by differences in resource utilization or sampling biases. This conclusion was further supported by analyses of data from small islands, which suggested that outbreeding species have a higher degree of endemism and that inbreeding species are generally more widespread. 4,Recently established small populations necessarily go through a period of severe inbreeding, which should affect inbreeding species much less than outbreeding ones. In addition, non-genetic ecological and behavioural (,Allee') effects are also expected to reduce the success of outbreeding colonists much more than that of inbreeders: compared with inbreeders, outbreeders are expected to have slower growth rates, have greater difficulties with mate-location and be vulnerable to random extinction over a longer period. [source]

Birds as tourism flagship species: a case study of tropical islands

ANIMAL CONSERVATION, Issue 6 2009
D. Veríssimo
Abstract Species selected as flagships to promote conservation activities around the world are typically well known and charismatic mega-fauna. Unfortunately this limits the scope for applying the concept as some critical areas for biodiversity conservation, such as tropical islands, lack such species. In this study, we explore the potential to apply the concept of ,tourism flagship species' to tropical island birds of the Seychelles, an archipelago of considerable importance for conservation that is highly dependent on international tourism. In particular we wish to identify which species attributes are most influential with regard to their potential for fundraising among international tourists. Using a choice experiment approach and using state-of-the-art econometric methods, we found that conservation attributes and physical appearance of the bird species are both important in terms of raising funds for conservation. Nevertheless, conservation attributes ranked higher in the respondents preferences. Our results suggest that there is considerable potential for a variety of species to effectively act as flagships in developing nations that are dependent on international tourism and rich in biodiversity but lack charismatic fauna. [source]