Assessing the basic knowledge and awareness of dengue fever prevention among migrant workers in Klang Valley, Malaysia.

BACKGROUND: Globally, 390 million dengue virus infections occur per year. In Malaysia, migrant workers are particularly vulnerable to dengue fever (DF) due to mosquito breeding sites exposure and poor health literacy. Therefore, this study aimed to (i) assess the current DF knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP), and (ii) identify strategies to promote DF awareness, among migrant workers in Klang Valley. METHOD: A survey was conducted with 403 Nepali, Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers through phone interviews and online self-administered questionnaires. Piecewise structural equation modelling was applied to identify predictor variables for DF KAP. RESULTS: Most respondents were male, working in the services industry, had completed high school, aged between 30-39 years and with less than ten years work experience in Malaysia. Overall, respondents' knowledge was positively correlated with attitude but negatively with practices. Older respondents, who had completed higher education, obtained higher knowledge scores. Similarly, those with working experience of >20 years in Malaysia obtained higher attitude scores. Respondents with a previous history of DF strongly considered the removal of mosquito breeding sites as their own responsibility, hence tended to frequently practise DF preventive measures. Respondents' knowledge was also positively correlated to their understanding of DF information sourced from social media platforms. CONCLUSION: These findings highlighted: (i) the need for targeted DF educational intervention among younger and newly arrived workers with lower levels of education and (ii) maximising the usage of social media platforms to improve DF public awareness.

Assessing the knowledge of, attitudes towards, and practices in, food safety among migrant workers in Klang Valley, Malaysia.

BACKGROUND: Annually, 600 million individuals are affected by food-borne diseases (FBD), alongside 425,000 fatalities. Improving the general public knowledge of, attitudes towards, and practices in, (KAP) food safety is necessary for minimizing FBD transmission. In Malaysia, migrant workers account for 11.1% of the workforce, with a high proportion involved in food and beverage services. Therefore, this study aimed (i) to evaluate the current food safety KAP, and (ii) to identify the strategies to promote food safety awareness, among migrant workers across occupational sectors in Klang Valley. METHOD: A survey was conducted with 403 migrant workers through phone interviews and online self-administered questionnaires. Piecewise structural equation modelling and multinomial regression were applied to identify predictor variables for food safety KAP and to explore differences across nationalities. RESULTS: The respondents were Nepalese, Filipino and Indonesian. The majority were male, working in the services industry, had completed high school, aged between 30 and 39 years and had worked in Malaysia for less than ten years. Knowledge was significantly correlated with attitudes and practices. Female respondents had lower knowledge and attitude scores while younger respondents had lower knowledge scores. Indonesian and Filipino respondents had lower knowledge and attitudes scores than Nepalese respondents. Understanding food safety information from social media was positively correlated with the respondents' food safety knowledge and practices. CONCLUSION: These findings highlighted: (i) the need to target female, younger, Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers, and (ii) the potential of social media to improve public awareness of food safety and hygienic practices.

Familiarity with, perceptions of and attitudes toward butterflies of urban park users in megacities across East and Southeast Asia.

Perceptions of, and attitudes toward, wildlife are influenced by exposure to, and direct experiences with, nature. Butterflies are a conspicuous and ubiquitous component of urban nature across megacities that are highly urbanized with little opportunity for human-nature interactions. We evaluated public familiarity with, perceptions of and attitudes toward butterflies across nine megacities in East and Southeast Asia through face-to-face interviews with 1774 urban park users. A total of 79% of respondents had seen butterflies in their cities mostly in urban parks, indicating widespread familiarity with butterflies. Those who had seen butterflies also had higher perceptions of butterflies, whereas greater than 50% of respondents had positive attitudes toward butterflies. Frequent visits to natural places in urban neighbourhoods was associated with (i) sightings of caterpillars, indicating increased familiarity with urban wildlife, and (ii) increased connectedness to nature. We found two significant positive relationships: (i) between connectedness to nature and attitudes toward butterflies and (ii) between connectedness to nature and perceptions of butterflies, firmly linking parks users' thoughts and feelings about butterflies with their view of nature. This suggests that butterflies in urban parks can play a key role in building connectedness to nature and consequently pro-environmental behaviours and support for wildlife conservation among urban residents.

Eliciting local knowledge of ecosystem services using participatory mapping and Photovoice: A case study of Tun Mustapha Park, Malaysia.

Protected areas in Malaysia have always been managed using top-down approach that often exclude the local communities, who are the main users of ecosystem services, from the planning and management. However, a newly established multiple-use marine park in Malaysia, Tun Mustapha Park (TMP), aims for inclusivity in managing the park. This research explores different participatory approaches (i.e. participatory mapping and Photovoice) to understand the ecosystem services and the dynamics surrounding the services in TMP. Community-based organisations and a mariculture farm in TMP were invited to participate in this work. The participants mapped the ecosystem services and provided in-depth qualitative data that supported the maps, besides highlighting ecological, sociocultural and economic issues surrounding the ecosystem services. Furthermore, the participants provided suggestions and recommendations that carry political effects. Therefore, the participatory approaches employed here had provided rich visual and spatial data to enhance the ecosystem-based management of TMP besides empowering the participants to voice out for their communities. The results generated from this work were also further utilised to fill in the gaps of knowledge in a separate ecosystem service assessment matrix. However, the output from participatory approaches should not be considered as the ultimate outcome but rather as supplement to the planning and management of TMP due to potential human errors and biases. Although the participatory approaches came with limitations and challenges that may have affected the findings here, these nonetheless had provided support to the capability of local communities to provide information crucial for management of protected areas as well as room for improvement for further work.

Pollination implications of the diverse diet of tropical nectar-feeding bats roosting in an urban cave.

BACKGROUND: Intense landscaping often alters the plant composition in urban areas. Knowing which plant species that pollinators are visiting in urban areas is necessary for understanding how landscaping impacts biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. The cave nectar bat, Eonycteris spelaea, is an important pollinator for many plants and is often recorded in human-dominated habitats. Previous studies of the diet of E. spelaea relied on morphological identification of pollen grains found in faeces and on the body of bats and by necessity disregarded other forms of digested plant material present in the faeces (i.e., plant juice and remnants). The main objective of this study was to examine the diet of the nectarivorous bat, E. spelaea, roosting in an urban cave at Batu Caves, Peninsular Malaysia by identifying the plant material present in the faeces of bats using DNA metabarcoding. METHODS: Faeces were collected under the roost of E. spelaea once a week from December 2015 to March 2016. Plant DNA was extracted from the faeces, Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplified at ITS2 and rbcL regions and mass sequenced. The resultant plant operational taxonomic units were searched against NCBI GenBank for identification. RESULTS: A total of 55 species of plants were detected from faeces of E. spelaea including Artocarpus heterophyllus, Duabanga grandiflora and Musa spp. which are likely to be important food resources for the cave nectar bat. DISCUSSION: Many native plant species that had not been reported in previous dietary studies of E. spelaea were detected in this study including Bauhinia strychnoidea and Urophyllum leucophlaeum, suggesting that E. spelaea remains a crucial pollinator for these plants even in highly disturbed habitats. The detection of many introduced plant species in the bat faeces indicates that E. spelaea are exploiting them, particularly Xanthostemon chrysanthus, as food resources in urban area. Commercial food crops were detected from all of the faecal samples, suggesting that E. spelaea feed predominantly on the crops particularly jackfruit and banana and play a significant role in pollination of economically important plants. Ferns and figs were also detected in the faeces of E. spelaea suggesting future research avenues to determine whether the 'specialised nectarivorous' E. spelaea feed opportunistically on other parts of plants.

A checklist of the bats of Peninsular Malaysia and progress towards a DNA barcode reference library.

Several published checklists of bat species have covered Peninsular Malaysia as part of a broader region and/or in combination with other mammal groups. Other researchers have produced comprehensive checklists for specific localities within the peninsula. To our knowledge, a comprehensive checklist of bats specifically for the entire geopolitical region of Peninsular Malaysia has never been published, yet knowing which species are present in Peninsular Malaysia and their distributions across the region are crucial in developing suitable conservation plans. Our literature search revealed that 110 bat species have been documented in Peninsular Malaysia; 105 species have precise locality records while five species lack recent and/or precise locality records. We retrieved 18 species from records dated before the year 2000 and seven species have only ever been recorded once. Our search of Barcode of Life Datasystems (BOLD) found that 86 (of the 110) species have public records of which 48 species have public DNA barcodes available from bats sampled in Peninsular Malaysia. Based on Neighbour-Joining tree analyses and the allocation of DNA barcodes to Barcode Index Number system (BINs) by BOLD, several DNA barcodes recorded under the same species name are likely to represent distinct taxa. We discuss these cases in detail and highlight the importance of further surveys to determine the occurences and resolve the taxonomy of particular bat species in Peninsular Malaysia, with implications for conservation priorities.

Citizen Science: The First Peninsular Malaysia Butterfly Count.

BACKGROUND: Over the past 50 years, Southeast Asia has suffered the greatest losses of biodiversity of any tropical region in the world. Malaysia is a biodiversity hotspot in the heart of Southeast Asia with roughly the same number of mammal species, three times the number of butterfly species, but only 4% of the land area of Australia. Consequently, in Malaysia, there is an urgent need for biodiversity monitoring and also public engagement with wildlife to raise awareness of biodiversity loss. Citizen science is "on the rise" globally and can make valuable contributions to long-term biodiversity monitoring, but perhaps more importantly, involving the general public in science projects can raise public awareness and promote engagement. Butterflies are often the focus of citizen science projects due to their charisma and familiarity and are particularly valuable "ambassadors" of biodiversity conservation for public outreach. NEW INFORMATION: Here we present the data from our citizen science project, the first "Peninsular Malaysia Butterfly Count". Participants were asked to go outdoors on June 6, 2015, and (non-lethally) sample butterfly legs for species identification through DNA barcoding. Fifty-seven citizens responded to our adverts and registered to take part in the butterfly count with many registering on behalf of groups. Collectively the participants sampled 220 butterfly legs from 26 mostly urban and suburban sampling localities. These included our university campus, a highschool, several public parks and private residences. On the basis of 192 usable DNA barcodes, 43 species were sampled by the participants. The most sampled species was Appias olferna, followed by Junonia orithya and Zizina otis. Twenty-two species were only sampled once, five were only sampled twice, and four were only sampled three times. Three DNA barcodes could not be assigned species names. The sampled butterflies revealed that widely distributed, cosmopolitan species, often those recently arrived to the peninsula or with documented "invasive" potential, dominated the habitat types sampled by the participants. Data from this first Butterfly Count helps establish a baseline from which we can monitor the patterns and changes in butterfly communities in Peninsular Malaysia.