The projected effect on insects, vertebrates, and plants of limiting global warming to 1.5°C rather than 2°C.

In the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the United Nations is pursuing efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C, whereas earlier aspirations focused on a 2°C limit. With current pledges, corresponding to ~3.2°C warming, climatically determined geographic range losses of >50% are projected in ~49% of insects, 44% of plants, and 26% of vertebrates. At 2°C, this falls to 18% of insects, 16% of plants, and 8% of vertebrates and at 1.5°C, to 6% of insects, 8% of plants, and 4% of vertebrates. When warming is limited to 1.5°C as compared with 2°C, numbers of species projected to lose >50% of their range are reduced by ~66% in insects and by ~50% in plants and vertebrates.

Ecological specialization and population size in a biodiversity hotspot: how rare species avoid extinction.

Species with narrow environmental niches typically have small geographic ranges. Small range size is, in turn, often associated with low local abundance. Together, these factors should mean that ecological specialists have very small total populations, putting them at high risk of extinction. But some specialized and geographically restricted species are ancient, and some ecological communities have high proportions of rare and specialized endemics. We studied niche characteristics and patterns of distribution and abundance of terrestrial vertebrates in the rainforests of the Australian Wet Tropics (AWT) to identify mechanisms by which rare species might resist extinction. We show that species with narrow environmental niches and small geographic ranges tend to have high and uniform local abundances. The compensation of geographic rarity by local abundance is exact, such that total population size in the rainforest vertebrates of the AWT is independent of environmental specialization. This effect would tend to help equalize extinction risk for specialists and generalists. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that environmental specialists have been gradually accumulating in this fauna, indicating that small range size/environmental specialization can be a successful trait as long as it is compensated for by demographic commonness. These results provide an explanation of how range-restricted specialists can persist for long periods, so that they now form a major component of high-diversity assemblages such as the AWT.

Identification and dynamics of a cryptic suture zone in tropical rainforest.

Suture zones, shared regions of secondary contact between long-isolated lineages, are natural laboratories for studying divergence and speciation. For tropical rainforest, the existence of suture zones and their significance for speciation has been controversial. Using comparative phylogeographic evidence, we locate a morphologically cryptic suture zone in the Australian Wet Tropics rainforest. Fourteen out of 18 contacts involve morphologically cryptic phylogeographic lineages, with mtDNA sequence divergences ranging from 2 to 15 per cent. Contact zones are significantly clustered in a suture zone located between two major Quaternary refugia. Within this area, there is a trend for secondary contacts to occur in regions with low environmental suitability relative to both adjacent refugia and, by inference, the parental lineages. The extent and form of reproductive isolation among interacting lineages varies across species, ranging from random admixture to speciation, in one case via reinforcement. Comparative phylogeographic studies, combined with environmental analysis at a fine-scale and across varying climates, can generate new insights into suture zone formation and to diversification processes in species-rich tropical rainforests. As arenas for evolutionary experimentation, suture zones merit special attention for conservation.

Influence of rhodamine 123 on the photosensitizing properties of porphyrins.

The photophysical and photochemical properties of porphyrins were profoundly changed upon addition of rhodamine 123. The Soret band of the porphyrins shifted to higher wavelengths, the fluorescence yield of the porphyrins decreased with unaltered decay rates, and their triplet state was quenched. These observations indicate a strong interaction between porphyrins and rhodamine 123 and formation of 1:1 nonfluorescent complexes, of which the binding constants were determined. Illumination of a porphyrin in the presence of rhodamine 123 resulted in the formation of a porphyrin radical cation, which could be detected with ESR spectroscopy. Quenching of the triplet state of the porphyrins by rhodamine 123 resulted in a decreased singlet oxygen yield and a decrease of the photooxidation of histidine, methionine, tyrosine, and tryptophan. However, the oxidation of thiol compounds was increased and the stoichiometry of the reaction between cysteine and oxygen changed from 2 to 3.8 mol cysteine/ mol oxygen. These results show that the presence of rhodamine 123 converted the for porphyrins prevalent energy transfer (type II) reaction to an electron transfer (type I) reaction.

Interaction of photodynamically induced cell killing and dark cytotoxicity of rhodamine 123.

Loss of clonogenicity of Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells, murine L929 fibroblasts and human bladder carcinoma T24 cells caused by photodynamic treatment (PDT) with hematoporphyrin derivative (HPD) is synergistically enhanced by subsequent incubation with rhodamine 123 in the dark. For CHO and L929 cells this synergistic interaction can be explained by an increased uptake of rhodamine 123 as the result of the photodynamic treatment. With aluminum phthalocyanine (AIPC) as photosensitizer only additive effects were observed in the three cell lines. Incubation in the dark with rhodamine 123, followed by a photodynamic treatment with HPD, resulted in an antagonistic interaction with regard to loss of colony formation. With AIPc the combination of treatments resulted in an additive effect with L929 and T24 cells, whereas with CHO cells a slight antagonistic interaction was observed. An antagonistic effect was also observed in model experiments, treating histidine photodynamically with HPD and measuring oxygen consumption. A possible explanation of these results could be an interaction or complex formation of rhodamine 123 with HPD resulting in a diminished singlet oxygen production. With AIPc this does not take place.