Diversity

Marine benthic ecosystems comprise diverse communities living on or within the seafloor, spanning habitats from coastal environments to the deep ocean [...]

Wild bird trade poses a persistent threat to global biodiversity, highlighting the importance of long-term market monitoring for detecting changes in trade patterns and informing conservation and management. However, systematic assessments of long-term changes in physical bird markets at the city scale remain limited. Based on long-term surveys conducted in major physical bird markets in Beijing, China, from 2014 to 2026, we characterized the species composition and recorded numbers of wild birds, the representation of protected species, and their temporal variation. In total, 217 wild bird species and 29,803 individuals were recorded. Records were strongly concentrated taxonomically, with Passeriformes accounting for 89.4% of recorded species and 99.5% of recorded individuals. Twenty-eight species listed under China’s National Key Protected Wild Animals or in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendices were recorded, accounting for 12.9% of all recorded species and 35.7% of all recorded individuals. Seasonal patterns differed between species richness and individual records: spring had the highest cumulative number of recorded species (166 species, 76.5% of all recorded species), whereas autumn had the highest mean number of individuals recorded per survey (260.34 individuals per survey). Interannually, the number of wild birds observable in physical bird markets showed an overall declining trend. Overall, this study documents the long-term composition and temporal dynamics of wild bird records in physical bird markets in Beijing, providing a baseline for city-scale monitoring of wild bird trade and supporting the regulation of high-priority species and broader wild bird conservation and management.

Cliff habitats support distinctive plant communities, yet the vegetation characteristics associated with the natural occurrence of Dendrobium moniliforme remain poorly understood. This study characterized plant communities associated with the occurrence of D. moniliforme on a coastal cliff of Seonyudo Island, Republic of Korea, using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based vegetation surveys. A total of 56 plots, comprising 13 occurrence and 43 absence plots, were surveyed, and plant diversity, taxonomic composition, and life-form composition were compared between the two groups. Species richness was significantly lower in occurrence plots, whereas Shannon diversity was significantly higher. Plant community composition differed significantly between occurrence and absence plots (PERMANOVA, R² = 0.075, p = 0.0005), with several species contributing to the observed compositional differences. Life-form composition also differed significantly between the two groups (PERMANOVA, R² = 0.045, p = 0.028), with occurrence plots tending to show greater relative cover of chamaephytes, hemicryptophytes, geophytes, and epiphytes. These findings suggest that, within the studied coastal cliff, the occurrence of D. moniliforme is associated with differences in surrounding vegetation composition rather than simply greater species richness, providing site-specific baseline information for habitat characterization and conservation.