Animals living at high altitude must adapt to environments with hypoxia and low temperatures, but relatively little is known about underlying genetic changes. Toad-headed lizards of the genus Phrynocephalus cover a broad altitudinal gradient of over 4000 m and are useful models for studies of such adaptive responses. In one of the first studies to have considered selection on mitochondrial protein-coding regions in an ectothermic group distributed over such a wide range of environments, we analysed nineteen complete mitochondrial genomes from all Chinese Phrynocephalus (including eight genomes sequenced for the first time). Initial analyses used site and branch-site model (program: PAML) approaches to examine nonsynonymous: synonymous substitution rates across the mtDNA tree. Ten positively selected sites were discovered, nine of which corresponded to subunits ND2, ND3, ND4, ND5, and ND6 within the respiratory chain enzyme mitochondrial Complex I (NADH Coenzyme Q oxidoreductase). Four of these sites showed evidence of general long-term selection across the group while the remainder showed evidence of episodic selection across different branches of the tree. Some of these branches corresponded to increases in altitude and/or latitude. Analyses of physicochemical changes in protein structures revealed that residue changes at sites that were under selection corresponded to major functional differences. Analyses of coevolution point to coevolution of selected sites within the ND4 subunit, with key sites associated with proton translocation across the mitochondrial membrane. Our results identify mitochondrial Complex I as a target for environment-mediated selection in this group of lizards, a complex that frequently appears to be under selection in other organisms. This makes these lizards good candidates for more detailed future studies of molecular evolution.

In order to explore the landscape pattern evolution and driving forces of the Yilong Lake watershed, the combined method of supervised classification with manual visual interpretation based on the landsat5TM/8OLI remote sensing image data sources was used to establish a high-precision spatial distribution information database of the Yilong Lake watershed. Landscape index was used to analyze the distribution and spatial pattern change characteristics of various land-use types. Based on correlation and principal component analysis, we discuss the relationship between the change characteristics of land-use type, distribution and spatial pattern, and the interference of local socio-economic development and natural factors. The results show that: (1) In the past 30 years, the land-use types of the Yilong Lake watershed are mainly forest, garden plot and cultivated land. The forest area decreased significantly by 30.45 km², of which the fastest reduction stage was from 2000 to 2005, with a total reduction of 20.56 km². The garden plot conversion is relatively large, with a total of 181.69 km² transferred out, of which 28.84 km² has become unused land, respectively. (2) In the past 30 years, the maximum patch index decreased by 9.94% and the patch density index increased by 14.25%, indicating that the landscape fragmentation in the whole basin increased. The Shannon diversity index showed an increasing process; the aggregation index showed a decreasing process. (3) The change in landscape pattern in the watershedwas closely related to economic growth, population growth, social affluence and agricultural development. Natural factors, social factors and economic indicators are significantly positively correlated with patch density, edge density, landscape shape index and Shannon diversity index, and significantly negatively correlated with the largest patch index and the contagion index. On the whole, the wetlands in the basin are shrinking and the landscape diversity is changing. Reducing the excessive impact of human activities on the watershed ecosystem is a key factor for the local protection of wetland resources and the maintenance of wetland ecological functions.

It is essential to study the characteristics of land use change in the Fuxian Lake basin, a plateau lake in Yunnan Province, and to predict the basin’s future trend of land use change for sustaining the key carriers of current national major strategies such as ecological civilization, green development, and rural revitalization. This study used the Fuxian Lake basin as the subject and based on the seven periods of historical land use data, added six driving factors including human and natural factors, applied patches to generate the land-use simulation model (PLUS), and forecasted and analyzed the characteristics of land-use change in the basin in 2048 under the three scenarios of natural trend development, ecological protection, and production protection. The results showed that: (1) the overall simulation accuracy of the model was 79.14%, Kappa index was 0.73, FOM value was 0.29, and the model’s consistency was high. The model can be used to simulate future land-use changes in the Fuxian Lake basin. (2) In the natural development scenario, land-use development and the driving factors in the basin have the following relationship: rainfall and trunk road distance significantly impacted the types of land that emphasize ecological conservation and product development. Elevation and soil distribution characteristics had a significant impact on land types focused mainly on water zones and ecological protection. The land types mainly focused on urban construction were greatly affected by elevation, trunk road distance, GDP per capita, and other factors. (3) The main direction of land-use change in the watershed is the mutual conversion between farmland and forest land, with the continuous expansion of construction land. In the production protection scenario, the area of farmland increased by 44.79 hm². In the ecological protection scenario, the area of arbor forest land increased by 37.85 hm² and the area of shrub forest land decreased by 62.37 hm². (4) From the perspective of spatial distribution patterns, the regional hotspot change blocks are mainly concentrated in the north of the basin, along the coast of the north of Fuxian Lake, and the southern land. In general, the PLUS model had good applicability in this study. The simulation results of the different scenarios were in line with the land development in the Fuxian Lake basin and can provide scientific reference for land-space planning, ecological and production land constraints, and coordination of development in the Fuxian Lake basin.

We investigated population dynamics, breeding pairs, breeding habitat selection, nest density, distance between neighboring nests, nest survival, reproductive success, and recruitment rate for Black-necked Cranes (BNC,Grus nigricollis) during 2013–2015 in Yanchiwan National Nature Reserve (YCW), Gansu, China. Numbers of BNC and breeding pairs remained relatively stable at around 140 individuals and 40 pairs. Recruitment rates ranged from 15.7% to 25.8%. The average nest distance was 718.66 ± 430.50 m (2013), 1064.51 ± 323.99 m (2014) and 534.99 ± 195.45 m (2015). Average nest survival rate, hatching success, and breeding success of all 29 nests were 65.56 ± 5.09%, 57.04 ± 6.12% and 32.78% ± 2.55. Water depth, water body area, and distance to land were positively related to nest survival, while disturbance level showed a negative relationship. However, nest site selection of BNC was determined by habitat type, disturbance and water depth. BNC often foraged in mudflats and freshwater marsh but seldom foraged in saline-alkali wet meadows due to food density and quantity in April, the month when BNC choose nest sites. Conservation strategies based on habitats should consider ecological factors that may not be well predicted by nest site selection. Shifts within core-use areas from satellite tracking of BNC demonstrated that maintaining populations demands that conservation areas are large enough to permit breeding BNC changes in space use. Our results are important for conservation management and provide quantitative reproductive data for this species.

Ecosystem monitoring involves fully understanding the complex interactions of ecosystem progress and providing massive scientific data to answer research questions. Fetching data in extreme areas without a public network largely relies on human efforts. Along with the ongoing advances of the Internet of Things (IoT), the Internet of Remote Things (IoRT), as a new paradigm, is being pursued. In this paper, we improve the previous drone-enabled IoRT system and innovatively integrate the system with ecological monitoring devices for wildlife, phenology and environmental monitoring, and the monitored data are remotely retrieved by drones. The experimental results indicate that the data transmission rate between the drone relay and the terrestrial terminal reaches up to 10-15 MB/s. Experiments further demonstrate that in terms of wildlife monitoring, the required time to retrieve an image cached on a terrestrial terminal is approximately 0.35 s, the time required to transfer a set of phenology data is 0.29 and 0.34 s, and in regard to environmental monitoring data, the average time consumption reaches approximately 0.0302 s. Moreover, we introduce a signal strength-based priority strategy that can reduce the time consumption of data transmission between the drone relay and the terrestrial terminal. The demonstrated applications reveal that monitoring devices deployed in remote extreme regions can be connected in the IoRT network, and the way to retrieve data from these deployed devices is being revolutionized by the drone-enabled IoRT network.