Rarity

The decade that goes from the end of the Napster's era (first P2P network closed by US authorities, in 2001) and the fall of MegaUpload (world network of file sharing closed in 2012 by the New Zealand authorities) is characterized by the progressive decline of the technological barriers relating to home video downloading practices. However, few studies focuses on illegal downloading practices considering it as the reflect of a changing behavior and consumption of film audiences. This article attempts to describe the file sharing experience observed during nearly ten years on the online non-official video market. This paper puts forth the hypothesis of a growing disagreement with the basic commercial online video offers, by ordinary film viewers, which are increasingly informed and experts in cinema rarities. Based on the results of a qualitative survey conducted among file sharing users, we show that the downloading and streaming remain practices strongly correlated with the profane knowledge of film consumers and the new trend of the niche cinephilia.

Keywords : movies, Internet, film viewers, ordinary experts, file sharing practices, streaming, niche cinephilia, rarity.

Although molluscs feature prominently in the semi-popular and academic literature on marine biodiversity, field surveys largely ignore the small and rare species that form the majority of marine molluscan diversity. As a result of a massive effort to sample the benthic molluscs of a complex tropical coastal environment, 23,238 gastropod specimens representing 259 species of Triphoridae—a family with most adult species ranging from 2 to 10 mm—were obtained from a 45,000 hectares study area off the island of Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. Most species are represented by fewer than 20 specimens and, despite the intensity of the sampling effort, 13% of the species are unique singletons. Spatial heterogeneity was high: out of 416 sampling events, 187 contained triphorids, and 42% of the species occurred at fewer than 5 stations. Most species were small (68% below 5 mm) or very small (22% below 3 mm). A faunal turnover was documented at around 10 m, and another at around 60 m, at the onset of the ‘‘twilight zone’’ that is particularly difficult to sample. On the order of 70% of the species are probably new to science. When dealing with taxonomically difficult groups a morphospecies segregation approach is operationally appropriate to detect patterns of richness, rarity and spatial turn-over. Very few, if any, conservation surveys have the human and funding resources to carry out baseline surveys of the intensity that generated the results presented here. However, as species numbers are often used to promote the conservation interest of a reef, a bay or a stretch of coast, it is essential to know how the numbers were generated: absolute numbers of species are meaningless unless sampling effort and techniques, area surveyed, and size classes targeted are described. This is very rarely the case, even in the academic literature.

Objetivou-se avaliar as espécies arbóreas raras e comuns da família Myrtaceae amostradas pelo Inventário
Florístico Florestal de Santa Catarina na Floresta Estacional Decidual. Esta floresta ocorre ao longo do rio
Uruguai e afluentes, sob baixas temperaturas no inverno e chuvas bem distribuídas ao longo do ano, com
árvores do dossel e emergentes predominantemente caducifólias. Coletaram-se dados em 78 unidades amostrais
com 0,40 ha cada, registrando-se árvores com diâmetro na altura do peito ≥ 10 cm. Utilizou-se a metodologia
Rabinowitz para segregar as espécies em raras ou comuns, considerando três variáveis: distribuição geográfica,
especificidade por habitat e tamanho populacional. Das 28 espécies amostradas, 78,57% (22 spp.) apresentaram
alguma forma de raridade e 21,43% (6 spp.) foram comuns. As espécies de Myrtaceae na Floresta Estacional
Decidual são, em geral, amplamente distribuídas, mas seletivas quanto ao habitat e possuem poucos indivíduos.
Destacam-se três espécies consideradas raras na floresta avaliada: Eugenia subterminalis, Myrcianthes gigantea
e Siphoneugena reitzii com um indivíduo cada. Campomanesia xanthocarpa foi a espécie mais comum. Todas
as espécies avaliadas são zoocóricas e podem ser utilizadas em restauração ambiental.

Thinking over some important issues from Foucault, Colombo and Pêcheux the following questions are proposed: (a) the scientific status of Information Science under the epistemological spots, as point by authors like Foucault; (b) some Information Science fundamental ideas, mainly information explosion compared to Foucualt’s discourse rarity; (c) some aspects concerned to memory nowadays using Fausto Colombo’s idea of support fragility and artificial memory. At last part, helped by Pêcheux concepts it is argued the professional education on information that supposes the possibility of neutrality on files reading practices.

Materia médica explores the intersection of the sciences and humanities in Spanish sixteenth and seventeenth century representations of the extraordinary within the larger scheme of the Baroque. Medical and chirurgical treatises, discourses, letters, broadsheets, and paratexts of the period share with the humanities thought processes, methods, patterns, and—most importantly—some forms of description. Archival evidence broadens the spectrum of these texts, and cases are frequently compared to similar instances in disciplines such as theology, literature, and the law.

Materia médica maps, among other notions, the imagination, the spectacular, the legendary and the "novelesque" in scientific writing, and examines the influence of the theatrical in representations of medical cases as stated by doctors themselves. The analyses of Materia médica tilt between the world of fact and fantasy, and explore the effect of the descriptions of its cases on the social sphere. An eclectic monograph, it is intended for specialists in both early-modern culture and intellectual history. It also appeals to scholars who are particularly interested in the history of the rare, the unusual, and the monstrous, a fertile niche that is very much in the spirit of sixteenth and seventeenth century Western thought.

Effective conservation of rare plant species requires a detailed understanding of their unique distributions and habitat requirements to identify conservation targets. Research suggests that local conservation efforts may be one of the best means for accomplishing this task. We conducted a geographical analysis of the local distributions of rare plants in Napa County, California, to identify spatial relationships with individual habitat types. We measured the potential contribution of individual habitats to rare plant conservation by integrating analyses on overall diversity, species per area, specificity-weighted richness, presence of hotspots, and the composition of the rare plant community in each habitat type. This combination of analyses allowed us to determine which habitats are most significant for rare plant conservation at a local scale. Our analyses indicated that several habitat types were consistently associated with rare plant species. In broad terms, grasslands, oak forests, coniferous forests, wetlands, serpentines, chaparral, and rock outcrops were most consistently highlighted. No single habitat stood out in every analysis however, and therefore we conclude that careful selection of an assemblage of habitats that best represents diverse, restricted and unique rare plant communities will be the most efficient approach to protecting rare plant habitat at local scales. Accordingly we present a means of identifying conservation targets and protecting global biodiversity through local efforts.

Natural hybridisation is a widespread phenomenon, particularly well documented in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, where it has been ascribed substantial evolutionary and adaptive relevance. Hybridisation has received comparatively less attention in marine systems, though there has been a recent surge of reported marine hybrids, particularly among corals and fishes. This review summarises the current knowledge of hybridisation in marine fishes, with a focus on ecological and behavioural factors that may play a role in hybridisation processes. Rarity of one or both parental species within the hybrid zone, overlap in habitat use, dietary overlap and the breakdown in assortative mating appear to have a role in facilitating hybridisation. Despite this, most of the recent literature on marine fish hybridisation has a strong genetic focus, with little or no quantitative information about the ecological and behavioural factors that initiate or facilitate hybridisation. Future studies should attempt to gather ecological and behavioural data from hybrid zones, thus teasing out which processes are most relevant to overcoming pre-zygotic barriers to reproductive isolation. Not only will this advance our understanding of the adaptive and evolutionary relevance of hybridisation in marine fishes, but it will also provide unique insights into the maintenance of reproductive isolation and the process of speciation in the marine environment.

Understanding the causes of rarity has become increasingly important for the conservation and management of plant species. In this study, we compared spatial distribution, habitat characteristics, and population size and structure of two closely related species of poppy occurring in the Himalaya, the rare and endemic Meconopsis napaulensis and the widespread common congener M. paniculata in order to explain the causes of rarity of the former species. This study was carried out in Langtang National Park, north-central Nepal covering six populations of M. napaulensis and four populations of M. paniculata. Analysis of the habitat features revealed greater tendency of M. napaulensis to exhibit high habitat specificity. It was restricted to nutrient-poor, open and rocky habitats at >3700 m asl. Sites where M. paniculata were sampled showed high variability in terms of edaphic and topographic features. Mean ‘area of occupancy’ tended to be high for M. paniculata compared to M. napaulen...

Serpentine soils have attracted the attention of evolutionary biologists for decades because of their high number of rare and endemic taxa, though less is known about the ecological factors that govern the diversity and composition of serpentine communities. Theory suggests that vegetation on these low-productivity soils will be relatively resilient to fire, the most common natural disturbance in serpentine systems.
We studied the recovery of vegetation in Darlingtonia fens, a unique habitat dominated by herbaceous perennials, from a major fire that burned ∼202,000 ha in California and Oregon's Klamath Mountains in 2002. We established permanent plots in eight unburned and eight burned fens in 2003 and recorded percent cover of vascular plant species. We re-sampled plots each year through 2007.
Burned fens had less plant cover than unburned fens for 2 yr after the fire. Average species density was ∼10% lower in burned fens 1 yr after the fire but ∼4-8% higher for the next 4 yr. Burned fens exhibited greater evenness but not until 4 yr after the fire. Differences in community composition were detected between the two fen types, but species ranks were similar, and species neither were added to nor removed from the burned assemblages.
Burning of Darlingtonia fens has detectable, albeit modest, effects on serpentine communities. Because fens have little or no canopy cover, fire has little influence on light availability in this system. This relatively small resource change, combined with high soil moisture and well-developed underground organs of fen plants, produces a highly resilient assemblage.

The relationships between rarity (i.e., range-size, local abundance) and niche-breadth can be important to assess the risks the species face under global change, namely those resulting from fire regime change. In fire areas, germination is critical for establishing after fire for many species.
We examined the relationships between rarity and germination niche-breadth for 53 plant species of two life-forms (chamaephytes and hemicryptophytes)
growing in Eastern Spain. Rarity was measured as geographic range-size and as local abundance. Local abundance was evaluated at two sites differing in their post-fire successional status (a recently burned area and a long-unburned one).
Germination niche-breadth was measured as the mean germination evenness index from four germination experiments that subjected the seeds to
various germinating conditions characteristics of fire environments. Correlations between rarity (range-size, local abundance) and niche-breadth
were calculated in cross-species mode or by way of phylogenetically independent contrasts, and either for the 53 species (all-species set) or for each of two life-form groups (chamaephytes, hemicryptophytes).
In general, no significant correlations were found between the rarity measures and germination nichebreadth for the all-species set. However, significant correlations emerged when the analyses were done separating species by life-forms. Germination nichebreadth was positively correlated with range-size for chamaephytes, and negatively for hemicryptophytes.
In addition, germination niche-breadth was uncorrelated, or negatively so, with local abundance for chamaephytes and hemicryptophytes, respectively.
While no correlation between range-size and local abundance was found for chamaephytes, a negative one was obtained for hemicryptophytes. We conclude that rarity/germination-niche relationships varied by life-form. This pattern of relationships was obscured when all species were joined in a
single group. Based on the contrasting patterns of correlations obtained for each life-form we argue that the changes in the germinating environment
caused by alterations in fire regime are likely to differentially affect these two groups of species.

Plant diversity and rarity have been relatively well studied for bryophytes in Canadian western boreal peatlands, but there is little information on vascular plants. Diversity, community composition, and rarity of bryophytes and vascular plants were determined, and relationships examined among these and environmental variables in five peatland types at Duck Mountain, Manitoba: wooded bogs, black spruce swamps, wooded moderate-rich fens, open moderate-rich fens, and open extreme-rich fens. Total diversity was 299 species, comprised of 87 bryophytes and 212 vascular plants. Mean diversity followed a unimodal distribution over a bog – rich fen gradient. Wooded moderate-rich fens (59.0) and black spruce swamps (53.4) had the highest mean diversity, whereas wooded bogs (32.3) and open extreme-rich fens (34.7) had the lowest mean diversity. Occurrences of locally rare species followed the same general pattern, and provincially rare vascular plants were found primarily in wooded moderate-rich fens and black spruce swamps, and were mostly orchids. Reasons for these patterns are complex, but high diversity appears to be related to high habitat heterogeneity and moderate environmental variables, such as pH and alkalinity and low diversity appears related to environmental extremes, e.g., pH and alkalinity, in bogs and extreme-rich fens. Wooded peatlands have comparatively high plant diversity and rarity and require consideration if the focus is biodiversity conservation. This will become increasingly important in landscapes where development pressures are high.

Locally rare taxa are those that are rare or uncommon within a local geographical boundary while more common outside of that boundary. In addition to the rare taxa identified by global, national, and state/provincial levels, locally rare taxa are important for the preservation of species diversity and ecological processes, and therefore require effective and recognizable conservation status. Currently, there are no specific local rarity criteria in use to categorize taxa at regional jurisdictional levels. To address this need, we developed criteria for categorizing locally rare plant taxa by using the framework the Natural Heritage Network's Element Ranking System combined with attributes of the World Conservation Union's Red List Criteria. We then tested the efficacy of our classification system (called L-ranks) on the flora of Napa County using a geographic information system and available plant distribution data for the State of California. Results indicated that 89 taxa from 34 families met the area of occupancy criteria for local rarity status. Our findings demonstrated that with available geographic data, the proposed criteria for classifying locally rare plants can be usefully applied at the county level to identify significant peripheral plant populations. The proposed L-rank system was specifically designed to be compatible with existing multi-scale conservation programs and will augment the current systems in use by local organizations. By systematically classifying locally rare plants, current regulations that are applicable to locally rare taxa may be used more effectively in conservation planning and prioritizing at the county scale.

The aim of this work is to examine whether there exists a link between local and landscape patterns of species commonness, and if these are related to morphological traits in tropical plant communities. The Madidi region (Bolivian tropical Andes) is
selected as study location. We estimated local and landscape commonness, rarity classes, height, diameter, number of stems, and habit for[2,300 species. We employed correlations
to evaluate the relationship between local scale commonness and landscape scale commonness. We performed ANCOVA and multinomial logistic regressions to predict commonness
and rarity variables from the morphological traits. We repeated the analyses for six different forest types, including dry forests and wet forests along a 3,477 m elevation gradient. We found a positive relationship between local and landscape commonness in all