2nd International Conference on Ecology, Ecosystems and Conservation biology July 11-12,2018 Toronto,Ontario,Canada

Pan’s academic commitments in zoology, primatology and conservation related to Asian and African regions, particularly China, have resulted in more than 90 publications with more than 30 scholars in China, Australia, the UK, the USA and South Africa. He has successfully conducted 36 research projects sponsored by the foundations in China, Australia, the USA, the UK and South Africa. His current specific focus is on the devastated ecosystem in China and its unprecedented impacts on fauna and flora as well as human society, which was initiated from his publication of Science Commentary in AJP (the first one listed about), and the submitted manuscript of “The Primate Extinction Crisis in China: Immediate Challenges and A Way Forward” to Diversity and Conservation, and the one whose abstract is attached here. He is playing a leading role for such a mission by bringing together scientists in Australia, the USA, Mexico, Brazil and China.

In the face of the dramatized Old China, unprecedented human population growth and driven by mercantilism, China has since the 1950s embarked upon an important period of agricultural expansion, industrialization, economic reforms, and urbanization, which collectively depended principally on the depletion of natural resources and land conversion. The results based on a database from the World Bank composing 42 variables of eco-social development and the records on the related emissions in Asia indicate that 12 (23.7%) of them in China show larger values than the averages of the region; and the Euclidian distance between China and non China Asia shows a linear increase from the 1960s to the end of the last century. That is, China stands out alone in its negative impact on Asian ecosystem. The backgrounds rooted such unique scenarios are discussed. The factors leading up to such catastrophe, including extravagant depletion of the natural resources and land conversion, large scales of deforestation and contaminated lands, agriculture and water, excessive dam construction, heavily polluted air and remarkably increased human expansion, are presented. We also presented some scenarios showing how the fauna and the flora in China severely have been impacted, rigid climate pattern appeared and human society has been challenged unprecedentedly due to the prominent declining birth rate, mountainous burdens on the public health system, ubiquitously contaminated food chain and drink water, which has led to remarkably increased infertility and higher rates of cancer, lung and respiratory diseases and the booming immigration. Such devastating impact has raised a great attention following the spreading not just in Asia, but also to Western America. This study delivery a strong alarming message not just to China but also the other region: such an eco-social development model is also a pathway to devastating the whole global wellbeing, particularly humans.

Professor Zhanqing Hao focused on the biodiversity and ecological functions. As one of the Chinese scientists who participated in biodiversity research, he initiated the establishment of 25ha temperate permanent monitoring forest plot in Northeast China at 2004, which is the earliest temperate forest plot in China and had been an important member of Chinese Forest Biodiversity Monitoring Network (CForBio). After that, a series of forest plots had been established along successional stages and latitude gradients. All those forest plots provided the opportunity to detect the biodiversity patterns and maintaining mechanisms in temperate forests.

The trait-based approach is widely used in the study of different processes (dispersal limitation, habitat filtering, and limitation similarity) underlying community assembly. However, most researches are based on trait mean value, which only considers interspecific trait variation. Due to the genetic and environmental difference, a functional trait can also exhibit significant intraspecific trait variation (ITV). Thus disentangle whether and how will the detection of the relative importance of ecological process be influenced by the inclusion of ITV is of significant meaning for our understanding of community assembly. Here,we collected community composition data and 8 functional traits in a young (24 ha) and an old (25 ha) growth forest plot.We analyzed the relative importance of different process based on a recently developed modeling technique (STEPCAM).Moreover, we detect the effect of ITV on the relative importance with and without ITV. We found that dispersal limitation is most important at 20m scale in two forest plots, followed by habitat filtering, and limiting similarity had a minor effect. When taking ITV into consideration, the proportion of deterministic process (habitat filtering and limiting similarity) improved at the early successional stage, while such effect was not found at a late successional stage. Moreover, based on a single trait, we found the deterministic process only improved for the nutrition absorb related trait when we consider of ITV at a late successional stage, which implies the importance of soil condition on community assembly at this scale. In conclusion, our study highlights the importance of ITV for the detection of a trait-based ecological process in this temperate forest across successional stages.

Oil-mining companies have to subject waste water to expensive treatment before it can be discharged on land or at sea to comply with environment regulations. This study aims at developing an economically valid and applied comprehensive solution that takes advantage of oil-contaminated brackish salty water disposed by the General Petroleum Company in Egypt,maximizes its economic value and ensures its safe use in the environment. Three fields in RasSidr site of the company were inspected. Two main common plant species to RasSidr, Tamarix niloteca tree and Phragmites australis grass, that are tolerant to salinity along with Pongamia pinnata tree that is a leguminous and suitable for the RasSidr environment and grow close to saline-tiled beaches were used. These plants together with their associated bacteria of endophytes and rhizosphere that utilize crude oil as a carbon and energy source was considered a useful combination of bioremediation agents. Initially, soil characteristics were determined by analyzing soil samples taken at depths of 25 cm and 50 cm, and bacterial content of soil around the roots and within plant tissues was examined. Discharged water (@50 m3day-1) was used in irrigating plant fields in amounts sufficient to plant needs only. Growth parameters of plants were assessed four times in an interval of two months.Preliminary results indicated that growth rates in plant length, number of branches and stem girth, and chlorophyll content of oil-polluted water-irrigated plants of the two plant species were not significantly different (p≤0.05) from plants irrigated with fresh water. The number of bacteria in the soil increased significantly (p≥0.05) over time, and the color of residual oil in the soil was fading, indicating its decomposition. Soil under Tamarix niloteca contained similar quantities of microorganisms in both coastal saline-alkali soil and inland arid region indicating that colonization of the plant provided stable growth conditions for microorganisms. These plants and endophytes and rhizosphere combination played the main rule in the in-situ bioremediation process, and were efficient in removing around 70 % of the initial traces of crude oil within two months. They also provide safe environment and promote plant growth. They were able to decompose hydrocarbons and residues of crude oil as they possess special physiological mechanisms (PGPR) turns polluted water to safe water for human and environmental, and meanwhile achieving the objectives of this work. These results indicated that Tamarix niloteca and Phragmites australis are promising agents for treating oil-polluted salty wastewater in other fields of crude oil mining.