Biological diversity is important for ecosystem function and services, which in turn is essential for human well-being. Under the Convention on Biological Diversity, international efforts have been made to achieve a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss. The loss continues, however. The Asia-Pacific region includes both developing countries with high biodiversity and developed countries with sophisticated data collection and analyses, but only limited information about the status quo of biodiversity in this region has been available. Many Asia-Pacific countries have rapidly grown their economies and social infrastructures, causing a loss of biodiversity and requiring an urgent mandate to achieve a balance between development and conservation in the region. In December 2009, scientists successfully organized the Asia-Pacific Biodiversity Observation Network in the region, to establish a network for research and monitoring of ecosystems and biodiversity and to build a cooperative framework. The present volume is the first collection of information on biodiversity in the Asia-Pacific and represents a quantum step forward in science that optimizes the synergy between development and biodiversity conservation.

This volume focuses on new trends in monitoring biodiversity in the Asia-Pacific region, one of the most rapidly changing areas in the world. It provides reviews of the challenges in studying the spatial variability of biodiversity across various ecosystems. This book also describes newly developed concepts and methods for biodiversity observation including ubiquitous genotyping, systematic conservation, monitoring of the functions and services of ecosystems and biodiversity informatics. These contributions will lead to establishing integrative observations and assessments of biodiversity, essential for reporting the current status and for the effective conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. This work will interest biodiversity researchers not only in the Asia-Pacific region but also across the entire globe.

This book presents the latest topics in ecological and evolutionary research on aquatic biodiversity from bacteria to fishes, with special reference to Lake Biwa, an ancient lake in western Japan. With a geological history of 4 million years, Lake Biwa is the third oldest lake in the world. It is considered a biodiversity hotspot, where 1,769 aquatic species including 61 endemics are recorded, providing a rare opportunity to study the evolutionary diversification of aquatic biota and its ecological consequences. The first chapter introduces the evolutionary history of biodiversity, especially of fish in this lake. In the second chapter, some examples of trophic polymorphism in fish are described. Fish are keystone predators in lake ecosystems, and they can be a major driver for altering biological communities through their top-down trophic cascading effects. An excellent laboratory experiment is presented, demonstrating that functional diversity of fish feeding morphology alters food web properties of plankton prey communities. The third chapter focuses on aquatic microbes, whose abundance and diversity may also be influenced by the diversity of fish through top-down trophic cascades. Aquatic microbes can have a strong impact on ecosystem functioning in lakes, and in this chapter, the latest molecular techniques used to examine genetic and functional diversity of microbial communities are introduced. The final chapter presents theoretical frameworks for predicting how biodiversity has the potential to control the incidence and intensity of human-induced regime shifts. While respecting the precious nature of biodiversity in lakes, it is essential to be aware that modern human activities have brought a crisis of biodiversity loss in lakes worldwide. Throughout this book, readers will learn why biodiversity must be conserved at all levels, from genes to ecosystems.

Biological diversity is important for ecosystem function and services, which in turn is essential for human well-being. Under the Convention on Biological Diversity, international efforts have been made to achieve a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss. The loss continues, however. The Asia-Pacific region includes both developing countries with high biodiversity and developed countries with sophisticated data collection and analyses, but only limited information about the status quo of biodiversity in this region has been available. Many Asia-Pacific countries have rapidly grown their economies and social infrastructures, causing a loss of biodiversity and requiring an urgent mandate to achieve a balance between development and conservation in the region. In December 2009, scientists successfully organized the Asia-Pacific Biodiversity Observation Network in the region, to establish a network for research and monitoring of ecosystems and biodiversity and to build a cooperative framework. The present volume is the first collection of information on biodiversity in the Asia-Pacific and represents a quantum step forward in science that optimizes the synergy between development and biodiversity conservation.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation, ISAAC 2011, held in Yokohama, Japan in December 2011. The 76 revised full papers presented together with two invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 187 submissions for inclusion in the book. This volume contains topics such as approximation algorithms; computational geometry; computational biology; computational complexity; data structures; distributed systems; graph algorithms; graph drawing and information visualization; optimization; online and streaming algorithms; parallel and external memory algorithms; parameterized algorithms; game theory and internet algorithms; randomized algorithms; and string algorithms.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Algorithms and Computation, WALCOM 2008, held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in February 2008.

The 19 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 57 submissions. The papers feature original research in the areas of algorithms and data structures, combinatorial algorithms, graph drawings and graph algorithms, parallel and distributed algorithms, string algorithms, computational geometry, graphs in bioinformatics and computational biology. The papers are organized in topical sections on bioinformatics algorithms, computational geometry and graph drawing, graph algorithms, and algorithm engineering.

The abstracts and papers in this volume were presented at the Fifth Annual International Computing and Combinatorics Conference (COCOON '99), which was held in Tokyo, Japan from July 26 to 28, 1999. The topics cover most aspects of theoretical computer science and combinatorics pertaining to computing. In response to the call for papers, 88 high-quality extended abstracts were submitted internationally, of which 46 were selected for presentation by the p- gram committee. Every submitted paper was reviewed by at least three program committee members. Many of these papers represent reports on continuing - search, and it is expected that most of them will appear in a more polished and complete form in scienti c journals. In addition to the regular papers, this v- ume contains abstracts of two invited plenary talks by Prabhakar Raghavan and Seinosuke Toda. The conference also included a special talk by Kurt Mehlhorn on LEDA (Library of E cient Data types and Algorithms). The Hao Wang Award (inaugurated at COCOON '97) is given to honor the paper judged by the program committee to have the greatest scienti c merit. The recipients of the Hao Wang Award 1999 were Hiroshi Nagamochi and Tos- hide Ibaraki for their paper \An Approximation for Finding a Smallest 2-Edge- Connected Subgraph Containing a Speci ed Spanning Tree".

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference and Workshop on Algorithms and Computation, WALCOM 2019, held in Guwahati, India, in February/ March 2019. The 30 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 100 submissions. The papers are organized in topical headings on the facility location problem; computational geometry; graph drawing; graph algorithms; approximation algorithms; miscellaneous; data structures; parallel and distributed algorithms; and packing and covering.