These misassemblies usually contain SwaI restriction site differences (Table 2, Fig. 4), and some of them may bear gaps.
One such contrarian thinker, Michael Burke of Investors Intelligence, reported his latest numbers on adviser sentiment July 2. They show bulls outnumbering bears 53.1% to 20.9%–a narrowing of the huge bull-bear gap that earlier in June had been at its widest spread since April 1987.
Surprisingly, the annual rate of black bear-created gap formation was approximately 6.6 times that of tree-fall gap formation.
This formula and Sbroken branch method were computed using data on broken branches and were used to calculate black bear-created gap sizes for all affected trees in the study area.
Estimates of black bear-created gap size obtained using the hemispherical photograph method were significantly and positively correlated with values obtained using the broken branch method (r = 0.7700, p = 0.0033, R = 0.5928).
Also, the rate of bear-created gap formation was demonstrably higher than that of tree-fall gap formation in several previous studies: 42.0 m ha 1 yr–1 in an old-growth deciduous forest [ 33], 55.6 m ha 1 yr–1 in an evergreen broadleaf forest [ 34], and 81.3 m ha 1 yr–1 in a conifer/broadleaved forest [ 35] in Japan.
In total, 159 trees with Japanese black bear-created gaps were documented throughout the entire study area over 5 years.
No previous report has defined the canopy gaps created by black bears; here, we define these openings as gaps in the crown that are created when black bears break branches (openings without leaves or branches, as shown in Figure 2a).
Surprisingly, the annual rate of bear-created canopy gap formation reached 141.3 m ha 1 yr–1 on ridges, which were hot spots in terms of black bear activity.
Human-bear conflicts are increasing worldwide for many ursids [27] [29], and considering that wildlife agencies prefer to target management at humans rather than bears [16], the gap in knowledge about the effectiveness of education and enforcement is especially glaring for management of human-bear conflicts.
