23A common focus for conservation planning is to identify locations for siting potential protected 24 areas, something that requires estimates for the costs of setting up these areas and benefits for 25 biodiversity of doing so. When cost data are not available over relevant scales, conservation 26 planners commonly rely on proxy data that they hope will estimate conservation costs. Here, we 27 assessed how accurately agricultural land values, a commonly used proxy for cost data in 28 conservation planning, estimates the actual acquisition costs of protected areas, focusing on a 29case study from the central and southern Appalachians. We compared plans based on cost 30 estimates derived from different sources and that involved different levels of spatial aggregation 31to understand how a reliance on these estimates would impact conservation planning. We found 32 the average agricultural land value in a county did not accurately predict the acquisition costs of 33 protected areas in that county. This lack of accuracy was a result of choosing agricultural land 34 values as a proxy for acquisition costs, and not spatial averaging. A reliance on agricultural land 35 values risks diverting limited funds for establishing protected areas away from parcels that offer 36 the greatest return-on-investment. It would also lead a conservation organization to overestimate 37 the budget needed to protect a given number of species. Our findings highlight the importance of 38 incorporating data on how much protected areas actually cost in future conservation planning 39 studies. 40 3

Facing tight resource constraints, conservation organizations must allocate funds available for habitat protection as effectively as possible. Often, they combine spatially referenced economic and biodiversity data to prioritize land for protection. We tested how sensitive these prioritizations could be to differences in the spatial grain of these data by demonstrating how the conclusion of a classic debate in conservation planning between cost and benefit targeting was altered based on the available information. As a case study, we determined parcel-level acquisition costs and biodiversity benefits of land transactions recently undertaken by a nonprofit conservation organization that seeks to protect forests in the eastern United States. Then, we used hypothetical conservation plans to simulate the types of ex ante priorities that an organization could use to prioritize areas for protection. We found the apparent effectiveness of cost and benefit targeting depended on the spatial grain of the data used when prioritizing parcels based on local species richness. However, when accounting for complementarity, benefit targeting consistently was more efficient than a cost targeting strategy regardless of the spatial grain of the data involved. More pertinently for other studies, we found that combining data collected over different spatial grains inflated the apparent effectiveness of a cost targeting strategy and led to overestimation of the efficiency gain offered by adopting a more integrative return-on-investment approach.

Bacterial cultures exposed to iron-doped apatite nanoparticles (IDANPs) prior to the introduction of antagonistic viruses experience up to 2.3 times the bacterial destruction observed in control cultures. Maximum antibacterial activity of these bacteria-specific viruses, or phage, occurs after bacterial cultures have been exposed to IDANPs for 1 hr prior to phage introduction, demonstrating that IDANP-assisted phage therapy would not be straight forward, but would instead require controlled time release of IDANPs and phage. These findings motivated the design of an electrospun nanofiber mesh treatment delivery system that allows burst release of IDANPs, followed by slow, consistent release of phage for treatment of topical bacterial infections. IDANPs resemble hydroxyapatite, a biocompatible mineral analogous to the inorganic constituent of mammalian bone, which has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for many biomedical purposes. The composite nanofiber mesh was designed for IDANP-assisted phage therapy treatment of topical wounds and consists of a superficial, rapid release layer of polyethylene oxide (PEO) fibers doped with IDANPs, followed by inner, coaxial polycaprolactone / polyethylene glycol (PCL/PEG) blended polymer fiber layer for slower phage delivery. Our investigations have established that IDANP-doped PEO fibers are effective vehicles for dissemination of IDANPs for bacterial exposure and resultant increased bacterial death by phage. In this work, slower delivery of the phage behind IDANPs was accomplished using coaxial, electrospun fibers composed of PCL/PEG polymer blend.

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