Recent Status of Bear Habitation and Damage by Bears

The Trade in Bears and Bear Parts

Parts of bears have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years in Asia. The use originated in China, and then was adopted by users in Korea and Japan. Today, the use of traditional Chinese medicine is widespread throughout Asia and in Asian communities in North America and Europe. Bear bile from the bear gall bladder is one of the most treasured of traditional Chinese medi...

Introgressive hybridization: brown bears as vectors for polar bear alleles.

The dynamics and consequences of introgression can inform about numerous evolutionary processes. Biologists have therefore long been interested in hybridization. One challenge, however, lies in the identification of nonadmixed genotypes that can serve as a baseline for accurate quantification of admixture. In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Cahill et al. (2015) analyse a genomic data set of 28...

Space Habitation and Microbiology: Status and Roadmap of Space Agencies

1Human Health and Performance, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 1601, NASA Parkway, Houston, Texas 77058, USA; 2Space Environment Utilization Center, Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), 2–1–1 Sengen, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305–8505, Japan; 3Laboratory of Space and Environmental Medicine, Graduate School...

Grizzly bear space use, survival, and persistence in relation to human habitation and access

Previous studies showed that the likelihood of a bear becoming a nuisance and thus being removed from a population (i.e., relocated or killed) depends on numerous factors such as natural food supply, sex, age, and reproductive status. Distances from a bear’s home range and activity centers to confl ict zones such as towns, roads, and trails used by humans also aff ect the incidence of nuisance ...

Nutritional and Hormonal Status of Some Eastern Slopes Grizzly Bear Project Bears and Possible Links to Low Reproductive Output