INTRODUCTION Malaria is re-emerging in most of the African highlands exposing the non immune population to deadly epidemics. A better understanding of the factors impacting transmission in the highlands is crucial to improve well targeted malaria control strategies. METHODS AND FINDINGS A conceptual model of potential malaria risk factors in the highlands was built based on the available lite...

A checklist of Oppiidae sampled at Golden Gate Highlands National Park in central South Africa is provided. Twelve genera and 17 species were recorded of which one species, Arcoppia fenestralis, is recorded from South Africa for the first time. One new subgenus and six new species were identified and are described. The new species are Brachioppia louwi sp. nov., Brachioppiella (B.) dawidi sp. n...

Cairngorms as a Unique Extreme Environment: The Cairngorms is a sub-arctic site with a mixture of continental and oceanic climates. The area hosts a wide diversity of habitats, from native woodlands and open moorland through scrub and sub-arctic habitats [1]. The Cairngorms provides a good initial evaluation site for biosensing equipment and astrobiological instrumentation due to the variety an...

Leadbeater’s possum is an endangered species particular to mountain ash country in the Central Highlands of Victoria. The species is threatened by the outbreak of catastrophic wildfire and the loss of nesting sites resulting from logging trees younger than 150 years of age. A stochastic dynamic programming approach to determine how much logging should be foregone to enhance the probability of s...

The Phora of Costa Rica were reviewed and three species, all belonging to Schmitz's Group III, were recognized: P. americana Schmitz and Wirth, P. truncata new species and P. paramericana new species. Of the three species, P. americana is by far the most abundant, with the other two species being rarely collected. All specimens were collected in the central highlands of the country. The previou...

Our review recognizes 15 species of the integripennis species group of Geocharidius from Nuclear Central America, include three species previously described (Geocharidiusgimlii Erwin, Geocharidiusintegripennis (Bates) and Geocharidiuszullinii Vigna Taglianti) and 12 described here as new. They are: Geocharidiusandersoni sp. n. (type locality: Chiapas, Chiapas Highlands, Cerro Huitepec) and Geoc...

Different malarial situations in Africa within the past 40 years are discussed in order to evaluate the impact of climatic and human factors on the disease. North of the equator, more droughts and lower rainfall have been recorded since 1972; and in eastern and southern Africa, there have been alternating dry and wet periods in relation to El Niño. Since 1955, the increase in human population f...

Hypoxia is one of the most important factors affecting survival at high altitude, and the major hemoglobin protein is a likely target of selection. We compared population genetic structure in the alphaA and betaA hemoglobin subunits (HBA2 and HBB) of five paired lowland and highland populations of Andean dabbling ducks to unlinked reference loci. In the hemoglobin genes, parallel amino acid rep...