Introduction Conclusions References

Immunocompetence benefits animal fitness by combating pathogens, but also entails some costs. One of its main components is fever, which in ectotherms involves two main types of costs: energy expenditure and predation risk. Whenever those costs of fever outweigh its benefits, ectotherms are expected not to develop fever, or even to show hypothermia, reducing costs of thermoregulation and divert...

Predation by introduced stoats is now considered a major threat to the population viability of several New Zealand endemic bird species. Historically stoat research and management has focused on beech forests and little is known about the ecology of stoats in the alpine grasslands occurring above the natural altitudinal limit of beech forest. Several stoat control operations in beech forest val...

Solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR, 290-400 nm) is a crucial environmental factor in alpine lakes because of the natural increase of the UVR flux with elevation and the high water transparency of these ecosystems. The ecological importance of UVR, however, has only recently been recognized. This review, examines the general features of alpine lakes regarding UVR, summarizes what is known about th...

We analyze seismic anisotropy for the Eastern Alpine region by inspecting shear-wave splitting from SKS and SKKS phases. The Eastern Alpine region is characterized by a breakdown of the clear mountain-chain-parallel fast orientation pattern that has been previously documented for the Western Alps and for the western part of the Eastern Alps. The main interest of this paper is a more detailed an...

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A ustralia, which lies southeast of Asia between the Indian and Pacific oceans, consists of the smallest continent (and the world’s largest island—approximately 4,000 km from east to west and 2,000 km from north to south) as well as the island of Tasmania. About a third of the continent is uninhabitable; in another third the rainfall is too low to permit close settlement. The climate varies fro...