The combination of environmental and anthropogenic stressors has driven the global decline of coral reefs. Changing demographics of the human population and growing dependence on coral reef resources have necessitated mitigation measures to improve the sustainable use of the reef ecosystem. While management measures are useful in slowing the unprecedented loss of coral reefs, active restoration...

The rock partridge, Alectoris graeca, is a polytypic species declining in Italy mostly due to anthropogenic causes, including the massive releases of the closely related allochthonous chukar partridge Alectoris chukar which produced the formation of hybrids. Molecular approaches are fundamental for the identification of evolutionary units in the perspective of conservation and management, and t...

The nitrogen cycle of pre-industrial ecosystems has long been remarkably closed, in spite of the high mobility of this element in the atmosphere and hydrosphere. Inter-regional and international commercial exchanges of agricultural goods, which considerably increased after the generalization of the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, introduced an additional type of nitrogen mobility, which ...

Habitat fragmentation is one of the leading causes of population declines, threatening ecosystems worldwide. Freshwater taxa may be particularly sensitive to habitat loss as connectivity between suitable patches of habitat is restricted not only by the natural stream network but also by anthropogenic factors. Using a landscape genetics approach, we assessed the impact of habitat availability on...

Jellyfish blooms cause important ecological and socio-economic problems. Among jellyfish, cubozoans are infamous for their painful, sometimes deadly, stings and are a major public concern in tropical to subtropical areas; however, there is little information about the possible causes of their outbreaks. After a bloom of the cubomedusa Carybdea marsupialis (Carybdeidae) along the coast of Denia ...

Prediction of monsoon changes in the coming decades is important for infrastructure planning and sustainable economic development. The decadal prediction involves both natural decadal variability and anthropogenic forcing. Hitherto, the causes of the decadal variability of Northern Hemisphere summer monsoon (NHSM) are largely unknown because the monsoons over Asia, West Africa, and North Americ...

A significant influence of anthropogenic forcing has been detected in globaland continental-scale surface temperature, temperature of the free atmosphere, and global ocean heat uptake. This paper reviews outstanding issues in the detection of climate change and attribution to causes. The detection of changes in variables other than temperature, on regional scales and in climate extremes, is imp...

Anthropogenic environmental change is a powerful and ubiquitous evolutionary force, so it is critical that we determine the extent to which organisms can evolve in response to anthropogenic environmental change and whether these evolutionary responses have associated costs. This issue is particularly relevant for species of conservation concern including many amphibians, which are experiencing ...

Many vertebrates, including teleosts, rely on acoustic signals for communication (Myrberg and Lugli 2006 ) . Sound production has been documented in four species of sand gobies ( Pomatoschistus ). Males of the sand ( P. minutus ), marbled ( P. marmoratus ), and canestrini ( P. canestrinii ) gobies produce low-frequency pulsed sounds when females enter the nest (Lugli and Torricelli 1999 ) . The...

The crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) Acanthaster planci is one of the largest causes of coral cover loss on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Numerous trophic-mediated and anthropogenic-related hypotheses, singly or in combination, have been proposed to explain COTS outbreaks, but the evidence remains inconclusive. There is, however, an urgent need for effective control and mitigation strategies. ...