Stanhopea is an orchid’s genus that includes 55 species distributed from Mexico to Argentina. However, due its horticultural potential, a decrease in wild populations has been generated by the effect of over-collecting, further aggravated habitat destruction, placing some risk categories. In this work, potential distribution areas six endemic and Federal Natural Protected Area (ANP) were modele...

NATO’s strategic transformation will have an important impact on the Alliance’s approach to the Mediterranean and on the future of its Mediterranean Initiative. During the Cold War, NATO’s strategy, doctrine, and military capabilities were oriented toward deterring a military threat from the Soviet Union. Today, the threats and challenges are more diverse—and more indirect. They range from ethn...

1. According to meta-population models, a superior competitor and a superior disperser can coexist in a patchy environment. The two anemonefishes, a large aggressive Amphiprion clarkii Bennett and a small less-aggressive A. perideraion Bleeker, use the same host anemone Heteractis crispa Ehrenberg on a coral reef, Okinawa, Japan, where most of the hosts disappeared after the coral bleaching in ...

Six species of sea turtles occur in the Pacific Ocean (green turtles, loggerheads, leatherbacks, hawksbills, olive ridleys and flatbacks). All species, except flatbacks, have transboundary distributions. The status of most sea turtle stocks in the Pacific Ocean is poorly understood. Some stocks are increasing, such as in eastern Australia and Hawaii. However, there is evidence that many stocks ...

BACKGROUND The wild relatives of crops represent a major source of valuable traits for crop improvement. These resources are threatened by habitat destruction, land use changes, and other factors, requiring their urgent collection and long-term availability for research and breeding from ex situ collections. We propose a method to identify gaps in ex situ collections (i.e. gap analysis) of crop...

BACKGROUND Despite accelerated global population declines due to targeted and illegal fishing pressure for many top-level shark species, the impacts of coastal habitat modification have been largely overlooked. We present the first direct comparison of the use of natural versus artificial habitats for the bull shark, Carcharhinus leucas, an IUCN 'Near-threatened' species--one of the few truly e...

Many services generated by forest ecosystems provide essential support for human well-being. However, the vulnerability of these services to environmental change such as forest fragmentation are still poorly understood. We present spatial modeling of the generation of ecosystem services in a human-dominated landscape where forest habitat patches, protected by local taboos, are located in a matr...