T r q a r n t e p d h h i o t e s Most virologists would accept the concept that particular viruses often appear to have either acute or persistent patterns of host infection. The polyomaviruses of mammals, for example, uniformly establish persistent infections of a specific host. In contrast, it has recently become clear that avian polyomaviruses infect a broad array of bird species in an acut...

Acknowledgements: We thank the Leibniz Association for supporting this study in the research network Noncognitive Skills: Acquisition and Economic Consequences. Furthermore, Friedhelm Pfeiffer’s research was supported by the German Science Foundation’s grants PF 331/2 (Microeconometric Methods to Assess Heterogeneous Returns to Education) and PF 331/3 (Wages, Rent-Sharing and Collective Wage Ba...

Dispersal can have positive and negative effects on metapopulation stability and persistence. One prediction is that high levels of dispersal synchronize density fluctuations between subpopulations. However, little is still known about how biotic and abiotic factors combine to modify the effects of dispersal rate on synchrony and metapopulation dynamics. In a fully factorial experimental design...

The current four experiments examined the sunk cost effect-nonoptimal persistence following investment-in a laboratory-based decision-making task with adult humans. Subjects made repeated decisions about whether to persist in a course of action-a fixed-ratio schedule whose response requirements varied unpredictably from one trial to the next-or to abandon it and escape in favor of a new trial w...

The ideal conservation planning approach would enable decision-makers to use population viability analysis to assess the effects of management strategies and threats on all species at the landscape level. However, the lack of high-quality data derived from long-term studies, and uncertainty in model parameters and/or structure, often limit the use of population models to only a few species of c...

Plant communities and their ecosystem functions are expected to be more resilient to future habitat fragmentation and deterioration if the species comprising the communities have a wide range of dispersal and persistence strategies. However, the extent to which the diversity of dispersal and persistence traits in plant communities is determined by the current and historical characteristics of s...

In open field arenas, Drosophila adults exhibit a preference for arena boundaries over internal walls and open regions. Herein, we investigate the nature of this preference using phenomenological modeling of locomotion to determine whether local arena features and constraints on movement alone are sufficient to drive positional preferences within open field arenas of different shapes and with d...

The extent to which evolution is deterministic (predictable), or random, is a fundamental question in evolution. This case study attempts to determine the extent to which interspecific divergence can be predicted from intraspecific trends related species. The mountainous Lesser Antilles are occupied by one or two anole species with very substantial intraspecific differences in the quantitative ...

Habitat loss and fragmentation has created metapopulations where there were once continuous populations. Ecologists and conservation biologists have become interested in the optimal way to manage and conserve such metapopulations. Several authors have considered the effect of patch disturbance and recovery on metapopulation persistence, but almost all such studies assume that every patch is equ...

magnetohydrodynamic turbulence S. Servidio, W. H. Matthaeus, M. A. Shay, P. Dmitruk, P. A. Cassak, and M. Wan Department of Physics and Astronomy and Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, Cosenza I-87036, Italy Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires,...