Seafloor biodiversity is a key mediator of ecosystem functioning, but its role is often excluded from global budgets or simplified to black boxes in models. New techniques allow quantification of the behavior of animals living below the sediment surface and assessment of the ecosystem consequences of complex interactions, yielding a better understanding of the role of seafloor animals in affect...

The performance of 4 seed-caching corvid species was tested using 2 different operant nonmatching tasks. These species differ in their dependence on stored food, and differences in spatial memory tests have been correlated with better performance by the more cache-dependent species. Acquisition and retention of a color non-matching-to-sample task was tested in Experiment 1. Acquisition of the c...

Traditional approaches for digitizing natural history collections, which include both imaging and metadata capture, are both labour- and time-intensive. Mass-digitization can only be completed if the resource-intensive steps, such as specimen selection and databasing of associated information, are minimized. Digitization of larger collections should employ an "industrial" approach, using the pr...

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) affects 15% of the Australian population and is a powerful and serious predictor of cardiovascular mortality yet continues to be under-recognised and undertreated. Diagnosis is simple and management is centred upon symptom relief and risk minimisation. While novel and specialised therapies play a role, the bulk of management is approachable and feasible. In thi...

MARIETTA L. BABA*, JULIA GLUESING, HILARY RATNER AND KIMBERLY H. WAGNER College of Social Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, U.S.A. Institute for Information Technology and Culture, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A. The Graduate School, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A. Human Resources and Organizational Behavior Area, Anderson Graduate S...

Photoscreeners are becoming increasingly available and are being widely used to screen for visual abnormalities in young children. However, consideration of accepted criteria for screening programs indicates there is still much further research that needs to be carried out before amblyopia screening could be recommended as a routine component of a community health surveillance program--an adequ...

A new species of Trachylepis is described from Tinhosa Grande islet, São Tomé e Príncipe, Gulf of Guinea. Tinhosa Grande islet is a small (20.5 ha), isolated desert islet used by several bird communities as a nesting place. The new species is distinguished from its congeners by its color pattern, size and lepidosis. Due to its limited geographical distribution the new species appears to be one ...

The female of Aysha yacupoi Brescovit, 1992 is described and illustrated for the first time. Males and female specimens were observed together in the same plants. Some data on natural history are presented.

Plague in Brazil is poorly known and now rarely seen, so studies of its ecology are difficult. We used ecological niche models of historical (1966-present) records of human plague cases across northeastern Brazil to assess hypotheses regarding environmental correlates of plague occurrences across the region. Results indicate that the apparently focal distribution of plague in northeastern Brazi...

Acknowledgements This work is partly based on the diploma work of Adelinda Csapó (entitled Biomechanical Analysis of Quadruped Walking Depictions, with Emphasis on Natural History Museums and Animal Anatomy Books. Eötvös University, Physical Institute, Department of Biological Physics, Budapest, 2007, in Hungarian). We thank Eleonóra Szűcs of the Hungarian Natural History Museum for picturing m...