Threats to several of the world’s great animal migrations necessitate a research agenda focused on identifying drivers of their population dynamics. The monarch butterfly is an iconic species whose continental migratory population in eastern North America has been declining precipitously. Recent analyses have linked the monarch decline to reduced abundance of milkweed host plants in the USA cau...

To improve our mechanistic understanding and predictive capacities with respect to climate change effects on the spring phytoplankton bloom in temperate marine systems, we used a process-driven dynamical model to disentangle the impact of potentially relevant factors which are often correlated in the field. The model was based on comprehensive indoor mesocosm experiments run at four temperature...

Knowing how climate change affects the population dynamics of insect pests is critical for the future of integrated pest management. Rising winter temperatures from global warming can drive increases in outbreaks of some agricultural pests. In contrast, here we propose an alternative hypothesis that both extremely cold and warm winters can mismatch the timing between the eclosion of overwinteri...

The spectacular migration of the Monarch from northeastern America to its overwintering grounds in Mexico requires the butterfly to set its time-compensated compass south in the autumn, then north in the spring for its return home. The stimulus responsible for compass resetting has been identified as a reduction in temperature.

Reemerging bluetongue virus serotype 8 (BTV-8) in Germany was detected first in May 2007 in a sentinel cow and in February 2008 in an export heifer. Reemergence was confirmed by retesting the samples, experimental inoculation, fingerprinting analysis, and virus isolation. Overwintering of BTV-8 and continuous low-level infections are assumed.