Genetic polymorphism at the loci encoding the enzymes phosphoglucose isomerase, leucine aminopeptidase and phosphoglucomutase was investigated in Irish Mytilus populations. Allele frequencies and heterozygote proportions indicated that populations on exposed Atlantic coasts differed from those on sheltered Atlantic coasts, and from Irish Sea mussels. When compared with data on M. edulis collect...

Two large-scale mass mortality events (MMEs) of unprecedented extent and severity affecting rocky benthic communities occurred during the summers of 1999 and 2003 along the coasts of the NW Mediterranean Sea. These mortality outbreaks were associated with positive thermal anomalies. In this study, we performed an analysis of inter-regional and inter-annual differences in temperature (T) conditi...

Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) is a life-threatening disease caused by Rickettsia rickettsii, an obligately intracellular bacterium that is spread to human beings by ticks. More than a century after its first clinical description, this disease is still among the most virulent human infections identified, being potentially fatal even in previously healthy young people. The diagnosis of RMSF...

R ocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF), a classic metazoonosis that involves both vertebrate and non-vertebrate reservoir hosts, is a seasonal disease of dogs and humans in the Americas. The clinical illness was first described among Native Americans, soldiers, and settlers in the Bitterroot River and Snake River valleys of Montana and Idaho during the late 1890s, but remained unrecognized in dog...

Approximately 50 ka, one or more subgroups of modern humans expanded from Africa to populate the rest of the world. Significant behavioral change accompanied this expansion, and archaeologists commonly seek its roots in the African Middle Stone Age (MSA; ∼200 to ∼50 ka). Easily recognizable art objects and "jewelry" become common only in sites that postdate the MSA in Africa and Eurasia, but so...

Surveys of benthic marine habitats encompassing 1814.7 ha and lining 90% of Dominica's shoreline were carried out to build the first composite picture of the distribution and size of the island's near-shore sublittoral habitats, and the epibenthic communities they harbor. Field survey sites covered areas ranging from 1425 to 29.6 ha, lining the shore in bands ranging between 50 and 250 m in wid...

Marine tidal notches are developed by bioerosion in the intertidal zones of rocky coasts, but a combination of sea-level change and crustal movements can result in them being raised above or submerged below the water line. For that reason, the present-day elevation of these former shorelines relative to mean sea level has long been used to quantify relative coastal uplift and subsidence in tect...

The Skagerrak receives large amounts of freshwater, both in the form of rather low-saline waters from the Baltic Sea and the southern North Sea and in pure form from local rivers. These waters, mixed with the underlying Atlantic Water, participate in a variable, mainly wind-driven, cyclonic surface circulation in the Skagerrak. This paper presents a thorough analysis of hydrographic data to pro...