Vineyards are likely to be regionally important for wildlife, but we lack biodiversity studies in this agroecosystem which is undergoing a rapid management revolution. As vine cultivation is restricted to arid and warm climatic regions, biodiversity-friendly management would promote species typical of southern biomes. Vineyards are often intensively cultivated, mostly surrounded by few natural ...

The northern wheatear Oenanthe oenanthe has an almost circumpolar breeding distribution in the Northern Hemisphere, but all populations migrate to sub-Saharan Africa winter. Currently, tracking data suggest two main access routes continents via Middle East and Iberian Peninsula. These would require detours for birds European Alps. Our aim was map migration determine annual schedules Switzerland...

We studied breeding bird assemblages in forest gaps created in 1995 by Hurricane Opal at the Bent Creek Experimental Forest in Asheville, NC. We hypothesized that forest gaps and adjacent closed-canopy forest would differ in bird density, richness, diversity, and relative abundances of some species. To test this hypothesis we censused breeding bird assemblages for 2 years in 12 gaps (0. l-l .2 ...

Evaluating the demographic trends of marine top predators is critical to understanding the processes involved in the ongoing rapid changes in Antarctic ecosystems. However, the remoteness and logistical complexity of operating in Antarctica, especially during winter, make such an assessment difficult. Satellite imaging is increasingly recognised as a valuable method for remote animal population...

Repeatedly-bred rats of both sexes develop subintimal accumulations of acid mucopolysaccharides and fibroblastic proliferation followed by distortion and destruction of elastic lamellae. Fibrosis, endothelial hyperplasia, lipid deposition, calcification and atheromata are also observed. Changes in the elastic tissue occur independently, and later than the alterations of the ground substance and...

The Desert locust Schistocerca gregaria is a major world pest that causes substantial agricultural and economic damage. Effective pest control relies on effective monitoring, which requires knowledge of locust microhabitat selection. Yet little is known about microhabitat selection of solitarious adult locusts in the field. We conducted field surveys to investigate fine-scale diel temporal and ...

We report on three shells of whale barnacle (Cirripedia: Coronulidae) collected from Pleistocene shallow-marine deposits exposed at Cinisi (northwestern Sicily, southern Italy). These specimens are identified as belonging to the extinct species Coronula bifida BRONN, 1831. Calcareous nannoplankton analysis of the sediment hosting the coronulid remains places the time of deposition between 1.93 ...

Although we agree that additional analysis of bi-parentally inherited, nuclear DNA markers, such as microsatellites, could strengthen our understanding of population structure in Alaskan harbor seals, we fundamentally disagree with Dr. Hoelzel that inclusion of nuclear DNA is a necessary component to identifying stock structure and note a confusion between demographic isolation and reproductive...