Point and nonpoint sources of nutrients, sediments, metals, and organic compounds from industrial, agricultural, and urban land uses are important water-quality issues in the Study Unit. Degradation of streams, including the loss of riparian habitat, reduction in fish populations, loss of habitat for bottom-dwelling organisms, eutrophication, and deterioration of the sanitary quality of streams...

Proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) is a nuclear protein that regulates DNA synthesis by DNA polymerase delta, and is essential for DNA replication. PCNA expression level is related to the malignancy of gastric cancer cells. Seven different gastric cancer cell lines and two kinds of control cell lines were treated with antisense oligonucleotides complementary to the messenger RNA of PCNA....

Forest fragmentation results in a loss of forest interior and an increase in edge habitat. We studied how understorey bird community composition and habitat variables changed along an edge-to-interior gradient in a 1248-ha lowland rainforest patch in peninsular Malaysia. Birds and environmental variables such as vegetation structure and litter depth were detected within a 25-m radius of each of...

Direct human impacts and global climate change are altering the composition and structure of coral reef habitats. These changes are simplifying size-abundance relationships of reef fish communities, reducing productivity through the system and ultimately threatening fisheries yields.

Becker et al. (1) showed a strong effect of habitat split on the richness of species with aquatic larvae but no effect on the richness of species with terrestrial development, both when habitat split was analyzed alone in linear regressions and when it was analyzed together with habitat loss and fragmentation in more complex path analyses. Cannatella (2) argues that if species with aquatic larv...

The wildland–urban interface represents landscape change—changes brought about by urbanization, by shifts in forest management, and altered disturbance regimes, each having ecological, social, and economic ramifications. In this chapter, I will focus on some of the ecological ramifications associated with landscape change, primarily forest fragmentation and deforestation, resulting from urbaniz...

1. Local extinctions in habitat patches and asymmetric dispersal between patches are key processes structuring animal populations in heterogeneous environments. Effective landscape conservation requires an understanding of how habitat loss and fragmentation influence demographic processes within populations and movement between populations. 2. We used patch occupancy surveys and molecular data ...

The aims of this study were to determine the extent and distribution of an OSPAR priority habitat under current baseline ocean temperatures; to illustrate the prospect for habitat loss under a changing ocean temperature scenario; and to demonstrate the potential application of predictive habitat mapping in "future-proofing" conservation and biodiversity management. Maxent modelling and GIS envi...

Many specialist species are declining as a result of habitat loss and fragmentation, such that conservation actions typically aim to stem rates of decline rather than bring about genuine recovery. Here, we document the recovery of a species from former population refuges. An extensive survey of the entire British range ofHesperia comma, conducted in 2000, recorded over three times the number of...

Emergent infectious diseases represent a major threat for biodiversity in fragmented habitat networks, but their dynamics in host metapopulations remain largely unexplored. We studied a large community of pathogens (including 26 haematozoans, bacteria and viruses as determined through polymerase chain reaction assays) in a highly fragmented mainland bird metapopulation. Contrary to recent studi...