Background: Wet meadows occur in numerous locations throughout the American Southwest, but in many cases have become heavily degraded. Among other things they have frequently been overgrazed and have had roads built through them, which have affected the hydrology of these wetland ecosystems. Because of the important hydrologic and ecological functions they are believed to perform, there is curr...

In climate chamber and outdoor experiments we analysed germination traits of 42 vascular plant species typical of floodmeadows of the alliance Cnidion. In Central Europe such flood-meadows and their highly endangered character species are confined to large lowland river corridors with a dry and warm climate. Due to the prevailing ecological conditions, particularly the extremely high variabilit...

Habitat specificity plays a pivotal role in forming community patterns in coral reef fishes, yet considerable uncertainty remains as to the extent of this selectivity, particularly among newly settled recruits. Here we quantified habitat specificity of juvenile coral reef fish at three ecological levels; algal meadows vs. coral reefs, live vs. dead coral and among different coral morphologies. ...

Background: The old concept of total-etch/dry bonding has been superseded by total-etch/wet bonding, and later on by the self-etch systems. Manufacturers have introduced single bottle systems to be used in total-etch, self-etch, or selective-etch modes under both dry and moist conditions. The aim of this study was to evaluate shear bond strengths of three different dental adhesives under dry an...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Plants need different survival strategies in habitats differing in hydrological regimes. This probably has consequences for vegetation development when former floodplain areas that are currently confronted with soil flooding only, will be reconnected to the highly dynamical river bed. Such changes in river management are increasingly important, especially at locations where ...

For gregarious animals the cost-benefit trade-offs that drive habitat selection may vary dynamically with group size, which plays an important role in foraging and predator avoidance strategies. We examined how habitat selection by bison (Bison bison) varied as a function of group size and interpreted these patterns by testing whether habitat selection was more strongly driven by the competing ...

Ecological fingerprints of climate change are becoming increasingly evident at broad geographical scales as measured by species range shifts and changes in phenology. However, finer-scale species-level responses to environmental fluctuations may also provide an important bellwether of impending future community responses. Here we examined changes in abundance of butterfly species along a hydrol...

We used the isolated-perfused rat lung model to study the influence of pulmonary ventilation and surfactant instillation on the development of postreperfusion lung microvascular injury. We hypothesized that the state of lung inflation during ischemia contributes to the development of the injury during reperfusion. Pulmonary microvascular injury was assessed by continuously monitoring the wet lu...