Advances in understanding avian nesting ecology are hindered by a prevalent lack of agreement between nest-site characteristics and fitness metrics such as nest success. We posit this is a result of inconsistent and improper timing of nest-site vegetation measurements. Therefore, we evaluated how the timing of nest vegetation measurement influences the estimated effects of vegetation structure ...

Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) nest on dynamic, erosion-prone beaches. Erosive processes and resulting nest loss have long been presumed to be a hindrance to clutch survival. In order to better understand how leatherbacks cope with unstable nesting beaches, I investigated the role of beach erosion in leatherback nest site selection at Playa Gandoca, Costa Rica. I also examined t...

-Previous research on House Sparrows (Passer domesticus) in Europe indicated that males with larger bibs are more likely to obtain nest sites with multiple potential nests. To test this observation experimentally, I created nest sites containing either one or two nest boxes. 1 found no morphological differences, including bib size, between males at single-box nest sites (SBNS’s) and those at do...

Audubon’s Hermit Thrushes (Cutharus guttatus auduboni) in central Arizona have a low nesting success (7 to 20%) due almost exclusively to nest predation. We examine the sites chosen for nesting and compare them to nonuse sites randomly selected within the vegetation types associated with nests. Hermit Thrush nest sites differ from nonuse sites primarily in that nest sites have more small (lto 3...

Identifying factors influencing a species' ecological niche and demography is a prerequisite for species conservation. However, our understanding of the interplay between demographic rates and biotic/abiotic factors is still poor for most species of conservation concern. We evaluated relevance of eight hypotheses relating to timing of breeding, temporal nest exposure, nest concealment, topograp...

Many individual decisions are informed by direct comparison of the alternatives. In collective decisions, however, only certain group members may have the opportunity to compare options. Emigrating ant colonies (Temnothorax albipennis) show sophisticated nest-site choice, selecting superior sites even when they are nine times further away than the alternative. How do they do this? We used radio...

In unicolonial populations of ants, individuals can mix freely within large networks of nests that contain many queens. It has been proposed that the absence of aggression in unicolonial populations stems from a loss of nest mate recognition, but few studies have tested this hypothesis. We investigated patterns of aggression and nest mate recognition in the unicolonial wood ant, Formica paralug...

BACKGROUND Metastatic breast tumors from other organs are very rare. We herein describe the case of a patient with a metastatic breast tumor due to ovarian cancer who was diagnosed by the succession of a p53 mutation. CASE PRESENTATION The patient was a 59-year-old woman with sigmoid colon stenosis. Diagnostic imaging revealed a pelvic mass, multiple liver tumors, ascites, and multiple swolle...

We establish results on NeST graphs (intersection tolerance graphs of neighborhood subtrees of a tree) and several subclasses. In particular, we show the equivalence of proper NeST graphs and unit NeST graphs, the equivalence of 5xed distance NeST graphs and threshold tolerance graphs, and the proper containment of NeST graphs in weakly chordal graphs. The latter two results answer questions of...

Nest predation can greatly affect reproductive success of waterfowl. We studied factors influencing duck-nest predation near Humboldt Bay in northern California by testing the prediction that measurements of nest concealment and nest location should differ between successful and depredated artificial nests. We ran a priori hypothesized logistic regression models to evaluate the effects of nest ...