BACKGROUND Grass pollen allergens are a major cause of allergic respiratory disease but traditionally prescribing practice for grass pollen allergen-specific immunotherapy has favoured pollen extracts of temperate grasses. Here we aim to compare allergy to subtropical and temperate grass pollens in patients with allergic rhinitis from a subtropical region of Australia. METHODS Sensitization t...

BACKGROUND Seasonal mortality differences have been reported in US hemodialysis (HD) patients. Here we examine the effect of seasons on mortality, clinical and laboratory parameters on a global scale. METHODS Databases from the international Monitoring Dialysis Outcomes (MONDO) consortium were queried to identify patients who received in-center HD for at least 1 year. Clinics were stratified ...

Studying the genetic signatures of climate-driven selection can produce insights into local adaptation and the potential impacts of climate change on populations. The honey bee (Apis mellifera) is an interesting species to study local adaptation because it originated in tropical/subtropical climatic regions and subsequently spread into temperate regions. However, little is known about the genet...

To understand the global distribution patterns of litter-dwelling thrips, a total 150 leaf litter samples were collected from 6 natural reserves located in three climatic regions, temperate, subtropical and tropical. The results showed the relative abundance of Thysanoptera was over 3.0% in 4 natural reserves from subtropical and tropical zone, and reached 5.9% in one tropical reserve, only les...

Slow life histories are characterized by high adult survival and few offspring, which are thought to allow increased investment per offspring to increase juvenile survival. Consistent with this pattern, south temperate zone birds are commonly longer-lived and have fewer young than north temperate zone species. However, comparative analyses of juvenile survival, including during the first few we...

Dung beetle communities have been compared across north temperate latitudes. Tropical dung beetle communities appear to be more diverse based on studies using different methodologies. Here, we present results from a standardized sampling protocol used to compare dung beetle communities across five neotropical forests in Brazil and Ecuador and two warm, north temperate forests in Mississippi and...

Cairns, Stephen D. Scleractinia of the Temperate North Pacific. Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology, number 557, 150 pages, 3 figures, 42 plates, 5 tables, 1994.—The 119 species of temperate North Pacific azooxanthellate Scleractinia are described or diagnosed in two separate accounts: the 25 species known to occur in the temperate northeastern Pacific and the 102 species known to occur in the...

The risk assessment of pesticides for freshwater ecosystems in the Amazon has relied on the use of toxicity data and water quality criteria derived for temperate regions due to a lack of ecotoxicological studies performed with indigenous species. This leaves an unknown margin of uncertainty for the protection of Amazonian ecosystems, as differences in environmental conditions and species sensit...

Reef and temperate carbonate units alternate in the upper Miocene^Pliocene stratigraphic record of Betic basins palaeogeographically connected to the Mediterranean. Shallow-water coralline algal assemblages in temperate units differ in taxonomic composition from those in reef carbonate units. The difference attains the subfamily level since the temperate lithofacies are characterised by assembl...

Eggs of temperate Aedes albopictus populations are cold hardy and can diapause, but tropical populations are not cold hardy and cannot diapause. Heterozygotes possess intermediate diapause and cold hardiness. Males of a tropical strain from Malaysia with a distinctive genetic marker were released into an existing temperate population in East St. Louis, Illinois. Subsequent egg samples from the ...