The genesis of Hurricane Hernan (1996) in the eastern Pacific was investigated using gridded analyses from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and gridded outgoing longwave radiation. Hernan developed in association with a wave in the easterlies that could be tracked back to Africa in longitude–time plots of the filtered y component of the wind (2–6-day period) at 700 mb. The...

[1] Plate kinematics have been derived from GPS site velocities spanning Australasia and the western Pacific and define a framework in which deformation fields at plate boundaries can be investigated. The Australian Plate appears to be rigid from Cocos Island in the west to Noumea in the east and incorporating all of the Australian continent. A revision of the angular velocity vector of the Pac...

The global distribution of zooplankton community structure is known to follow latitudinal temperature gradients: larger species in cooler, higher latitudinal regions. However, interspecific relationships between temperature and size in zooplankton communities have not been fully examined in terms of temporal variation. To re-examine the relationship on a temporal scale and the effects of climat...

Recently, two introduced tunicate species Ecteinascidia thurstoni Herdman, 1891 and Clavelina cyclus Tokioka & Nishikawa, 1975 were discovered in the coastal waters of Thailand. E. thurstoni was found in Andaman Sea, the west coast of Thailand while C. cyclus was first recorded in the east coast, upper Gulf of Thailand. From the historical records, E. thurstoni can be found in South Asia, South...

Traditional use of medicinal plants as febrifuge by the tribals of Purulia district, West Bengal, India Abhijit Dey, Dr. Jitendra Nath De Assistant Professor, Department of Botany, Presidency University (Formerly Presidency College), 86/1, College Street, Kolkata-700073, West Bengal, India. Retired Head and Reader, Department of Botany, Charuchandra College, Calcutta. Flat No.-C-103, Sunrise Es...

Polydora and related genera associated with hermit crabs from shallow subtidal coral reef areas of the Indo-West Pacific are described. Over 2000 hermit crabs were collected from localities in the Philippines and Indonesia between July 1997 and April 1999. In total, 10 species of polychaetes among five genera (Boccardia, Carazziella, Dipolydora, Polydora, and Tripolydora) were identified and de...

Sequence data derived from four markers (the nuclear RP1 and Aldolase and the mitochondrial 16S rRNA and cytochrome b genes) were used to determine the phylogenetic relationships among 32 species belonging to the genus Hippocampus. There were marked differences in the rate of evolution among these gene fragments, with Aldolase evolving the slowest and the mtDNA cytochrome b gene the fastest. Th...

West Nile virus spread rapidly from east to west across North America, despite the north-south migratory flyways of its avian hosts. In this issue, Venkatesan & Rasgon (2010) present new data on the population genetics of Culex tarsalis, the dominant West Nile virus vector in the Western United States, suggesting that patterns of mosquito gene flow may better reflect the virus's expansion from ...

The rhinoceros auklet (Cerorhinca monocerata) breeds on islands in the North Pacific from California to Japan. Breeding colonies are not evenly distributed along the coastline nor are population numbers similar throughout the range with approximately 50 % of the birds breeding in British Columbia, Canada (Rodway 1991). Like other puffins (tribe Fraterculini), rhinoceros auklets lay a single-egg...

[1] Following an El Niño event, a basin-wide warming takes place over the tropical Indian Ocean, peaks in late boreal winter and early spring, and persists through boreal summer. Our observational analysis suggests that this Indian Ocean warming induces robust climatic anomalies in the summer Indo-West Pacific region, prolonging the El Niño’s influence after tropical East Pacific sea surface te...