Habitat loss is one of the key factors underlying the decline of many waterbird species, including Siberian Crane (Grus leucogeranus), a threatened species worldwide. Wetlands are the primary stopover for many waterbirds and restoration of these wetlands involves both hydrological restoration and water resource management. To protect the stopover sites of Siberian Cranes, we collected Siberian ...

Divergence of mating signals can occur rapidly and be of prime importance in causing reproductive isolation and speciation. A ring species, in which two reproductively isolated taxa are connected by a chain of intergrading populations, provides a rare opportunity to use spatial variation to reconstruct the history of divergence. I use geographic variation in the song of a likely ring species, t...

Karyotype studies of common shrews in the vicinity of Lake Baikal (Irkutsk Region, Eastern Siberia) resulted in the description of two new chromosomal races of Sorex araneus Linnaeus, 1758 (Lypotyphla, Mammalia), additional to 5 races formerly found in Siberia. In the karyotypes of 12 specimens from 3 locations, the polymorphism of metacentric and acrocentric chromosomes of the Robertsonian typ...

Genetic patterns were examined in five populations of North American Cleistes with three sources of molecular data: amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP), DNA sequencing, and plastid microsatellites. Populations of C. bifaria were sampled in four areas of the south-eastern US: the coastal plains of Florida and North Carolina and the mountains of North Carolina and West Virginia. A popu...

The relationship of smoking to total mortality and to the prevalence of cardiorespiratory symptoms has been studied in three prospective surveys in west central Scotland in which 18 786 people attended a multiphasic screening examination. The prevalence of respiratory symptoms, and to a lesser extent cardiovascular symptoms, increased with the number of cigarettes smoked, with inhalation, and w...

The Ganga Plain represents a large proportion of the current foreland 14 basin to the Himalaya. The Himalayan-sourced waters irrigate the Plain via major river 15 networks that support approximately 10% of the global population. However, some of 16 these rivers are also the source of devastating floods. The tendency for some of these 17 rivers to flood is directly linked to their large scale mo...

one of the most important atmospheric systems in the eurasian continent during the northern hemisphere winter season is the siberian high pressure. in this study, using the ncep/ncar reanalysis data for winters of 1948-2008, trend of changes in the intensity of the high system center and its effects on some meteorological fields are investigated. the results show that the 2m height mean tempera...