Search results for " Southern"

El Niño variability off Peru during the last 20,000 years

2005

Here we present a high-resolution marine sediment record from the El Nino region off the coast of Peru spanning the last 20,000 years. Sea surface temperature, photosynthetic pigments, and a lithic proxy for El Nino flood events on the continent are used as paleo–El Nino–Southern Oscillation proxy data. The onset of stronger El Nino activity in Peru started around 17,000 calibrated years before the present, which is later than modeling experiments show but contemporaneous with the Heinrich event 1. Maximum El Nino activity occurred during the early and late Holocene, especially during the second and third millennium B.P. The recurrence period of very strong El Nino events is 60–80 years. El…

Evolution of leaf anatomy in arid environments – A case study in southern African Tetraena and Roepera (Zygophyllaceae)

2015

The dry biomes of southern Africa (Desert, Nama Karoo and Succulent Karoo) are home to a rich and diverse xerophytic flora. This flora includes two morphologically diverse clades of Zygophyllaceae, Tetraena and Roepera (Zygophylloideae), which inhabit some of the most arid habitats in the region. Using a plastid phylogeny of Zygophylloideae we assess whether the evolution of putatively adaptive traits (leaf shape, vasculature, mode of water storage and photosynthetic type: C3 versus C4) coincides with the successful colonisation of environments with different drought regimes within southern Africa. Our results show general niche conservatism within arid habitats in Tetraena, but niche shift…

2018

The effectiveness of fish feeding behaviour in mirroring trawling-induced patterns

2017

The ability to observe and predict trawling-induced patterns at spatial and temporal scales that are relevant to inform realistic management strategies is a challenge which scientists have consistently faced in recent decades. Here, we use fish feeding behaviour, a biological trait easily impaired by trawling disturbance, to depict alterations in fish condition (i.e. individual fitness) and feeding opportunities. The benthivorous fish Mullus barbatus barbatus was selected as a model species. The observed trends of responses to trawling in prey species confirmed the effectiveness of a non-trawled zone in sustaining higher levels of diet diversity (e.g. quantity and quality of ingested prey) …

A multivariate morphometric analysis of diagnostic traits in southern Italy and Sicily pubescent oaks

2020

AbstractSpecies identification within the species complex ofQ. pubescensis a well-known taxonomic challenge among European botanists. Some of the specific pubescent oak binomials currently accepted in various European floras and checklists were originally described in Sicily and southern Calabria. As a consequence, several species belonging to the pubescent oaks group (Q. pubescens,Q. amplifolia,Q. congesta,Q. dalechampii,Q. leptobalanaandQ. virgiliana) are reported in the taxonomic and phytosociological literature. To verify whether it was possible to associate a diverse set of morphological characters with each of these different taxa, thirteen natural populations of pubescent oak from Si…

Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic Asteroidea database

2018

The present dataset is a compilation of georeferenced occurrences of asteroids (Echinodermata: Asteroidea) in the Southern Ocean. Occurrence data south of 45°S latitude were mined from various sources together with information regarding the taxonomy, the sampling source and sampling sites when available. Records from 1872 to 2016 were thoroughly checked to ensure the quality of a dataset that reaches a total of 13,840 occurrences from 4,580 unique sampling events. Information regarding the reproductive strategy (brooders vs. broadcasters) of 63 species is also made available. This dataset represents the most exhaustive occurrence database on Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic asteroids.

Shared language, diverging genetic histories: high-resolution analysis of Y-chromosome variability in Calabrian and Sicilian Arbereshe.

2015

The relationship between genetic and linguistic diversification in human populations has been often explored to interpret some specific issues in human history. The Albanian-speaking minorities of Sicily and Southern Italy (Arbereshe) constitute an important portion of the ethnolinguistic variability of Italy. Their linguistic isolation from neighboring Italian populations and their documented migration history, make such minorities particularly effective for investigating the interplay between cultural, geographic and historical factors. Nevertheless, the extent of Arbereshe genetic relationships with the Balkan homeland and the Italian recipient populations has been only partially investi…

Ancient and recent admixture layers in Sicily and Southern Italy trace multiple migration routes along the Mediterranean

2017

The Mediterranean shores stretching between Sicily, Southern Italy and the Southern Balkans witnessed a long series of migration processes and cultural exchanges. Accordingly, present-day population diversity is composed by multiple genetic layers, which make the deciphering of different ancestral and historical contributes particularly challenging. We address this issue by genotyping 511 samples from 23 populations of Sicily, Southern Italy, Greece and Albania with the Illumina GenoChip Array, also including new samples from Albanian-and Greek-speaking ethno-linguistic minorities of Southern Italy. Our results reveal a shared Mediterranean genetic continuity, extending from Sicily to Cypru…

Six Serum miRNAs Fail to Validate as Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1 Biomarkers.

2016

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is an autosomal dominant genetic disease caused by expansion of a CTG microsatellite in the 3' untranslated region of the DMPK gene. Despite characteristic muscular, cardiac, and neuropsychological symptoms, CTG trinucleotide repeats are unstable both in the somatic and germinal lines, making the age of onset, clinical presentation, and disease severity very variable. A molecular biomarker to stratify patients and to follow disease progression is, thus, an unmet medical need. Looking for a novel biomarker, and given that specific miRNAs have been found to be misregulated in DM1 heart and muscle tissues, we profiled the expression of 175 known serum miRNAs in …

Effects of Long-Term Habitat Protection on Montane Small Mammals: Are Sorex araneus and S. minutus More Sensitive Than Previously Considered?

2022

Protection of natural areas by restricting human activities aims to preserve plant and animal populations and whole communities, ensuring the conservation of biological diversity and enhancement of ecosystem services. Therefore, it is expected that the longer the protection, the stronger the desired effects. We evaluated the responses of small mammals at the population and community levels under protection in the southern Carpathian Mountains. We surveyed small mammals for five years in sites with long- and short-term protection and non-protected. Besides protection status, we included elevation, habitat heterogeneity, and the month of survey as predictors in our models. As response variabl…