Search results for "North"
showing 10 items of 924 documents
Regional and Supra-Regional Coherence in Limnological Variabler
2009
Limnologists and water resources managers have traditionally perceived lakes as discrete geographical entities. This has resulted in a tendency for scientific lake studies to concentrate on lakes as individuals, with little connection either to each other or to large-scale driving forces. Since the 1990s, however, a shift in the prevailing paradigm has occurred, with lakes increasingly being seen as responding to regional, rather than local, driving forces. The seminal work on regional coherence in lake behaviour was that of Magnuson et al. (1990), who showed that many features of lakes within the same region respond coherently to drivers such as climate forcing and catchment processes. Fro…
Camouflage accuracy in Sahara–Sahel desert rodents
2020
1. Camouflage helps animals to hide from predators and is therefore key to survival. Although widespread convergence of animal phenotypes to their natural environment is well-established, there is a lack of knowledge about how species compromise camouflage accuracy across different background types in their habitat.2. Here we tested how background matching has responded to top–down selection by avian and mammalian predators using Sahara–Sahel desert rodents in North Africa.3. We show that the fur colouration of several species has become an accurate match to different types of desert habitats. This is supported by a correlation analysis of colour and pattern metrics, investigation of animal…
Ecosystem carbon response of an Arctic peatland to simulated permafrost thaw
2019
Permafrost peatlands are biogeochemical hot spots in the Arctic as they store vast amounts of carbon. Permafrost thaw could release part of these long-term immobile carbon stocks as the greenhouse gases (GHGs) carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane (CH 4 ) to the atmosphere, but how much, at which time-span and as which gaseous carbon species is still highly uncertain. Here we assess the effect of permafrost thaw on GHG dynamics under different moisture and vegetation scenarios in a permafrost peatland. A novel experimental approach using intact plant–soil systems (mesocosms) allowed us to simulate permafrost thaw under near-natural conditions. We monitored GHG flux dynamics via high-resolution…
The role of anthropogenic habitats in freshwater mussel conservation
2018
The data that supports the findings of this study are available in the supplementary material of this article.
Developing common protocols to measure tundra herbivory across spatial scales
2021
Understanding and predicting large-scale ecological responses to global environmental change requires comparative studies across geographic scales with coordinated efforts and standardized methodologies. We designed, applied and assessed standardized protocols to measure tundra herbivory at three spatial scales: plot, site (habitat), and study area (landscape). The plot and site-level protocols were tested in the field during summers 2014-2015 at eleven sites, nine of them comprising warming experimental plots included in the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX). The study area protocols were assessed during 2014-2018 at 24 study areas across the Arctic. Our protocols provide comparable a…
Optimization of photovoltaic solar power plant locations in northern Chile
2017
The optimization of photovoltaic solar power plants location in Atacama Desert, Chile, is presented in this study. The study considers three objectives: (1) Find sites with the highest solar energy potential, (2) determine sites with the least impact on the environment, and (3) locate the areas which produce small social impact. To solve this task, multi-criteria decision analyses (MCDAs) such as analytical hierarchy process and ordered weighted averaging were applied in a GIS environment. In addition, survey results of social impacts were analyzed and included into the decision-making process, including landscape values. The most suitable sites for solar energy projects were found near roa…
The Use of Wild Plants in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic of Northwestern Africa: Preliminary Results from the PALEOPLANT Project
2018
Carrión Marco Y., Morales J., Portillo M., Pérez-Jordà G., Peña-Chocarro L., Zapata L. (2018) The Use of Wild Plants in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic of Northwestern Africa: Preliminary Results from the PALEOPLANT Project. En: Mercuri A., D'Andrea A., Fornaciari R., Höhn A. (eds.) Plants and People in the African Past. Springer, Cham
Long live the alien: is high genetic diversity a pivotal aspect of crested porcupine (Hystrix cristata) long-lasting and successful invasion?
2016
AbstractStudying the evolutionary dynamics of an alien species surviving and continuing to expand after several generations can provide fundamental information on the relevant features of clearly successful invasions. Here, we tackle this task by investigating the dynamics of the genetic diversity in invasive crested porcupine (Hystrix cristata) populations, introduced to Italy about 1500 years ago, which are still growing in size, distribution range and ecological niche. Using genome-wide RAD markers, we describe the structure of the genetic diversity and the demographic dynamics of theH. cristatainvasive populations and compare their genetic diversity with that of native African populatio…
Spatial clustering of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato within populations of Allen's chipmunks and dusky-footed woodrats in northwestern California.
2017
The ecology of Lyme borreliosis is complex in northwestern California, with several potential reservoir hosts, tick vectors, and genospecies of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato. The primary objective of this study was to determine the fine-scale spatial distribution of different genospecies in four rodent species, the California ground squirrel (Otospermophilus beecheyi), northern flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus), dusky-footed woodrat (Neotoma fuscipes), and Allen's chipmunk (Neotamias senex). Rodents were live-trapped between June 2004 and May 2005 at the Hoopa Valley Tribal Reservation (HVTR) in Humboldt County, California. Ear-punch biopsies obtained from each rodent were tested by po…
SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: A genetic, epidemiological, and evolutionary perspective
2020
In less than five months, COVID-19 has spread from a small focus in Wuhan, China, to more than 5 million people in almost every country in the world, dominating the concern of most governments and public health systems. The social and political distresses caused by this epidemic will certainly impact our world for a long time to come. Here, we synthesize lessons from a range of scientific perspectives rooted in epidemiology, virology, genetics, ecology and evolutionary biology so as to provide perspective on how this pandemic started, how it is developing, and how best we can stop it.