Background As a landscape architect and a major seed disperser, the lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris) is an important indicator of the ecological health of certain habitats. Therefore, reliable data regarding tapir populations are fundamental in understanding ecosystem dynamics, including those associated with the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. Currently, many population monitoring studies use inv...

Varietal purity and proportions of grains with brown spots, fissured grains, chalky grains andwhole grains in a rice sample are important grain quality attributes influencing consumers'preference and price but little information exist on how these grain quality attributes are affectedby biophysical factors and pre-harvest practices. Several authors have studied in isolation theeffect of biophys...

abstract lowland rice (oryza sativa l.) in south asia is under stress, as nitrogen removals by crops are higher than their replenishment through fertilizers. limited information is available on optimizing nitrogen dose in lowland rice to turn out higher yield. the present investigation aimed to optimize nitrogen fertilization and it’s response to the growth and yield of lowland rice. we evaluat...

Tropical rain forests play a dominant role in global biosphere-atmosphere C O 2 exchange. A lthough climate and nutrient availability regulate net primary production (NPP) and decomposition in aU terrestrial ecosystems, the nature and extent o f such controls in tropical forests remain poorly resolved. We conducted a meta-analysis o f carbon-nutrient-chmate relationships in 113 sites across the...

Permafrost soils store over half of global soil carbon (C), and northern frozen peatlands store about 10% of global permafrost C. With thaw, inundation of high latitude lowland peatlands typically increases the surface-atmosphere flux of methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse gas. To examine the effects of lowland permafrost thaw over millennial timescales, we measured carbon dioxide (CO2) and CH4 ...

Dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations in lowland streams are naturally lower than those in upland streams; however, in some regions where monitoring data are lacking, DO criteria originally established for upland streams have been applied to lowland streams. This study investigated the DO concentrations at which fish and invertebrate assemblages at 35 sites located on lowland streams in southwes...

BACKGROUND Effective conservation of threatened ecological communities requires knowledge of where climatically suitable habitat is likely to persist into the future. We use the critically endangered Lowland Grassland community of Tasmania, Australia as a case study to identify options for management in cases where future climatic conditions become unsuitable for the current threatened communit...

1. Bees are believed to be dominant pollen vectors in tropical forests, yet studies specific to bees in south-east Asia are rare. Regeneration and restoration of the rapidly disappearing lowland forests of this region are reliant on bees, thus there is an urgent need for forest bee data at the community level. 2. Bee communities of eight forested sites in Johor (Malaysia) and Singapore were sur...

Late Pliocene and Pleistocene climatic instability has been invoked to explain the buildup of Neotropical biodiversity, although other theories date Neotropical diversification to earlier periods. If these climatic fluctuations drove Neotropical diversification, then a large proportion of species should date to this period and faunas should exhibit accelerated rates of speciation. However, the ...

BACKGROUND Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) also known as kala-azar is a growing health problem in Ethiopia with an estimated annual VL incidence between 3700 and 7400. The disease is mainly endemic in northwestern parts of the country. The aim of the current study was to determine the sand fly fauna and ecology of Phlebotomus orientalis in two endemic and ecologically distinct areas of northwestern...