Landscape heterogeneity in floral communities has the potential to modify pollinator behavior. Pollinator foraging varies with the diversity, abundance, and spatial configuration of floral resources. However, the implications of this variation for pollen transfer and ultimately the reproductive success of insect pollinated plants remains unclear, especially for species which are rare or isolate...

There is great interest in the restoration and conservation of coastal habitats for protection from flooding and erosion. This is evidenced by the growing number of analyses and reviews of the effectiveness of habitats as natural defences and increasing funding world-wide for nature-based defences-i.e. restoration projects aimed at coastal protection; yet, there is no synthetic information on w...

Many amphibian lineages show terrestrialization of their reproductive strategy and breeding is partially or completely independent of water. A number of causal factors have been proposed for the evolution of terrestrialized breeding. While predation has received repeated attention as a potential factor, the influence of other factors such as habitat has never been tested using appropriate data ...

One of the available tools for mapping the geographical distribution and potential suitable habitats is species distribution models. These techniques are very helpful for finding poorly known distributions of species in poorly sampled areas, such as the tropics. Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) is a recently developed modeling method that can be successfully calibrated using a relatively small number o...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Certain indigenous fish can play potential role in vector control. The study recorded distribution of Aphanius dispar (Rüppell) in its native habitats in Gujarat, India and evaluated its larval propensity for Indian mosquito vectors. METHODS Fishes were surveyed in various districts of Gujarat and samples were collected from coastal habitats and were identified to spec...

Ocean acidification is receiving increasing attention because of its potential to affect marine ecosystems. Rare CO2 vents offer a unique opportunity to investigate the response of benthic ecosystems to acidification. However, the benthic habitats investigated so far are mainly found at very shallow water (less than or equal to 5 m depth) and therefore are not representative of the broad range ...

Supporting species persistence may involve (re)connecting suitable habitats. However, for many declining species habitat suitability and drivers of establishment are poorly known. We addressed this experimentally for a declining flagship species of dry grasslands in Germany, Armeria maritima subsp. elongata. In three regions, we sowed seeds from each of eight source populations back to their or...

Green turtle fibropapillomatosis (GTFP) is a growing threat to the survival of green turtle (Chelonia mydas) populations worldwide. Recent transmission studies point to an infectious etiology. Several field studies suggest that high GTFP prevalence is associated with marine habitats that have been impacted by agricultural, industrial, or urban development. Environmental contaminants could be in...

Natural habitats located in urbanized regions are increasingly being impacted by residential, commercial and agricultural development, but little is known about their biotic and abiotic characteristics. Temporary aquatic habitats are less protected by environmental regulations than permanently flooded habitats, and they have been historically understudied. We sampled temporary aquatic habitats ...