Major negative oxygen isotopic anomalies in planktonic foraminifera are associated with deep-sea anoxic mud layers (sapropels) deposited 9000 and 80,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean. The isotopic depletion in surface-dwelling foraminifera is significantly greater than in mesopelagic foraminifera. This difference in isotopic response suggests that surface-water salinities were drastica...

A collection of 172 durum wheat landraces from 21 Mediterranean countries and 20 modern cultivars were phenotyped in 6 environments for 14 traits including phenology, biomass, yield and yield components. The genetic structure of the collection was ascertained with 44 simple sequence repeat markers that identified 448 alleles, 226 of them with a frequency lower than 5%, and 10 alleles per locus ...

OBJECTIVE The World Health Organization is the agency responsible for reporting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) indicator "percentage of population using solid fuels." In this article, we present the results of a comprehensive assessment of solid fuel use, conducted in 2005, and discuss the implications of our findings in the context of achieving the MDGs. METHODS For 93 countries, soli...

West Nile virus (WNV) has caused outbreaks and sporadic infections in Central, Eastern and Mediterranean Europe for over 45 years. Most strains responsible for the European and Mediterranean basin outbreaks are classified as lineage 1. In recent years, WNV strains belonging to lineage 1 and 2 have been causing outbreaks of neuroinvasive disease in humans in countries such as Italy, Hungary and ...

Citation: Guo C, Xia X, Pitta P, Herut B, Rahav E, Berman-Frank I, Giannakourou A, Tsiola A, Tsagaraki TM and Liu H (2016) Shifts in Microbial Community Structure and Activity in the Ultra-Oligotrophic Eastern Mediterranean Sea Driven by the Deposition of Saharan Dust and European Aerosols. Front. Mar. Sci. 3:170. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2016.00170 Shifts in Microbial Community Structure and Activit...

Citation: Rahav E, Shun-Yan C, Cui G, Liu H, Tsagaraki TM, Giannakourou A, Tsiola A, Psarra S, Lagaria A, Mulholland MR, Stathopoulou E, Paraskevi P, Herut B and Berman-Frank I (2016) Evaluating the Impact of Atmospheric Depositions on Springtime Dinitrogen Fixation in the Cretan Sea (Eastern Mediterranean)—A Mesocosm Approach. Front. Mar. Sci. 3:180. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2016.00180 Evaluating th...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The genus Centaurea has traditionally been considered to be a complicated taxon. No attempt at phylogenetic reconstruction has been made since recent revisions in circumscription, and previous reconstructions did not include a good representation of species. A new molecular survey is thus needed. METHODS Phylogenetic analyses were conducted using sequences of the internal ...

Citation: Krom MD, Shi Z, Stockdale A, Berman-Frank I, Giannakourou A, Herut B, Lagaria A, Papageorgiou N, Pitta P, Psarra S, Rahav E, Scoullos M, Stathopoulou E, Tsiola A and Tsagaraki TM (2016) Response of the Eastern Mediterranean Microbial Ecosystem to Dust and Dust Affected by Acid Processing in the Atmosphere. Front. Mar. Sci. 3:133. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2016.00133 Response of the Eastern M...

Crematogaster (Crematogaster) jehovaevar.cypria Santschi, 1930 is raised to species rank. Two new, related species are described from the north-eastern part of the Mediterranean Basin: Crematogaster (Crematogaster) erectepilosasp. n. (Dodecanese, Greece) and Crematogaster (Crematogaster) gullukdagensissp. n. (Antalya Prov., Turkey). These three species are well distinguished from other species ...