OBJECTIVE To identify geographic and climatic risk factors associated with exfoliation syndrome (ES). METHODS A retrospective study of 626 901 eye care recipients, dating from 2001 to 2007 from 47 US states in a managed care network. Incident ES cases-patients (N = 3367) were identified by using billing codes. We assessed the risk of ES by geographic latitude tier in the continental United St...

We estimated the geographic distributions of triatomine species in Central-West Region of Brazil (CW) and analysed the climatic factors influencing their occurrence. A total of 3,396 records of 27 triatomine species were analysed. Using the maximum entropy method, ecological niche models were produced for eight species occurring in at least 20 municipalities based on 13 climatic variables and e...

This paper is based on the data obtained in the course of population studies conducted in 33 geographical regions of the former USSR territory by the faculty of the Anuchin Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, between 1961 and 1991. The data resulting from study of 4386 male and 4626 female subjects aged 17 to 99 include head and body morphology, bon...

one of the most struggling issues for conservationists and wildlife managers is the climate change. this can be the necessity to develop climate condition indicators. due to the limited movements and special habitat conditions, pikas can be considered as reliable climate indicators. in this study, the most important climatic factors defining the distribution of this species were investigated to...

Microrefugia are sites that support populations of species when their ranges contract during unfavorable climate episodes. Here, we review and discuss two aspects relevant for microrefugia. First, distributions of different species are influenced by different climatic variables. Second, climatic variables differ in the degree of local decoupling from the regional climate. Based on this, we sugg...

To generate realistic projections of species' responses to climate change, we need to understand the factors that limit their ability to respond. Although climatic niche conservatism, the maintenance of a species's climatic niche over time, is a critical assumption in niche-based species distribution models, little is known about how universal it is and how it operates. In particular, few studi...

The late Quaternary period saw the rapid extinction of the majority of the world's terrestrial megafauna. The cause of these dramatic losses, especially the relative importance of climatic change and the impacts of newly arrived people, remains highly controversial, with geographically restricted analyses generating conflicting conclusions. By analyzing the distribution and timing of all megafa...

The aim of our study was to reveal biogeographical patterns in the native vascular flora of Iceland and to define ecological factors responsible for these patterns. We analysed dataset of more than 500,000 records containing information on the occurrence of vascular plants. Analysis of ecological factors included climatic (derived from WORLDCLIM data), topographic (calculated from digital eleva...