Dam construction projects have created opportunities for water security, targeted flood protection, and energy production but at the cost of increasing anthropogenic pressure on affected aquatic ecosystems. Wetland ecosystems are often among most vulnerable, as underlying hydrological regimes influence overall wetland structure function. Marsh bird species riparian habitat specialists, many whi...

Processes of adaptation to urban environments are well described for relatively few avian taxa, mainly passerines, but selective forces responsible for urban colonization in ecologically different groups of birds remain mostly unrecognized. The aim of this article is to identify drivers of recent urban colonization (Łódź, central Poland) by a reed-nesting waterbird, the Eurasian coot Fulica atr...

Life-history theory suggests that the variation in the seasonal timing of reproduction within populations may be explained on the basis of individual optimization. Optimal breeding times would vary between individuals as a result of trade-offs between fitness components. The existence of such trade-offs has seldom been tested empirically. We experimentally investigated the consequences of alter...

—We conducted 262 call-broadcast point-count surveys (1–6 replicate surveys on each of 62 points) using standardized North American Marsh Bird Monitoring Protocols between 31 May and 7 July 2006 on St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge, an island off the northwest coast of Florida. We conducted doubleblind multiple-observer surveys, paired morning and evening surveys, and paired morning and nigh...

Achatina fulica’s secretion has been recently related to antibacterial, antifungal, and cicatricial properties, and it is influenced by the kind of food offered. Therefore, this study investigated the healing potential of dressing films based on mucous secretion of Achatina fulica. Thus, surgical wounds performed in black wistar rats were dressed with films based on collagen, and on mucous secr...

Provision of suitable habitat for waterbirds is a major challenge for environmental managers in arid and semiarid regions with high spatial and temporal variability in rainfall. It is understood in broad terms that to survive waterbirds must move according to phases of wet-dry cycles, with coastal habitats providing drought refugia and inland wetlands used during the wet phase. However, both in...

The program AceDRG is designed for the derivation of stereochemical information about small molecules. It uses local chemical and topological environment-based atom typing to derive and organize bond lengths and angles from a small-molecule database: the Crystallography Open Database (COD). Information about the hybridization states of atoms, whether they belong to small rings (up to seven-memb...

INTRODUCTION The flux of uremic toxin middle molecules through currently used hemodialysis membranes is suboptimal, mainly because of the membranes' pore architecture. AIM Identifying the modifiable sieving parameters that can be improved by nanotechnology to enhance fluxes of uremic toxins across the walls of dialyzers' capillaries. METHODS We determined the maximal dimensions of endotheli...

We read with interest the article by Wang and colleagues regarding the role of wildlife in the transmission of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) (Wang et al., 2017). Although we appreciate the efforts in reviewing this important topic, we would like to comment on some statements that we believe are not up-todate or properly cited. The authors mentioned only two reports of Escherichia coli carrying...

Contaminants can cause detrimental effects in wild birds. However, these effects are difficult to measure in all but the most severe cases. Immune function is a sensitive and meaningful biological marker of contaminant-induced effects in captive birds but has more limitations in wild birds due in part to the lack of a proven blood preservation method. We developed methods to assess ex vivo immu...