Little is known of how archaeal diversity and community ecology behaves along elevational gradients. We chose to study Mount Fuji of Japan as a geologically and topographically uniform mountain system, with a wide range of elevational zones. PCR-amplified soil DNA for the archaeal 16 S rRNA gene was pyrosequenced and taxonomically classified against EzTaxon-e archaeal database. At a bootstrap c...

This paper presents some of the findings of the European project, RUROS, concentrating on the effect of microclimatic conditions on the use of open spaces in an urban Mediterranean environment. The findings confirm that there is a strong relationship between microclimatic conditions and use of open spaces. Regarding the users of open spaces, a sensitivity to the summer heat was apparent for the...

The conservation of the historic stone heritage has great importance when this material characterizes the image of a city, as it happens in Syracuse (Sicily). Its historical buildings are afflicted by a heavy state of deterioration due to the particular microclimate, to pollution and to neglect endured over time. This article reports the investigations made on limestone samples from historic fa...

Global energy demand is increasing as greenhouse gas driven climate change progresses, making renewable energy sources critical to future sustainable power provision. Land-based wind and solar electricity generation technologies are rapidly expanding, yet our understanding of their operational effects on biological carbon cycling in hosting ecosystems is limited. Wind turbines and photovoltaic ...

The mechanistic links between climate and the environmental sensitivities of organisms occur through the microclimatic conditions that organisms experience. Here we present a dataset of gridded hourly estimates of typical microclimatic conditions (air temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, solar radiation, sky radiation and substrate temperatures from the surface to 1 m depth) at high reso...

Life history traits in many ectotherms show complex patterns of variation among conspecific populations sampled along wide latitudinal or climatic gradients. However, few studies have assessed whether these patterns can be explained better by thermal reaction norms of multiple life history traits, covering major aspects of the life cycle. In this study, we compared five populations of a Holarct...

White-nose syndrome (WNS) is a disease responsible for unprecedented mortality in hibernating bats. First observed in a New York cave in 2006, mortality associated with WNS rapidly appeared in hibernacula across the northeastern United States. We used yearly presence-absence data on WNS-related mortality among hibernating bat colonies in the Northeast to determine factors influencing its spread...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND This paper discusses results obtained in the second monitoring campaign of the Carcer Tullianum, a particular hypogeum environment located in the historical centre of Rome (Italy). In the first paper we stressed the need to apply chemometric tools to this kind of studies in order to obtain full and significant information; really information on sampling design, sensors ...

Farms benefit from pest control services provided by nature, but management of these services requires an understanding of how habitat complexity within and around the farm impacts the relationship between agricultural pests and their enemies. Using cage experiments, this study measures the effect of habitat complexity across scales on pest suppression of the cabbage aphid Brevicoryne brassicae...

Soil conditions and microclimate are important determinants of the fine-scale distribution of plant species in the Arctic, creating locally heterogeneous vegetation. We hypothesize that root-associated fungal (RAF) communities respond to the same fine-scale environmental gradients as the aboveground vegetation, creating a coherent pattern between aboveground vegetation and RAF. We explored how ...