Spondyloarthropathy has been reported among modern individuals of several species of ursid. Prehistoric cervical vertebra of black bear (Ursus americanus) recovered from an archaeological site in northwestern Oregon are fused and distorted, indicating spondyloarthropathy in this species has some time depth. Inventory of this disease among paleozoological remains may reveal unknown details of di...

BACKGROUND Ecologically similar species often coexist by partitioning use of habitats or resources. Such partitioning can occur through divergent or shared niches. We investigated overlap in habitat use and spatial co-occurrence by sympatric Asiatic black bears and sun bears in three habitats in Thailand, and thereby assessed which niche model best accounts for their coexistence. METHODS/PRIN...

Loss and fragmentation of natural habitats caused by human land uses have subdivided several formerly contiguous large carnivore populations into multiple small and often isolated subpopulations, which can reduce genetic variation and lead to precipitous population declines. Substantial habitat loss and fragmentation from urban development and agriculture expansion relegated the Highlands-Glade...

When estimating population density from data collected on non-invasive detector arrays, recently developed spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models present an advance over non-spatial models by accounting for individual movement. While these models should be more robust to changes in trapping designs, they have not been well tested. Here we investigate how the spatial arrangement and size of the ...

BACKGROUND Indigenous peoples have traditionally relied on foods hunted and gathered from their immediate environment. The Eastern James Bay Cree people consume wild game and birds, and these are believed to provide health as well as cultural benefits. OBJECTIVE To determine the fatty acid (FA) composition of traditional game and bird meats hunted in the Eastern James Bay area. DESIGN Harve...

Despite extensive genetic analysis, the evolutionary relationship between polar bears (Ursus maritimus) and brown bears (U. arctos) remains unclear. The two most recent comprehensive reports indicate a recent divergence with little subsequent admixture or a much more ancient divergence followed by extensive admixture. At the center of this controversy are the Alaskan ABC Islands brown bears tha...

Parasites collected from free-ranging black bears, Ursus americanus Pallas, 1780, from northeastern Minnesota or northern Michigan include the dog tick, Dermacentor variabilis (Say, 1821), the winter tick, D. ALBIPICTUS (Packard, 1869), a louse, Trichodectes pinguis euarctidoes Hopkins, 1954, an ascarid worm, Baylisascaris transfuga (rudolphi, 1819), a filarial worm, Dirofilaria ursi Yamaguti, ...

We report that a single nucleotide replacement in the melanocortin 1 receptor gene [1] (mc1r) is responsible for the white coat color of the "Kermode" bear [2], a color phase of the black bear (Ursus americanus Pallus) found in the rainforests along the north coast of British Columbia. In a sample of 220 bears, of which 22 were white, there was complete association of a recessive Tyr-to-Cys rep...

This paper explores the distributional effects of contractionary monetary policy by race and gender in the US from 1979-2008 using state-level panel data. We hypothesize that women and Blacks, as groups with less power and lower status in the social hierarchy, fare worse in the competition over jobs, resulting in a disproportionate rise in female and Black unemployment rates relative to White m...