The purpose of this research is to determine the feasibility of developing a new aesthetic, crashworthy terminal for the steel-backed timber (SBT) guardrail system for use by the National Park Service and others along park roads and scenic highways. Two conceptual designs, a flared non-energy absorbing concept and a parallel energy absorbing concept, were developed using the same materials that...

Fraser et al. (Reports, 17 July 2015, p. 302) report that a hump-backed model describes the worldwide relationship between productivity and plant species richness in grassland communities. We reanalyze their data from a larger-scale perspective, using local species pool. This influences richness far more strongly than productivity, and, when this is taken into account, the hump-backed richness-...

The nest box is a powerful research tool for ecological and conservational studies of birds and several other cavity nesters. However, skilful predators such as martens sometimes invade nest boxes, thus disturbing researches. To protect nest boxes against predation by martens, we attached a small plate inside the nest box below the entrance hole, and we report here on the advantage of this devi...

Animals often settle near competitors, a behavior known as social attraction, which belies standard habitat selection theory. Two hypotheses account for these observations: individuals obtain Allee benefits mediated by the physical presence of a competitor, or they use successfully settled individual as a source of information indicating the location of high quality habitat. We evaluated these ...

Fraser et al. (Reports, 17 July 2015, p. 302) report that a hump-backed model describes the worldwide relationship between productivity and plant species richness in grassland communities. We reanalyze their data from a larger-scale perspective, using local species pool. This influences richness far more strongly than productivity, and, when this is taken into account, the hump-backed richness-...