Oceanic anoxic events (OAEs) are large-scale events of oxygen depletion in the deep ocean that happened during pre-Cenozoic periods of extreme warmth. Here, to assess the role of major continental configuration changes occurring during the Late Cretaceous on oceanic circulation modes, which in turn influence the oxygenation level of the deep ocean, we use a coupled ocean atmosphere climate mode...

The Greenland Stadial 1 (GS-1; ~12.9 to 11.65 kyr cal BP) was a period of North Atlantic cooling, thought to have been initiated by North America fresh water runoff that caused a sustained reduction of North Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), resulting in an antiphase temperature response between the hemispheres (the 'bipolar seesaw'). Here we exploit sub-fossil New Zealand kau...

Dung beetle community structures changes due to the effects of destruction, fragmentation, isolation and decrease in tropical forest area, and therefore are considered ecological indicators. In order to assess the influence of type of maize cultivated and associated maize management on dung beetle communities in Atlantic Forest fragments surrounded by conventional and transgenic maize were eval...

Atlantic-Mediterranean anchovies were genetically characterized at two polymorphic nuclear loci (intron 6 of two creatine-kinase genes) and compared to reference Engraulis albidus and E. encrasicolus samples from the northern Western Mediterranean to provide new insights into their geographic structure. Northeastern Atlantic anchovy, represented by one sample from the Canary archipelago and one...

The genus Nyctiphanes (Malacostraca, Euphausiacea) comprises four neritic species that display antitropical geographic distribution in the PaciWc (N. simplex and N. australis) and Atlantic (N. couchii and N. capensis) Oceans. We studied the origin of this distribution applying methods for phylogenetic reconstruction and molecular dating of nodes using a Bayesian MCMC analysis and the DNA sequen...

Shipborne aerosol lidar observations were performed aboard the research vessel Polarstern in 2009 and 2010 during three north-south cruises from about 50°N to 50°S. The aerosol data set provides an excellent opportunity to characterize and contrast the vertical aerosol distribution over the Atlantic Ocean in the polluted northern and relatively clean southern hemisphere. Three case studies, an ...

AIM Competition for food among populations of closely related species and conspecifics that occur in both sympatry and parapatry can be reduced by interspecific and intraspecific spatial segregation. According to predictions of niche partitioning, segregation is expected to occur at habitat boundaries among congeners and within habitats among conspecifics, while negative relationships in the de...

[1] The stability of the glacial Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is examined using a coupled model of intermediate complexity. Two slightly different climatic states are generated. One has a southward overturning freshwater transport at the southern border of the Atlantic basin, the other a northward transport. Pulse experiments with varying magnitude always result in a collapsed ci...

Seagrasses, marine flowering plants, are widely distributed along temperate and tropical coastlines of the world. Seagrasses have key ecological roles in coastal ecosystems and can form extensive meadows supporting high biodiversity. The global species diversity of seagrasses is low (b60 species), but species can have ranges that extend for thousands of kilometers of coastline. Seagrass bioregi...

[1] Significant changes of the thermohaline circulation (THC) are likely to cause abrupt climate change. Here we intend to find a simple measure to detect changes in THC through examining several factors proposed to control the THC variations using a coupled climate model. These factors are equatorial-South Atlantic upper ocean temperature, Southern Ocean freshening, inter-basin sea surface sal...