One island group suggested to be an exception to the species!area relationship is the Vanuatu Archipelago, a group of 13 large and 80 small islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean. To test the hypothesis that the lizard fauna of the Vanuatu Archipelago does not meet the predictions of the species!area relationship, and thus is depauperate, we compare diversity among several island groups in the ...

Subducting lithospheric plates are the cool, downwelling limbs of mantle convection and the negative buoyancy of subducting slabs (slab pull) drives plate tectonics [Forsyth and Uyeda, 1975]. Subduction zones are regions of intense earthquake activity, explosive volcanism, and complex mass transfer between the crust, mantle, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. In this contribution, I present subductio...

[1] We perform travel-time tomography to estimate detailed seismic velocity structures in the crust of the Pacific slab from northeastern (NE) Japan to the Kanto district, Japan, and reveal that the depth extent of the low-velocity (hydrated) oceanic crust varies along the arc. The low-velocity oceanic crust is subducting to depths of 120–150 km beneath Kanto, which is 40–70 km deeper compared ...

The Bi’r Umq-Nakasib suture zone, 5-65 km wide and over 600 km long, consists of highly deformed ophiolite nappes and metavolcanic, metasedimentary, and intrusive rocks contained in one of the longest ophiolite-decorated shear zones in the Arabian-Nubian Shield. The rocks originated in a variety of juvenile oceanic environments and include assemblages formed in mid-ocean-ridge, subduction-zone,...

High attenuation of short-period body waves and extremely low surface-wave group velocities have been found for seismic paths that traverse the crust and upper mantle beneath the concave side of the Lesser Antilles island arc (eastern Caribbean). The observations can be explained in terms of the currently accepted models of lithospheric plate subduction at other island arcs such as Fiji-Tonga, ...

Purpose: To present a new method of arthroscopic measurement of the surface and location of condylar lesions. Methods: We propose measuring the height of the condylar lesion by using the lesion’s arc (∆°) obtained from the difference between the angle of flexion at the beginning of the lesion and the angle of flexion at the end of the lesion. The first goal of the study was to determine the int...

PURPOSE To present a new method of arthroscopic measurement of the surface and location of condylar lesions. METHODS We propose measuring the height of the condylar lesion by using the lesion's arc (Δ°) obtained from the difference between the angle of flexion at the beginning of the lesion and the angle of flexion at the end of the lesion. The first goal of the study was to determine the int...

Oceanic islands typically exhibit a lower number of species per unit area than continents owing to their geographical isolation (MacArthur & Wilson, 1967). This relationship demonstrates a remarkable consistency across spatial and taxonomic scales (MacArthur & Wilson, 1967) and has significant evolutionary consequences because island organisms are expected to respond to the empty niche space th...

[1] Orogens with multiple (ultra)high-pressure ((U)HP) and (ultra)high-temperature ((U) HT) metamorphic events provide a complex but telling record of oceanic and continental interaction. The Early Paleozoic history of the “Heart of China,” the Qinling orogenic collage, offers snapshots of at least three (U)HP and two (U)HT metamorphic events. The preservation of remnants of both oceanic and co...

The crown-of-thorns starfish, Acanthaster planci, is a major coral predator widely distributed in the Indo-Pacific region, where population outbreaks have caused dramatic impacts on coral reefs. In the Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) A. planci occurs at low population densities; it has been significantly abundant only in Panama and Cocos Island. We have recently found two individuals of A. planc...