in order to evaluate the effects of forest road on regeneration and vegetation composition in district no. 2 shafaroud, a road was selected with the length of 400 m that the altitude, aspect, slope variations and species composition were similar. five transects in right and 5 transects in left side of road, were established as perpendicular. in each transect 5, 15, 25 and 35 m distances were de...

Ecological theory and nature conservation have traditionally relied solely on observed local diversity. In this review, we recommend including those species that are absent from an ecosystem but which belong to its species pool; that is, all species in the region that can potentially inhabit those particular ecological conditions. We call the set of absent species 'dark diversity'. Relating loc...

Changes from sexual reproduction to female-producing parthenogenesis (thelytoky) have great evolutionary and ecological consequences, but how many times parthenogenesis evolved in different animal taxa is unknown. We present the first exhaustive database covering 765 cases of parthenogenesis in haplodiploid (arrhenotokous) arthropods, and estimate frequencies of parthenogenesis in different tax...

the relationship between topography, soil factors, and distribution of ecological vegetation groups in the nodoushan arid rangelands of yazd province (iran) was investigated. the present species were recorded in each vegetation group using a randomized-systematic sampling method. plant cover and density were estimated quantitatively using the transect and quadrate methods, and the two-way indic...

the genus ranunculus l., with a worldwide distribution, is the largest member of the ranunculaceae. here, nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (its) sequence data and chloroplast trnlf sequence data were used to analyze phylogenetic relationships among members of the annual and perennial (group praemorsa, group rhizomatosa, group grumosa and group non-grumosa) species of ranunculus...

We explore the applicability of the current socio-ecological model to characterize the social structure of Colobus vellerosus, a folivorous primate. The current socio-ecological model predicts that female social relationships should respond in predictable ways to food abundance and distribution and associated competitive regimes. It appears to successfully explain variation in social structure ...

 Benthic invertebrates are a well-established target in environmental quality status evaluations. The AMBI (AZTI's Marine Biotic Index) was developed to determine the impacts and the quality status of soft-bottom marine benthic communities. The aim of this study was investigating multivariate pattern of benthic invertebrate community and application of AMBI (AZTI's Marine Biotic Index) for dete...

Lineage separation and divergence form a temporally extended process whereby populations may diverge genetically, morphologically, or ecologically, and these contingent properties of species provide the operational criteria necessary for species delimitation. We inferred the historical process of lineage formation in the coast horned lizard (Phrynosoma coronatum) species complex by evaluating a...