The structure of and growth forms and habits exhibited by the New Zealand rain forest are described and compared with those of lowland tropical rain forest. Theories relating to the frequent regeneration failure of the forest dominants are outlined. The floristic affinities of the forest type are discussed and it is suggested that two main elements can be recognized-lowland tropical and montane...

Many studies suggest that global warming is driving species ranges poleward and toward higher elevations at temperate latitudes, but evidence for range shifts is scarce for the tropics, where the shallow latitudinal temperature gradient makes upslope shifts more likely than poleward shifts. Based on new data for plants and insects on an elevational transect in Costa Rica, we assess the potentia...

The present study examined the genetic diversity and population structure of Plasmodium falciparum in western Kenya by analyzing the polymorphism of 12 microsatellite loci and two antigen loci. Malaria in highland areas is unstable and epidemic whereas malaria in lowland areas is endemic. Transmission intensity and malaria prevalence are substantially lower in the highlands than in the lowlands...

available online at http://meteoritics.org 1509 © The Meteoritical Society, 2006. Printed in USA. Martian subsurface properties and crater formation processes inferred from fresh impact crater geometries Sarah T. STEWART* and Gregory J. VALIANT Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, 20 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA *Corresponding author. E-mail: sst...

We demonstrate a novel long-reach PON downstream scheme based on the regenerated pilot assisted direct-detection optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DDO-OFDM) superchannel transmission. We use the optical comb source to form DDO-OFDM superchannel, and reserve the center carrier as a seed pilot. The seed pilot is further tracked and reused to generate multiple optical carriers at...

Two anomalous, gray, silty clay beds are present in ODP cores collected from Saanich Inlet, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The beds, which date to about 10,500 C yr BP (11,000 calendar years BP), contain Tertiary pollen derived from sedimentary rocks found only in the Fraser Lowland, on the mainland of British Columbia and Washington just east of the Strait of Georgia. Abundant ill...

The spread of plaza-pyramid complexes across southern Mesoamerica during the early Middle Preclassic period (1000 to 700 BCE) provides critical information regarding the origins of lowland Maya civilization and the role of the Gulf Coast Olmec. Recent excavations at the Maya site of Ceibal, Guatemala, documented the growth of a formal ceremonial space into a plaza-pyramid complex that predated ...

Understanding the genetic basis of adaption is a central task in biology. Populations of the honey bee Apis mellifera that inhabit the mountain forests of East Africa differ in behavior and morphology from those inhabiting the surrounding lowland savannahs, which likely reflects adaptation to these habitats. We performed whole genome sequencing on 39 samples of highland and lowland bees from tw...

1. In England, the loss of lowland heathland, a habitat of global conservation importance, is primarily due to the invasion of birch and pine. This encroachment has been researched in depth from a plant perspective but little is known about the role of mycorrhizal fungi. In lowland heathlands the resident dwarf shrubs form ericoid mycorrhizas whereas invading trees form ectomycorrhizas. Therefo...

Ruminant livestock turn forages and poor-quality feeds into human edible products, but enteric methane (CH4) emissions from ruminants are a significant contributor to greenhouse gases (GHGs) and hence to climate change. Despite the predominance of pasture-based beef production systems in many parts of Europe there are little data available regarding enteric CH4 emissions from free-ranging grazi...