Buruli ulcer (BU) is a neglected tropical skin disease caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans with more than two thirds of the global cases reported in West Africa. A nationwide active BU case search conducted in 1999 identified two health districts along the Offin River as two of the three most endemic districts in Ghana. Based on recent anecdotal accounts that transmission is unstable along the Off...

Papua New Guinea is one of the most valuable tropical regions but ecological research of its freshwater invertebrates has been lacking. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the species richness, diversity and structure of aquatic insect assemblages in different habitats in the Wanang River catchment in a well-preserved lowland rainforest. Assemblage structure was studied on two spatial scales ...

Amphidromy is a diadromous life history pattern, common in tropical and subtropical freshwater caridean shrimps, in which adults live, breed and spawn small-sized embryos in freshwater but have extended larval development (ELD) in marine waters. Most completely freshwater species spawn large embryos with either direct or abbreviated larval development (ALD). An important benefit of amphidromy i...

The Strickland River is the primary sediment source for the Fly River system, a large tropical river that ranks in the global top 20 for both water and sediment discharge. Over the past decade the Strickland sediment discharge has been gauged at many locations. Comprehensive studies are now underway to study the delivery, transport, and storage of sediment throughout this system. A key question...

Measuring population connectivity is a critical task in conservation biology. While genetic markers can provide reliable long-term historical estimates of population connectivity, scientists are still limited in their ability to determine contemporary patterns of gene flow, the most practical time frame for management. Here, we tackled this issue by developing a new approach that only requires ...

We report mercury (Hg) mass-dependent isotope fractionation (MDF) and mass-independent isotope fractionation (MIF) in hair samples of the Bolivian Esse Ejjas native people and in several tropical fish species that constitute their daily diet. MDF with delta(202)Hg ranging from -0.40 to -0.92 per thousand for fish and +1.04 to +1.42 per thousand for hair was observed. Hair samples of native peop...

Rivers play a significant role in providing water resources for human and ecosystem survival and health. Hence, river water quality is an important parameter that must be preserved and monitored. As the state of Selangor and the city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, are undergoing tremendous development, the river is subjected to pollution from point and non-point sources. The water quality of the Kl...

We develop a dynamic methanogen-available carbon model (DMCM) to quantify the role of the methanogenavailable carbon pool in determining the spatial and temporal variability of tropical wetland CH4 emissions over seasonal timescales. We fit DMCM parameters to satellite observations of CH4 columns from SCIAMACHY CH4 and equivalent water height (EWH) from GRACE. Over the Amazon River basin we fou...