The role of fire in terrestrial vertebrate richness patterns.

Productivity is strongly associated with terrestrial species richness patterns, although the mechanisms underpinning such patterns have long been debated. Despite considerable consumption of primary productivity by fire, its influence on global diversity has received relatively little study. Here we examine the sensitivity of terrestrial vertebrate biodiversity (amphibians, birds and mammals) to fire, while accounting for other drivers.

Climatic and stand drivers of forest resistance to recent bark beetle disturbance in European coniferous forests.

Bark beetle infestation is a major driver of tree mortality that may be critical for forest persistence under climate change and the forecasted increase of extreme heat and drought episodes. Under this context, the environmental position of host tree populations within the species' climatic niche (central vs. marginal populations) is expected to be a determinant in the dynamics of insect-host systems.

The highly packed and dehydrated structure of preformed unexposed human pulmonary surfactant isolated from amniotic fluid.

By coating the alveolar air-liquid interface, lung surfactant overwhelms surface tension forces that, otherwise, would hinder the lifetime effort of breathing. Years of research have provided a picture of how highly hydrophobic and specialized proteins in surfactant promote rapid and efficient formation of phospholipid-based complex three-dimensional films at the respiratory surface, highly stable under the demanding breathing mechanics. However, recent evidence suggests that the structure and performance of surfactant typically isolated from bronchoalveolar lung lavages may be far from that of nascent, still unused, surfactant as freshly secreted by type II pneumocytes into the alveolar airspaces.

Short-term forest resilience after drought-induced die-off in Southwestern European forests.

Drought-induced die-off in forests is becoming a widespread phenomenon across biomes, but the factors determining potential shifts in taxonomic and structural characteristics following mortality are largely unknown. We report on short-term patterns of resilience after drought-induced episodes of tree mortality across 48 monospecific forests from Morocco to Slovenia. Field surveys recorded plants growing beneath a canopy of dead, defoliated and healthy trees.

Species climatic niche explains post-fire regeneration of Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis Mill.) under compounded effects of fire and drought in east Spain.

Fire and drought are two major agents that shape Mediterranean ecosystems, but their interacting effects on forest resilience have not been yet fully addressed. We used Pinus halepensis to investigate how compound fire-drought regimes determine the success of post-fire regeneration. We measured the density of P.