Appropriateness of the dialysis modality selection process: A cross-sectional study.

Studies that specifically quantify the appropriateness of the process of dialysis modality selection are lacking. Peritoneal dialysis (PD) offers clinical and social advantages over hemodialysis (HD), but may be underused. We aimed to determine the appropriateness of the process of dialysis modality selection and quantify the percentage of patients who could potentially have been PD candidates.

Expansion of the agricultural frontier in the largest South American Dry Forest: Identifying priority conservation areas for snakes before everything is lost.

Conservation planning relies on integrating existing knowledge, social-environmental contexts, and potential threats to identify gaps and opportunities for action. Here we present a case study on how priority areas for conservation can be determined using existing information on biodiversity occurrence and threats. Specifically, our goals are: (1) to model the ecological niche of twelve endemic snake species in the Dry Chaco Forest, (2) to quantify the impact of the deforestation rates on their distributions, (3) to propose high priority areas for conservation in order to improve the actual protected area system, and (4) to evaluate the influence of the human footprint on the optimization of selected priority areas.

But they move! Vicariance and dispersal in southern South America: Using two methods to reconstruct the biogeography of a clade of lizards endemic to South America.

This study aims to identify events that modeled the historical biogeography of Phymaturus, using three methodologies: Spatial Analysis of Vicariance (VIP), Statistical Dispersal-Vicariance Analysis (S-DIVA), and Bayesian Binary Method MCMC (BBM). In order to assign areas for the Dispersal-Vicariance and the BBM analyses, we preferred not to use predefined areas, but to identify areas defined via an endemism analysis of Phymaturus species. The analyses were conducted using the same basic topology, which we obtained by constructing a metatree with two recent phylogenies, both morphology and molecular-based.

Estimating ancestral ranges: testing methods with a clade of neotropical lizards (iguania: liolaemidae).

Establishing the ancestral ranges of distribution of a monophyletic clade, called the ancestral area, is one of the central objectives of historical biogeography. In this study, I used three common methodologies to establish the ancestral area of an important clade of Neotropical lizards, the family Liolaemidae. The methods used were: Fitch optimization, Weighted Ancestral Area Analysis and Dispersal-Vicariance Analysis (DIVA).