Climate-mediated changes in marine ecosystem regulation during El Niño.

The degree to which ecosystems are regulated through bottom-up, top-down, or direct physical processes represents a long-standing issue in ecology, with important consequences for resource management and conservation. In marine ecosystems, the role of bottom-up and top-down forcing has been shown to vary over spatio-temporal scales, often linked to highly variable and heterogeneously distributed environmental conditions. Ecosystem dynamics in the Northeast Pacific have been suggested to be predominately bottom-up regulated.

Resilience and stability of a pelagic marine ecosystem.

The accelerating loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services worldwide has accentuated a long-standing debate on the role of diversity in stabilizing ecological communities and has given rise to a field of research on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF). Although broad consensus has been reached regarding the positive BEF relationship, a number of important challenges remain unanswered. These primarily concern the underlying mechanisms by which diversity increases resilience and community stability, particularly the relative importance of statistical averaging and functional complementarity.

Multi-decadal oceanic ecological datasets and their application in marine policy and management.

Long-term biological time-series in the oceans are relatively rare. Using the two longest of these we show how the information value of such ecological time-series increases through space and time in terms of their potential policy value. We also explore the co-evolution of these oceanic biological time-series with changing marine management drivers.

Host mating system and the spread of a disease-resistant allele in a population.

The model presented here modifies a susceptible-infected (SI) host-pathogen model to determine the influence of mating system on the outcome of a host-pathogen interaction. Both deterministic and stochastic (individual-based) versions of the model were used. This model considers the potential consequences of varying mating systems on the rate of spread of both the pathogen and resistance alleles within the population.

The mixed mating system of Impatiens capensis and infection by a foliar rust pathogen: patterns of resistance and fitness consequences.

Outcrossing by hosts may offer protection from natural enemies adapted to parental genotypes by creating diverse progeny that differ from their parents through genetic recombination. However, past experimental work addressing the relationship between mating system and disease in offspring has given conflicting results, suggesting that outcrossing might also cause the dissolution of resistant genotypes. To determine if selfed progeny are more susceptible to disease caused by the heteroecious rust, Puccinia recondita, or if selfing preserves existing resistant genotypes, we used a factorial design to compare levels of infection of selfed and outcrossed progeny of Impatiens capensis, a woodland annual with a mixed mating system.

Depth-mediated reversal of the effects of climate change on long-term growth rates of exploited marine fish.

The oceanographic consequences of climate change are increasingly well documented, but the biological impacts of this change on marine species much less so, in large part because of few long-term data sets. Using otolith analysis, we reconstructed historical changes in annual growth rates for the juveniles of eight long-lived fish species in the southwest Pacific, from as early as 1861. Six of the eight species show significant changes in growth rates during the last century, with the pattern differing systematically with depth.

Host mating system and the prevalence of disease in a plant population.

A modified susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) host-pathogen model is used to determine the influence of plant mating system on the outcome of a host-pathogen interaction. Unlike previous models describing how interactions between mating system and pathogen infection affect individual fitness, this model considers the potential consequences of varying mating systems on the prevalence of resistance alleles and disease within the population. If a single allele for disease resistance is sufficient to confer complete resistance in an individual and if both homozygote and heterozygote resistant individuals have the same mean birth and death rates, then, for any parameter set, the selfing rate does not affect the proportions of resistant, susceptible or infected individuals at equilibrium.

Mutualistic fungus promotes plant invasion into diverse communities.

Reducing the biological diversity of a community may decrease its resistance to invasion by exotic species. Manipulative experiments typically support this hypothesis but have focused mainly on one trophic level (i.e.

Evidence for maintenance of sex by pathogens in plants.

The predominance of outcrossing despite the substantial transmission advantage of self-fertilization remains a paradox. Theory suggests that selection can favor outcrossing if it enables the production of offspring that are less susceptible to pathogen attack than offspring produced via self-fertilization. Thus, if pathogen pressure is contributing to the maintenance of outcrossing in plants, there may be a positive correlation between the number of pathogen species attacking plant species and the outcrossing rate of the plant species.

Occurrence of high levels of tetracosahexaenoic acid in the jellyfish Aurelia sp.

The FA composition of the pelagic jellyfish Aurelia sp. collected from off-shore Western Australia waters was determined by capillary GC and GC-MS, with confirmation of PUFA structure performed by analysis of 4,4-dimethyloxazoline derivatives. PUFA constituted 47.

Delivering the city's children: municipal programs and midwifery in Los Angeles.

In 1915, at the height of a movement in the United States to regulate midwifery, health officials in the city of Los Angeles devised an unusual plan for doing so: they put the city itself in the midwifery business. At the same time that public health officials in Los Angeles enacted traditional regulatory legislation to deal with the "midwife problem," they also established a Division of Obstetrics within the city's health department to provide prenatal and postnatal care for the poor. Unlike the maternity dispensaries of other municipalities, Los Angeles provided physicians to attend home-births.

Diversity and endemism of the benthic seamount fauna in the southwest Pacific.

Seamounts comprise a unique deep-sea environment, characterized by substantially enhanced currents and a fauna that is dominated by suspension feeders, such as corals. The potential importance of these steep-sided undersea mountains, which are generally of volcanic origin, to ocean biogeography and diversity was recognized over 40 years ago, but this environment has remained very poorly explored. A review of seamount biota and biogeography reported a total of 597 invertebrate species recorded from seamounts worldwide since the Challenger expedition of 1872.