Plague in Small Mammals From an Endemic Focus of the Malagasy Central Highlands: A Longitudinal Survey With a Special Reference on Black Rats (Rattus rattus).

Plague, a zoonotic disease caused by Yersinia pestis, remains a major public health threat in several parts of the world, including Madagascar. Factors underlying long-term persistence and emergence of the pathogen remain poorly understood. We implemented a longitudinal survey to provide insights into plague reservoir ecology within an endemic focus.

Persistent humid climate favored the Qin and Western Han Dynasties in China around 2,200 y ago.

The Qin and Western Han dynasties (221 BCE to 24 CE) represent an era of societal prosperity in China. However, due to a lack of high-resolution paleoclimate records it is still unclear whether the agricultural boost documented for this period was associated with more favorable climatic conditions. Here, multiparameter analysis of annually resolved tree-ring records and process-based physiological modeling provide evidence of stable and consistently humid climatic conditions during 270 to 77 BCE in northern China.

Brain-body co-evolution in incipient versus established primate species - evaluating Simpson's "most important distinction".

Are differences between species the long-term consequence of microevolution within species, or does speciation involve fundamentally different processes? We analyzed brain and body sizes of present-day primate species using a novel phylogenetic comparative method that decomposes the phenotypic covariance of these traits into speciational and anagenetic components. We estimated that approximately half of speciation events are accompanied by accelerated phenotypic change. Equivalent in magnitude to approximately 7 million years of gradual microevolution, such speciational changes in brain and body size account for about 58% of the phenotypic variation among extant species.