Audible changes in marine trophic ecology: Baleen whale song tracks foraging conditions in the eastern North Pacific.

Among tremendous biodiversity within the California Current Ecosystem (CCE) are gigantic mysticetes (baleen whales) that produce structured sequences of sound described as song. From six years of passive acoustic monitoring within the central CCE we measured seasonal and interannual variations in the occurrence of blue (Balaenoptera musculus), fin (Balaenoptera physalus), and humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae) whale song. Song detection during 11 months of the year defines its prevalence in this foraging habitat and its potential use in behavioral ecology research.

Maximizing biological insights from instruments attached to animals.

Instruments attached to animals ('biologgers') have facilitated extensive discoveries about the patterns, causes, and consequences of animal behavior. Here, we present examples of how biologging can deepen our fundamental understanding of ecosystems and our applied understanding of global change impacts by enabling tests of ecological theory. Applying the iterative process of science to biologging has enabled a diverse set of insights, including social and experiential learning in long-distance migrants, state-dependent risk aversion in foraging predators, and resource abundance driving movement across taxa.

Anthropogenic impacts at the interface of animal spatial and social behaviour.

Human disturbance is contributing to widespread, global changes in the distributions and densities of wild animals. These anthropogenic impacts on wildlife arise from multiple bottom-up and top-down pathways, including habitat loss, resource provisioning, climate change, pollution, infrastructure development, hunting and our direct presence. Animal behaviour is an important mechanism linking these disturbances to population outcomes, although these behavioural pathways are often complex and can remain obscured when different aspects of behaviour are studied in isolation from one another.

Long-distance communication can enable collective migration in a dynamic seascape.

Social information is predicted to enhance the quality of animals' migratory decisions in dynamic ecosystems, but the relative benefits of social information in the long-range movements of marine megafauna are unknown. In particular, whether and how migrants use nonlocal information gained through social communication at the large spatial scale of oceanic ecosystems remains unclear. Here we test hypotheses about the cues underlying timing of blue whales' breeding migration in the Northeast Pacific via individual-based models parameterized by empirical behavioral data.

Shaped by Their Environment: Variation in Blue Whale Morphology across Three Productive Coastal Ecosystems.

Species ecology and life history patterns are often reflected in animal morphology. Blue whales are globally distributed, with distinct populations that feed in different productive coastal regions worldwide. Thus, they provide an opportunity to investigate how regional ecosystem characteristics may drive morphological differences within a species.

SoundScape learning: An automatic method for separating fish chorus in marine soundscapes.

Marine soundscapes provide the opportunity to non-invasively learn about, monitor, and conserve ecosystems. Some fishes produce sound in chorus, often in association with mating, and there is much to learn about fish choruses and the species producing them. Manually analyzing years of acoustic data is increasingly unfeasible, and is especially challenging with fish chorus, as multiple fish choruses can co-occur in time and frequency and can overlap with vessel noise and other transient sounds.

The influence of social cues on timing of animal migrations.

Animal migration plays a central role in many ecological and evolutionary processes, yet migratory populations worldwide are increasingly threatened. Adjusting migration timing to match ecosystem phenology is key to survival in dynamic and changing ecosystems, especially in an era of human-induced rapid environmental change. Social cues are increasingly recognized as major components of migratory behaviour, yet a comprehensive understanding of how social cues influence the timing of animal migrations remains elusive.

Oceanic giants dance to atmospheric rhythms: Ephemeral wind-driven resource tracking by blue whales.

Trophic transfer of energy through marine food webs is strongly influenced by prey aggregation and its exploitation by predators. Rapid aggregation of some marine fish and crustacean forage species during wind-driven coastal upwelling has recently been discovered, motivating the hypothesis that predators of these forage species track the upwelling circulation in which prey aggregation occurs. We examine this hypothesis in the central California Current Ecosystem using integrative observations of upwelling dynamics, forage species' aggregation, and blue whale movement.

Animal-Borne Metrics Enable Acoustic Detection of Blue Whale Migration.

Linking individual and population scales is fundamental to many concepts in ecology [1], including migration [2, 3]. This behavior is a critical [4] yet increasingly threatened [5] part of the life history of diverse organisms. Research on migratory behavior is constrained by observational scale [2], limiting ecological understanding and precise management of migratory populations in expansive, inaccessible marine ecosystems [6].

Seasonal trends and primary contributors to the low-frequency soundscape of the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

Passive acoustic monitoring of ocean soundscapes can provide information on ecosystem status for those tasked with protecting marine resources. In 2015, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) established a long-term, continuous, low-frequency (10 Hz-2 kHz) passive acoustic monitoring site in the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary (CBNMS), located offshore of the central United States of America (U.S.

Coral bleaching response index: a new tool to standardize and compare susceptibility to thermal bleaching.

As coral bleaching events become more frequent and intense, our ability to predict and mitigate future events depends upon our capacity to interpret patterns within previous episodes. Responses to thermal stress vary among coral species; however the diversity of coral assemblages, environmental conditions, assessment protocols, and severity criteria applied in the global effort to document bleaching patterns creates challenges for the development of a systemic metric of taxon-specific response. Here, we describe and validate a novel framework to standardize bleaching response records and estimate their measurement uncertainties.

[Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of flunarizine in multimorbid, geriatric patients with vertigo].

Ten multimorbid, geriatric, hospitalised patients, mean age 76 years, were treated for vertigo and received 10 mg flunarizine (CAS 52468-60-7; Sibelium) daily for 3 weeks. The study of the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of this dosage scheme revealed that the kinetics did not change during the three weeks of therapy. The terminal half-life is 7.

Flunarizine in the treatment of vestibular vertigo: experimental and clinical data.

Because maintenance antivertiginous treatment with commonly used drugs is only moderately effective, there is still need for new therapeutic concepts in the therapy of vestibular vertigo. The cerebral calcium antagonist flunarizine (Sibelium) revealed positive vestibular effects in experimental animal studies and in healthy volunteers. Clinical trials versus placebo and reference drugs proved flunarizine to be effective in the treatment of vestibular disorders.

Flunarizine in migraine prophylaxis: the clinical experience.

Apart from the treatment of migraine attacks, prophylaxis may be required when certain criteria of frequency, duration, or severity are met. In a series of placebo-controlled, double-blind studies, the effectiveness of the cerebral calcium antagonist flunarizine (Sibelium) in migraine prophylaxis was shown. In further investigations, the effectiveness of flunarizine was similar to that of propranolol, metoprolol, pizotifene, and methysergide.

Flunarizine (10 and 20 mg) i.v. versus placebo in the treatment of acute migraine attacks: a multi-centre double-blind study.

In a multi-centre, randomized double-blind study, the effect and tolerance of 10 and 20 mg flunarizine i.v. versus placebo was tested on 102 migraineurs with acute migraine attacks with and/or without aura.

Flunarizine i.v. in the acute treatment of common or classical migraine attacks--a placebo-controlled double blind trial.

The efficacy and tolerance of 20 mg flunarizine i.v. were tested in comparison with placebo in a multicentre randomised double-blind trial in the acute treatment of migraine attacks.

Flunarizine i.v. in the acute treatment of the migraine attack. A double-blind placebo-controlled study.

Flunarizine, 20 mg by slow intravenous injection, was studied in the acute treatment of migraine attacks in a multicentre, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. At the end of the 60 min observation period, 23 of the 31 (74.2%) patients treated with flunarizine reported complete relief, or a pain reduction of more than 50%, vs.

Flunarizine vs. propranolol in the prophylaxis of migraine: two double-blind comparative studies in more than 400 patients.

In the course of a 16 weeks' interval treatment of migraine in connection with two multicenter double-blind studies, flunarizine was compared with propranolol in patients suffering predominantly from "classical migraine". Eighty-seven patients from 12 outpatient departments were admitted to the first study, while 434 patients from 99 medical practices participated in the second study. After each month of treatment, the patients were clinically evaluated, and the number, duration, and severity of attacks were documented.

[Astemizole in urticaria--a multicenter study by 412 established dermatologists].

In the course of a multicenter study on 2122 patients treated by 412 dermatologists in general practice, we investigated the effect of astemizole (Hismanal) on urticaria. During 2 weeks of treatment with astemizole 10 mg daily, the percentage of the patients with severe or moderate affection dropped from 82.4% to 9.