Do flatland- and mountain-dwelling species show different structuring of their experienced environment over latitude? A western vs. central-eastern North America rodent multispecies comparison

Common patterns of climatic variability across the Western Americas are modulated by tropical and extra-tropical oscillatory modes operating at different temporal scales. Interannual climatic variations in the tropics and subtropics of the Western Americas are largely regulated by El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), whereas decadal-scale variations are induced by long-term Pacific modes of climate variability such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). At higher latitudes, climate variations are dominated by oscillations in the Annular Modes (the Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations) which show both interannual and longer-scale temporal oscillations. Here we use a recently-developed network of tree-ring chronologies to document past climatic variations along the length of the Western Cordilleras. The local and regional characterization of the relationships between climate and tree-growth provide the basis to compare climatic variations in temperature- and precipitation-sensitive records in the Western Americas over the past 3–4 centuries. Upper-elevation records from tree-ring sites in the Gulf of Alaska and Patagonia reveal the occurrence of concurrent decade-scale oscillations in temperature during the last 400 years modulated by PDO. The most recent fluctuation from the cold- to the warm-phase of the PDO in the mid 1970s induced marked changes in tree growth in most extratropical temperature-sensitive chronologies in the Western Cordilleras of both Hemispheres. Common patterns of interannual variations in tree-ring chronologies from the relatively-dry subtropics in western North and South America are largely modulated by ENSO. We used an independent reconstruction of Nino-3 sea surface temperature (SST) to document relationships to tree growth in the southwestern US, the Bolivian Altiplano and Central Chile and also to show strong correlations between these regions. These results further document the strong influence of SSTs in the tropical Pacific as a common forcing of precipitation variations in the subtropical Western America during the past 3–4 centuries. Common patterns of interdecadal or longer-scale variability in tree-ring chronologies from the subarctic and subantarctic regions also suggest common forcings for the annular modes of high-latitude climate variability. A clear separation of the relative influence of tropical versus high-latitude modes of variability is currently difficult to establish: discriminating between tropical and extra-tropical influences on tree growth still remains elusive, particularly in subtropical and temperate regions along our transect. We still need independent reconstructions of tropical and polar modes of climate variability to gain insight into past forcing interactions and the combined effect on climates of the Western Americas. Finally, we also include a series of brief examples (as ‘boxes’) illustrating some of the major regional developments in dendrochronology over this global transect in the last 10 years.

J. L. Hoogland (ed.). 2006. Conservation of the Black-Tailed Prairie Dog: Saving North America's Western Grasslands.Island Press, Washington, D.C., 350350 pp. ISBN 1-55963-498-7, price (paper), $35. Conservation of the Black-Tailed Prairie Dog is a collection of papers written by many authors—including editor John L. Hoogland, who has devoted most of his professional career to the study of prairie dog biology—that aims to provide a summary of all current data concerning 1 of North America's keystone species, the black-tailed prairie dog ( Cynomys ludovicianus ), and the conservation of this species. With 30 contributing authors, this work provides substantial information on C. ludovicianus and also includes a very broad range of discussion stemming from different specializations. Incorporated into the text are many photographs and illustrations that help to support the writing. The main theme, of course, is conservation. Separated into 3 parts, this book serves to inform and offer solutions for the preservation and management of prairie dogs. Part I of the book is an overview of the natural history of prairie dogs, including demography and population dynamics, social structures, and discussion of C. ludovicianus as a keystone species. Hoogland points out that without solid and long-term scientific knowledge of prairie dog biology, we cannot act …

Introduction: the paper investigates the experience of some countries of Western Europe (Italy, Germany, Austria and The Netherlands), North America (the U.S. and Canada) and Asia (Mongolia and Japan) in the field of state protection of penitentiary personnel. The aim of summarizing the experience of these countries is to identify relevant examples of legal regulation and organization of state protection of civil servants, including prison staff, for the purpose of implementation of this experience in Russian practice. Methods: we use general scientific (analysis, synthesis, induction, etc.) and specific sociological methods of cognition (comparative-legal, sociological, statistical, comparative). Results: having conducted the comparative study, we find that Mongolia and Japan do not have a separate unified legal framework for state protection of penitentiary personnel. The norms that establish the legal and social guarantees of employees are contained in several laws and by-laws that specify them. The experience of the countries of Western Europe and America indicates that the activities aimed at ensuring state protection are concentrated and implemented by a specially created body with a wide range of powers. In these countries, special attention is paid to the issue of separate funding of programs for the protection of state servant sand persons who assist justice. Discussion: we highlight the fact that the legal and organizational aspects of ensuring state protection of the personnel of penitentiary institutions in some foreign countries have positive aspects. Some examples of foreign experience can be used in law-making and law enforcement activities in the Russian Federation. Keywords: Penitentiary personnel; foreign experience; state protection; penal system; security measures; legal and social protection measures

Poisoning: Overview and Statistics

By trade, geologists display a rather cavalier attitude toward the continents. In their minds or on computer screens they frequently rearrange the world, shuffling about Africa and Asia faster than an interior decorator might move sofas. But even those long accustomed to the game of continental twister are doing a double take at a novel theory about Earth's ancient history Two researchers propose that North America and Antarctica once lay side by side, locked together in a marathon union spanning perhaps more than a billion years. think it's pretty surprising to most people. When I first told it to a colleague of mine, he told me I was out of my mind, says Ian WD. Dalziel, a geologist at the University of Texas in Austin and one formulator of the new theory Dalziel and Eldridge M. Moores, from the University of California, Davis, devised independent versions of the hypothesis after Moores visited Antarctica in 1989 on a field trip led by Dalziel. Plate tectonic experts have long suspected that most of Earth's continents combined to form a giant landmass, existing from about 800 to 600 million years ago, the end of the Precambrian time. The details from that far back remain fuzzy Yet geologists know that when the unnamed supercontinent splintered apart, some landmass separated from North America's western edge, which at the time ran through the present locations of Montana, Idaho and Nevada. The popular theory among researchers holds that the missing block of continent now forms Siberia. Moores and Dalziel believe East Antarctica makes a better candidate for North America's long-lost mate, despite the incredible distance now separating the two. They proposed this connection after noticing that certain rocks from the frozen continent bear a close resemblance to those found in parts of the United States. According to Moores, the Dronning Maud Land section of East Antarctica contains a band of 1.1-billion-year-old metamorphic rocks very similar to the so-called Grenville belt that runs from Texas through the Adirondack Mountains of New York and into Quebec. He suggests that Dronning Maud Land originally sat next to present-day Texas, forming a continuation of the Grenville province into Antarctica. If the ancient core of Antarctica was indeed wedded to early North America, the marriage may have lasted for an unusually long time, even by geologic standards. Similar rocks found in Arizona and Antarctica indicate the two continental cores got hitched at least 1.6 billion years ago. Locked together, they wandered the Earth as a unit for hundreds of millions of years and then joined up with other regions to form the late Precambrian supercontinent. North America would have finally divorced from Antarctica about 600 million years ago, when an ocean opened between the two continents. In Dalziel's view of the ancient world, Antarctica and North America both connected to Australia, which then bordered what is now northwest Canada (see map). After those western connections developed, the eastern side of North America bonded with ancient parts of South America. Dalziel describes North America as a keystone at the center of the late Precambrian supercontinent, which apparently straddled Earth's equator. Moores and Dalziel are not the first to suggest a connection between the polar continent and North America. More than a decade ago, Canadian geologists proposed a similar idea but never developed the concept, which lay fallow for many years until Moores and Dalziel developed it independently in separate papers, which will appear respectively in the May and June issues of GEOLOGY. The two researchers discussed their work last month at a meeting of the Geologic Society of America in San Francisco.

The Distribution of Scrophulariaceae in the Holarctic With Special Reference to the Floristic Relationships Between Eastern Asia and Eastern North America

With the recent development of high‐quality, digital daily air‐temperature archives over North America, flexible approaches that evaluate trends in time‐varying percentiles are capable of estimating climate‐change parameters from all portions of air‐temperature frequency distributions. Using these methods, intense warming is found in the lowest minimum temperatures over western and central North America. During the months of January through March, the lower tail of the daily minimum air‐temperature distribution over western North America has warmed at rates exceeding 3°C/50yr. Daily maximum air temperatures also are increasing over western Canada and Alaska at this time, but all parts of the frequency distribution are warming equally. Other times of year in western North America, as well as much of eastern North America, show little change in either minimum or maximum air temperature during the last half‐century.

Similarities in the temperate floras of eastern Asia and North America have been appreciated for more than 200 yr, but the generality of the floristic relationships among eastern Asia (EAS), eastern North America (ENA), and western North America (WNA), postulated by Asa Gray about 150 yr ago, has not been tested until now. In this article, floristic relationships based on genera shared among EAS, ENA, and WNA were examined at different spatial scales for different phylogenetic groups using complete floras. Floristic similarity between EAS and ENA is higher than that between EAS and WNA, and the floras of ENA and WNA are more closely related to each other than are the floras of EAS and ENA. Compared with ENA and WNA, the number of genera common to EAS and ENA is significantly higher in basal angiosperms and significantly lower in asterids. Floristic similarities tend to decrease from more basal to more modern lineages between EAS and ENA and between EAS and WNA but not between ENA and WNA. Similarly, from more basal to more modern divisions, the fraction of shared genera decreases between EAS and ENA and between EAS and WNA, whereas the floristic similarity between ENA and WNA tends to increase. Furthermore, floristic similarity between EAS and ENA increases with latitude. The causes of the observed patterns of floristic similarity between EAS, ENA, and WNA are discussed.

The taxonomy of Megaloptera from the Nearctic region is fairly well known and their faunal diversity has been largely surveyed, even in relatively remote regions. However, the evolutionary history of Nearctic Megaloptera is still poorly known with phylogenetic and biogeographic studies lacking. In this paper, we report a new fishfly species of the endemic North American genus Neohermes Banks, 1908, increasing the total number known of species to six. This new species (Neohermes inexpectatus sp. nov.) is currently known to occur only in California (USA) and is apparently confined to the Northern Coastal Range. The new species resembles the three Neohermes species from eastern North America based on the relatively small body size and the presence of female gonostyli 9. However, our phylogenetic analysis using adult morphological data recovered the new species as the sister species to the remaining Neohermes, which includes two species from western North America and three from eastern North America. According to the present interspecific phylogeny of Neohermes, with reconstructed ancestral areas, the initial divergence within the genus was found to take place in western North America, with a subsequent eastward dispersal. This likely lead to the modern distribution of Neohermes in eastern North America with the closure of the Mid-Continental Seaway, which separated western and eastern North America in the Mid-Late Cretaceous (100–80 MYA) and finally disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous (70 MYA). The uplift of the Cordilleran System probably accounted for the divergence between the eastern and two western Neohermes species.

This article addresses the question whether new social risks have superseded the classic risks to family incomes addressed by welfare states in Western and North America – unemployment, the costs of illness and employment income foregone, industrial accidents, retirement poverty, and costs of raising a large family. While the risks at the time of a mature welfare state differ to some extent from those of its earlier formative days, the ‘old’ risks to family incomes did not disappear. There is no evidence to support the position that healthcare costs have become fiscally ‘unaffordable’ or politically ‘unsustainable’. If anything, there has been expansion of the risks covered by (public) health insurance by expanding entitlements and categories of beneficiaries, or adding long-term care insurance to the public schemes.

Seismic waves in the earth's crust and mantle are known to be sensitive to density contrasts over large volumes of rock, which contrasts tend to cause focusing effects. The end results of such effects observed at seismograph stations are hard to detect unless sufficient arrivals are sampled. It is a common fault to confuse such effects with those of local structures and properties. In a study of teleseismic, short‐period (1 s) P‐wave travel‐time residuals and variations of amplitudes in western North America. R. Butler of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics has found a high level of correlation to which he attributes qualitatively the focusing and defocusing of seismic waves (Nature, December 15, 1983). The correlation indicating that slow travel times relate to higher, and fast travel times to lower, amplitudes of seismic waves measured in western North America. Conversely, faster travel times and higher amplitudes are generally observed in eastern North America (defined as stations located east of the Rocky Mountain front). Although there may be less attenuation of seismic waves in the upper mantle beneath eastern North America, indications are that the degree of attenuation is highly variable. According to Butler, “On the large scale, the variations between western and eastern North America are probably rooted in lateral differences in temperature. Higher temperatures beneath the tectonically active west produce higher attentuation of P‐waves, lower velocities in the upper mantle, and high surface heat flow.” The focusing and defocusing effects of low and high velocity lenses, respectively, may be most effecitive if such lensese are located close to a seismic station. Butler noted that lenses, or anomalous regions, must have dimensions of one or more wavelengths of a P‐wave, which translates to a minimum dimension in the earth of 6–8 km (for 1‐s period waves). Positive correlations have been observed characteristically over large seismic arrays, suggeting the existence of lenses of several tens of square kilometers in cross section.

Geoarchaeology and paleoecology of the deeply stratified Richard Beene site, Medina River valley, South-Central Texas, USA

Despite over a century of prospecting and field research, fossil vertebrates are exceedingly rare in Paleogene and Neogene rocks in northern Canada's Yukon Territory. Here, we describe the first records of probable Neogene vertebrate fossils from the territory, including tooth fragments of a rhinocerotid, a partial calcaneum of an artiodactyl, shell fragments of the pond turtle Chrysemys s.l. and tortoise Hesperotestudo, and a fragment of a palatine of Esox (pike). Although the tooth fragments cannot be identified solely by traditional paleontological means, we use tooth enamel microstructure, and primarily the presence of vertical Hunter-Schreger bands, to refer them to the Rhinocerotidae. As the only known record of the Rhinocerotidae in North America's western Arctic, the tooth fragments from the Wolf Creek site support the hypothesis that the clade dispersed between Asia and North America across Beringia. The fossils are consistent with a Miocene age for the Wolf Creek site that is inferred from radiometric dates of the Miles Canyon basalt flows in the vicinity of the fossil locality. Further, the tortoise and pond turtle fossils indicate a mild climate in the Yukon at the time, consistent with the vegetation reconstructions of others that indicate a warmer, wetter world in the Miocene than today.

ABSTRACTOutcrops of sedimentary strata that infill the Georgia Basin, Canada and USA have been studied extensively as they record information on the tectonic evolution of western North America. However, these outcrops are situated in only a limited extent of the basin (mainly Vancouver Island) and preserve mainly Upper Cretaceous strata, and so the information that can be derived from outcrops is incomplete and spans less than half of the Georgia Basin's temporal history. The majority of the Georgia Basin, and the complete stratigraphy, occurs in the subsurface in the Whatcom Sub‐Basin, which extends below much of the Strait of Georgia, the Lower Mainland of British Columbia (LMBC), Canada and northwest Washington, USA. In this study, we reconstruct the stratigraphic architecture, evolution and palaeogeography of Upper Cretaceous and Cenozoic strata in the Whatcom Sub‐Basin, and we use these data to develop a more complete record of the depositional history of the Georgia Basin and its evolution relative to major tectonic events along North America's west coast. We focus on the Canadian extent of the Whatcom Sub‐Basin, the LMBC, because of the availability of two‐dimensional seismic reflection datasets and cored intervals, which enable facies characterisation and provide detrital zircon datasets. The stratigraphy of the Whatcom Sub‐Basin is divided into four stratal packages, including: lower Nanaimo Group, upper Nanaimo Group, Huntingdon Formation and Boundary Bay Formation. The few outcrops and a single cored interval suggest that the lower Nanaimo Group is dominated by fluvial strata in the Whatcom Sub‐Basin. The upper Nanaimo Group is dominated by fluvial strata in the central part of the Whatcom Sub‐Basin and turbidites and deep‐marine strata in the west, and this facies relationship indicates that sediment transport was to the west. The Eocene and younger Huntingdon and Boundary Bay formations record re‐organisation of the basin, with a shift in sediment transport to the south and southwest. Both the Huntingdon and Boundary Bay formations are dominated by terrestrial strata with evidence of marine influence increasing towards the southwest but decreasing stratigraphically upwards. Changing sediment transport pathways and recycling of Nanaimo Group strata in Eocene time reflect the bifurcation of the Georgia Basin with uplift of the forearc high (i.e., Vancouver Island). Boundary Bay Formation deposits extend further east than do all other stratigraphic units, and detrital zircon‐based maximum depositional age estimates indicate that parts of the Lower Mainland probably have experienced active subsidence for at least the past 15 million years. A comparison of our data to tectonic events along North America's western margin indicates that (a) the fill and geometry of the basin evolved due to syn‐ and post‐depositional tectonism, and (b) basin topography and syntectonic activity drove major changes in depositional environments both areally and temporally. For example, uplift of the forearc high and the associated re‐organisation of drainages in the Whatcom Sub‐Basin correlate temporally to docking of Siletzia in the early Eocene.

Changes in symbiont assemblages can affect the success and impact of invasive species, and may provide knowledge regarding the invasion histories of their vectors. Bark beetle symbioses are ideal systems to study changes in symbiont assemblages resulting from invasions. The red turpentine beetle (Dendroctonus valens) is a bark beetle species that recently invaded China from its native range in North America. It is associated with ophiostomatalean fungi in both locations, although the fungi have previously been well-surveyed only in China. We surveyed the ophiostomatalean fungi associated with D. valens in eastern and western North America, and identified the fungal species using multi-gene phylogenies. From the 307 collected isolates (147 in eastern North America and 160 in western North America), we identified 20 species: 11 in eastern North America and 13 in western North America. Four species were shared between eastern North America and western North America, one species (Ophiostoma floccosum) was shared between western North America and China, and three species (Grosmannia koreana, Leptographium procerum, and Ophiostoma abietinum) were shared between eastern North America and China. Ophiostoma floccosum and O. abietinum have worldwide distributions, and were rarely isolated from D. valens. However, G. koreana and L. procerum are primarily limited to Asia and North America respectively. Leptographium procerum, which is thought to be native to North America, represented >45% of the symbionts of D. valens in eastern North America and China, suggesting D. valens may have been introduced to China from eastern North America. These results are surprising, as previous population genetics studies on D. valens based on the cytochrome oxidase I gene have suggested that the insect was introduced into China from western North America.