The diversity of many marine benthic groups is unlike that of most other taxa. Rather than declining from the tropics to the poles, much of the benthos shows high diversity in the Southern Ocean. Moreover, many species are ...

Despite their significance in soil ecosystems and their use for investigations of soil ecosystem functioning and in bioindication elsewhere, springtails (Collembola) have not been well investigated in South Africa. Early ...

Background: The Fynbos (FB) and Succulent Karoo biomes (SKB) have high regional plant diversity despite relatively low productivity. Local diversity in the region varies but is moderate. For insects, previous work suggests ...

Non-indigenous ungulate species pose a problem for conservation. They can be socially and economically valuable, but are also potentially harmful to biodiversity. Therefore, their introduction requires an explicit assessment ...

For tsetse (Glossina spp.), the vectors of human and animal trypanosomiases, the physiological mechanisms linking variation in population dynamics with changing weather conditions have not been well established. Here, we ...

Despite the apparent risks of the introduction of non-indigenous ungulates to biodiversity, relatively little is known globally about the pathways of introduction, propagule pressure and realized impacts of ungulate ...

The discontinuous gas-exchange cycles (DGCs) observed in many quiescent insects have been a cause of debate for decades, but no consensus on their evolutionary origin or adaptive significance has been achieved. Nevertheless, ...

Despite the relative richness of spider species across the Southern Ocean islands remarkably little information is available on their biology. Here, the critical thermal limits of an indigenous (Myro kerguelenensis, Desidae) ...

Penguins have been receiving a lot of bad press lately. They are considered somehow counter, spare, strange. Unlike most plant and animal groups, they do not show a peak of species richness towards the equator and a ...

A full-factorial study of the effects of rates of temperature change and start temperatures was undertaken for both upper and lower critical thermal limits (CTLs) using the tsetse fly, Glossina pallidipes. Results show ...