The Voltage Gate

PLoS One has an overload of ecology centered articles I want to read and review from the past few weeks. I'm hoping I get to some of them in the next week:

Climate Change, Genetics or Human Choice: Why Were the Shells of Mankind's Earliest Ornament Larger in the Pleistocene Than in the Holocene?

[Abstract] The southern African tick shell, Nassariuskraussianus (Dunker, 1846), has been identified as being the earliest known ornamental object used by human beings. Shell beads dated from ,75,000 years ago (Pleistocene era) were found in a cave located on South Africa's south coast. Beads made from N.kraussianus shells have also been found in deposits in this region dating from the beginning of the Holocene era (,10,000 years ago). These younger shells were significantly smaller, a phenomenon that has been attributed to a change in human preference. Methodology/Principal Findings. We investigated two alternative hypotheses explaining the difference in shell size: a) N.kraussianuscomprises at least two genetic lineages that differ in size; b) the difference in shell size is due to phenotypic plasticity and is a function of environmental conditions. To test these hypotheses, we first reconstructed the species' phylogeographic history, and second, we measured the shell sizes of extant individuals throughout South Africa.

Locating Pleistocene Refugia: Comparing Phylogeographic and Ecological Niche Model Predictions

[Abstract] Ecological niche models (ENMs) provide a means of characterizing the spatial distribution of suitable conditions for species, and have recently been applied to the challenge of locating potential distributional areas at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) when unfavorable climate conditions led to range contractions and fragmentation. Here, we compare and contrast ENM-based reconstructions of LGM refugial locations with those resulting from the more traditional molecular genetic and phylogeographic predictions.

Rate of Decline of the Oriental White-Backed Vulture Population in India Estimated from a Survey of Diclofenac Residues in Carcasses of Ungulates

[Abstract] The non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac is a major cause of the rapid declines in the Indian subcontinent of three species of vultures endemic to South Asia. The drug causes kidney failure and death in vultures. Exposure probably arises through vultures feeding on carcasses of domesticated ungulates treated with the drug. However, before the study reported here, it had not been established from field surveys of ungulate carcasses that a sufficient proportion was contaminated to cause the observed declines. We surveyed diclofenac concentrations in samples of liver from carcasses of domesticated ungulates in India in 2004-2005.