Lionfish ( Pterois spp.) are hypothesized to negatively influence cryptobenthic reef fish assemblages through predation. We evaluated these potential effects on Caribbean reefs in Costa Rica and tropical reefs in Brazil. Brazil provided a reference condition for cryptobenthic assemblages prior to lionfish invasion, while the Costa Rica sites enabled comparisons between reefs inside marine protected areas (MPAs), where lionfish...

Coastal vulnerability is a critical determinant of risk in littoral systems, particularly in regions where seasonal environmental forcing intersects with persistent socioeconomic fragility. This study assesses the integrated socioeconomic and environmental vulnerability (SEVI) of 18 microzones along the Urabá coast in the Colombian Caribbean. Grounded in the exposure-sensitivity-adaptive capacity framework, the methodology uti...

Forests are at the frontline of both climate and biodiversity crises: forests are fundamental to the regulation of Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and tropical forests alone harbour over half of all terrestrial species. Consequently, forests are at the centre of global efforts to both prevent extinctions of species and sequester carbon to mitigate climate change. Most carbon sequestration initiatives do not measure...

Background The hereditary cerebellar ataxias are a clinically and genetically heterogeneous group of disorders characterized by progressive cerebellar degeneration leading to incoordination of gait, speech, limb, and eye movements. Hundreds of genes encoding diverse proteins underlie this family of degenerative disorders that may exhibit autosomal dominant, recessive, mitochondrial, or X-linked inheritance. Variations in clini...

Background and Aims Climate change is posing a major threat to global agricultural productivity. Plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) have emerged as sustainable tools to enhance crop tolerance to abiotic stress through different mechanisms. This study aimed to evaluate the physiological, biochemical, and transcriptomic responses of the Altoandina oat variety ( Avena sativa AV25T) under water deficit and to determine the eff...

In the Eastern South Pacific (ESP), blue whale ( Balaenoptera musculus subsp.) aggregations have been described for two feeding areas (in northern and southern Chile) and in the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP). However, despite the knowledge of these areas, little is known about the seasonal movements of blue whales between them. Comparisons of 1074 individual blue whales, photographed across these regions from 1992 to 2019, re...

The design of a micropollutant monitoring network in rivers is a challenging task because of the lack of environmental regulations, high laboratory analysis costs, and the limited availability of standardized analytical techniques, especially in Latin America. These constraints hinder the ability to make informed, data-driven decisions. In this study, we proposed a methodology that updates the micropollutant measurement proces...