Summary Infections with tick‐transmitted Borreliella ( Borrelia ) burgdorferi , the cause of Lyme disease, represent an increasingly large public health problem in North America and Europe. The ability of these spirochetes to maintain themselves for extended periods of time in their tick vectors and vertebrate reservoirs is crucial for continuance of the enzootic cycle as well as for the increasing exposure of humans to them....

Deep‐water benthic communities in the ocean are almost wholly dependent on near‐surface pelagic ecosystems for their supply of energy and material resources. Primary production in sunlit surface waters is channelled through complex food webs that extensively recycle organic material, but lose a fraction as particulate organic carbon ( POC ) that sinks into the ocean interior. This exported production is further rarefied by mic...

Animals can be important in modulating ecosystem‐level nutrient cycling, although their importance varies greatly among species and ecosystems. Nutrient cycling rates of individual animals represent valuable data for testing the predictions of important frameworks such as the Metabolic Theory of Ecology ( MTE ) and ecological stoichiometry ( ES ). They also represent an important set of functional traits that may reflect both...

Widespread global changes, including rising atmospheric CO 2 concentrations, climate warming and loss of biodiversity, are predicted for this century; all of these will affect terrestrial ecosystem processes like plant litter decomposition. Conversely, increased plant litter decomposition can have potential carbon‐cycle feedbacks on atmospheric CO 2 levels, climate warming and biodiversity. But predicting litter decomposition...

Recreational fishing is a popular sport and leisure activity in many countries worldwide. There has been growing interest by recreational fishing groups and researchers in the perceived physical and psychological health and social (or ‘biopsychosocial’) benefits of recreational fishing. However, quantifying the key subjective ‘human dimensions’ of fishing that satisfy both the needs of recreational fishing groups and fishery m...