Reliable, up-to-date assessments of population status and trends are essential for effective conservation. For the four Spheniscus penguin species, these are often undermined by methodological and logistical constraints due to their unique breeding ecology (e.g., burrow nesting and asynchronous breeding). As a result, no single survey method is universally applicable across the genus. Moreover, uneven sampling effort, inconsis...

Landscape transformation reduces the size of remaining natural patches and intensifies edge effects. These effects alter environmental conditions and vegetation structure, degrading remnant habitats. Amphibians and reptiles (herpetofauna) are especially vulnerable to edge effects because of their ecophysiological traits (e.g., critical temperatures, dehydration rates), making them valuable indicators of habitat change. We eval...

Age is a well-known risk factor to develop severe viral respiratory infections, including severe COVID-19. This study aimed to identify the biological alterations linked to severe disease in elderly patients with COVID-19. For this purpose, we employed a derivation cohort with 450 SARS-CoV-2 infected and unvaccinated patients admitted to hospital wards and a validation cohort with 244 SARS-CoV-2 infected and unvaccinated patie...