BioScience tip sheet July/August 2008( Research articles published in the J...)

Research articles published in the July/August 2008 issue of BioScience are as follows:

High-Speed Developments in Avian Genomics.
Camille Bonneaud, Joan Burnside, and Scott V. Edwards.
An increasingly broad range of genomics techniques is being applied to birds, thus expanding what has been learned from studies based on the chicken and shedding new light on the ecology and evolution of the whole class.

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Penguins as Marine Sentinels.
P. Dee Boersma.
The author describes the causes of population declines in most species of penguins and urges a program of improved surveillance focusing on penguin breeding "hot spots."
Note: this article is the subject of a separate press release dated today titled "Human influences challenge penguin populations."

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Controls on Annual Forest Carbon Storage: Lessons from the Past and Predictions for the Future.
Christopher M. Gough, Christoph S. Vogel, Hans Peter Schmid, and Peter S. Curtis.
Repeated clear-cut harvesting and fire disturbance resulted in a lasting decrease in annual carbon storage in a Michigan forest study site; climate variation also exerted a strong effect. The findings demonstrate that controlling greenhouse-gas levels will need to take into account both climatological influences and forest-management practices.

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"The Calamity of So Long Life": Life Histories, Contaminants, and Potential Emerging Threats to Long-lived Vertebrates.
Christopher L. Rowe.
Life-history theory indicates that long-lived species high in the food chain, such as many reptiles, birds, and mammals, are vulnerable to persistent contaminants in the environment. Long generation cycles, however, may delay the emergence of obvious toxic effects while putting limits on the ability of populations to recover.

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Biodiversity Congruence an
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