Nematodes are tiny, soil-dwelling animals that play a major role in Antarctic ecosystems. Identifying the genes involved in their responses to environmental changes, past and present, may contribute to understanding the carbon cycle.

Until recently, definitions of avian genome structure and function were based solely on our knowledge of the chicken genome. The expansion of genomic studies to include nonmodel avian species allows us not only to refine those definitions but also to begin collecting the necessary resources to initiate a truly ecological genomics of birds. In this article we review new genomic technologies that will speed up the investigation of avian genome function. The streamlined nature of avian genomes implies that large-scale transcriptional analyses, studies of the role of regulatory elements and of developmental genes, and even the annotation of avian genomes will yield interesting surprises. We review promising methods used to investigate genome evolution in birds as well as the means by which to integrate functional genomics approaches and transcriptional profiling information into ecological and evolutionary studies.

From the tropics to Antarctica, penguins depend on predictable regions of high ocean productivity where their prey aggregate. Increases in precipitation and reductions in sea ice associated with climate warming are affecting penguins. The largest breeding colony of Patagonian (Magellanic) penguins, at Punta Tombo, Argentina, had approximately 200,000 breeding pairs in October 2006—a decline of 22% since 1987. In the 1980s and 1990s, petroleum pollution was a major source of Patagonian penguin mortality. In 1994, tanker lanes were moved 40 kilometers (km) farther off the coast of Chubut, and the dumping of ballast water and the oiling of penguins are now rare. However, penguins are swimming 60 km farther north from their nests during incubation than they did a decade ago, very likely reflecting shifts in prey in response to climate change and reductions in prey abundance caused by commercial fishing. These temperate penguin species, marine sentinels for southern oceans, demonstrate that new challenges are confronting their populations.

The temperate forests of North America may play an important role in future carbon (C) sequestration strategies. New, multiyear, ecosystem-scale C cycling studies are providing a process-level understanding of the factors controlling annual forest C storage. Using a combination of ecological and meteorological methods, we quantified the response of annual C storage to historically widespread disturbances, forest succession, and climate variation in a common forest type of the upper Great Lakes region. At our study site in Michigan, repeated clear-cut harvesting and fire disturbance resulted in a lasting decrease in annual forest C storage. However, climate variation exerts a strong control on C storage as well, and future climate change may substantially reduce annual C storage by these forests. Annual C storage varies through ecological succession by rising to a maximum and then slowly declining in old-growth stands. Effective forest C sequestration requires the management of all C pools, including traditionally managed pools such as bole wood and also harvest residues and soils.

Persistent contaminants are ubiquitous in the environment, often present at concentrations that may jeopardize reproductive fitness only after long periods of exposure. As the duration of exposure is largely regulated by life span, long-lived species of high trophic status, such as many reptiles, birds, and mammals, may be at risk of reduced fitness and population decline. Delayed maturation and iteroparity confer the potential for cumulative effects to be expressed prior to reproduction, and large parental investments in yolk and milk may threaten offspring because of exposure during critical developmental periods. Long generation times may delay emergence of obvious effects on populations, perhaps eluding early intervention, while constraining rates at which populations may recover if conditions subsequently improve. Life history theory thus suggests that the suite of traits that optimized reproductive fitness throughout long-lived species' evolutionary histories may ultimately put them in peril in the modern, anthropogenically altered environment.

Understanding patterns of biodiversity is essential to developing conservation strategies and monitoring conservation goals, and severe data constraints make surrogate indicators necessary. We used a comprehensive data set of 6959 species of amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and vascular plants in terrestrial ecosystems of China to test the correlations among taxa, the utility of surrogates, and the effectiveness of conservation strategies in China. The results showed that the patterns of species richness between terrestrial vertebrates and vascular plants are concordant, except for those patterns between amphibians and birds; patterns of endemism are concordant at the national level; species richness and endemism are congruent, and each class can represent the four remaining classes. The underlying mechanisms responsible for the decline of species, however, are quite diverse, and conservation of one endangered class will not necessarily save the other classes. These results suggest that the extent of congruence varies according to the taxa and measures of diversity that are compared. There is no correlation between the coverage of nature reserves and overall species richness, endemism, or threat, nor between biodiversity investment and species richness, endemism, or threat.

For agriculture to meet goals that include profitability, environmental integrity, and the production of ecosystem services beyond food, fuel, and fiber requires a comprehensive, systems-level research approach that is long-term and geographically scalable. This approach is largely lacking from the US agricultural research portfolio. It is time to add it. A long-term agricultural research program would substantially improve the delivery of agricultural products and other ecosystem services to a society that calls for agriculture to be safe, environmentally sound, and socially responsible.

This article explains why we are experiencing a boom in ethanol and other biofuels, the current status of biofuels, and prospects for the future under different policy regimes. I argue that today's boom is in a sense an unintended consequence of a fixed ethanol subsidy that was keyed to $20-per-barrel crude oil, combined with a surge in crude oil prices—initially to $60 per barrel, and later doubling to $120 per barrel. Future prospects for corn ethanol depend on the crude oil price, the price of corn and distillers' grains, the market value of ethanol, plant capital and operating costs, and federal ethanol and biofuels policies. I examine the impacts of a wide range of policies for subsidies and renewable fuels standards. Policy choices will be absolutely critical in determining the extent to which biofuels targets are achieved and at what cost. However, if the price of oil remains above $100 per barrel, biofuels will continue to be produced even without government interventions.

With the advancement of genetic information and technologies, there is an increasing need for a genetically literate public. This study looks critically at student learning and at the current instruction of genetics in introductory non–science major biology and genetics courses at the undergraduate level. A new diagnostic tool, the Genetic Literacy Assessment Instrument, was administered pre- and postcourse to more than 300 students in six introductory nonmajor courses that emphasize genetics to varying degrees. Current data from students in these courses show a precourse average score of 43 percent correct zn the inventory. Postcourse scores increased only modestly, to an average of 49 percent. In this article, we discuss the impact of teaching methods and course content on scores, as well as student learning in the different content areas of genetics. The results suggest that further studies in genetics education are needed to better understand the effect of teaching methods on achieving genetic literacy.