Feather mites are among the most abundant and commonly occurring bird ectosymbionts. Basic questions on the ecology and evolution of feather mites remain unanswered because feather mite species identification is laborious even for specialised taxonomists. Here, DNA barcoding was tested as a useful molecular tool to identify feather mites from passerine birds.

Microsatellite loci are ideal for testing hypotheses relating to genetic segregation at fine spatio-temporal scales. They are also conserved among closely related species, making them potentially useful for clarifying interspecific relationships between recently diverged taxa. However, mutations at primer binding sites may lead to increased nonamplification, or disruptions that may result in decreased polymorphism in nontarget species.

Knowledge of melanin chemistry has important implications for the study of the evolutionary ecology of animal pigmentation, but the actual chemical diversity of these widely expressed biological pigments has been largely overlooked.

Guanacos are thought to have declined in Patagonia mainly as a result of hunting and sheep ranching. Currently accepted estimates of total population size are extrapolated from densities obtained through strip transects in local studies. In this study road surveys and distance sampling were used to estimate guanaco density and population size. Results doubles current estimates of guanaco population size in South America.

Forest regeneration may reduce the current loss of species due to tropical deforestation, but little is known about the extent and inter-specific variability of this effect. Authors compared the probability with which nine parrot species use old-growth and secondary forests in a 400 km2 Amazonian landscape, while considering two types of habitat use: perching and flyover use.