Bluetongue (BT) is a viral disease (Orbivirus) transmitted mainly by blood-sucking insects of the genus Culicoides that affects domestic and wild ruminants. It was described for the first time in South Africa in 1902 and underwent a great geographical expansion at the beginning of the 21st century, with several serotypes being described in Europe.

Modern death assemblages provide insights about the early stages of fossilization and useful ecological information about the species inhabiting the ecosystem. The results of taphonomic monitoring of modern vertebrate carcasses and bones from Doñana National Park, a Mediterranean coastal ecosystem in Andalusia, Spain, are presented. Ten different habitats were surveyed. Half of them occur in active depositional environments (marshland, lake margin, river margin, beach and dunes).

Hormones have not been found in concentrations of orders of magnitude higher than nanograms per milliliter. This study reports urine concentrations of a catecholamine (norepinephrine) ranging from 0.05 to 0.5 g/l, and concentrations of its metabolite dl-3,4-dihydroxyphenyl glycol (DOPEG) ranging from 1.0 to 44.5 g/l, in wild male red deer Cervus elaphus hispanicus after LC–MS analyses. The dark ventral patch of male red deer, a recently described sexually selected signal, contains high...