The vector competence of Aedes caspius and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes in Spain for the transmission of Zika virus was assessed. Whereas Ae. albopictus mosquitoes were a competent vector, Ae. caspius mosquitoes were unable to transmit Zika virus. High levels of vertical transmission of Zika virus in Ae. albopictus mosquitoes were also identified.

Hematological profiles are routinely used to assess the health status of animals. Several methods have been developed for blood-cell counting, but typically they are expensive and/or time-consuming. Here, a free image-processing software, Mizutama, developed for counting cells in photographs of blood smears is presented.

Long-term ecological research (LTER) sites need a periodic assessment of the state of their ecosystems and services in order to monitor trends and prevent irreversible changes. The ecological integrity (EI) framework opens the door to evaluate any ecosystem in a comparable way, by measuring indicators on ecosystem structure and processes. Such an approach also allows to gauge the sustainability of conservation management actions in the case of protected areas. Remote sensing (RS), provided by...

Social networks are the result of interactions between individuals at different temporal scales. Thus, sporadic intergroup encounters and individual forays play a central role in defining the dynamics of populations in social species. The rate of intergroup encounters was assessed for three western lowland gorilla Gorilla gorilla gorilla groups with daily observations over 5 years, and non-invasively genotyped a larger population over four months.

Although many climate research experiments are providing valuable data, long-term measurements are not always affordable. In the last decades, several facilities have secured long-term experiments, but few studies have incorporated spatial and scale effects. Most of them have been implemented in experimental agricultural fields but none for ecological studies. Scale effects can be assessed using remote sensing images from space or airborne platforms. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are...