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Despite wide agreement that strictly protected areas (World Conservation Union categories I-III) are the best strategy for conserving biodiversity, they are limited in extent and exclude many species of key conservation importance. In contrast, multiple-use management areas (categories IV-VI), comprising >60% of the world's protected-area network, are often considered of little value to biodiversity conservation, particularly in Africa, where they typically contain few charismatic large mammals. We sampled small mammals, amphibians, birds, butterflies, and trees at 41 sites along a four-step gradient of increasing human activity and decreasing conservation protection, from a well-protected Tanzanian national park to nonintensive agricultural land. Although preliminary, our results indicate that species richness of these five taxa did not decline along this gradient, but different management areas, occupying areas of largely similar habitat, hosted distinct communities of each taxon. Differences in species composition in the absence of manifest differences in species richness highlight the importance of developing landscape-scale conservation strategies and the danger of using either a limited suite of indicator taxa or umbrella species as surrogates for biodiversity. Although strictly protected areas perform a unique and vital conservation service in East Africa by protecting large mammals, areas that allow varied resource extraction activities still possess vital and complementary conservation value.

Re-wilding parts of North America with exotic Old-World species is an exciting but controversial conservation proposal hijacked by opinions over appropriate conservation baselines and details of implementation. Debate over its worth has become partisan. Here, I summarize the multifaceted issues surrounding Pleistocene re-wilding and edge debate from hazy conceptual arguments to empirical questions that can plug gaps in knowledge and begin to resolve this divisive conservation issue.

Considerable controversy surrounds the effectiveness of strictly protected areas that prohibit consumptive resource use. For Tanzania we compared temporal changes in densities of large herbivores among heavily protected national parks and game reserves, partially protected game-controlled areas, and areas with little or no protection. Comparisons based on surveys conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s versus the late 1990s and early 2000s showed three consistent patterns across the country. First, significant declines in the densities of large herbivores between these two snapshots in time overwhelmingly outnumbered significant increases in all protection categories. Second, more species fared well (increased significantly or showed no significant change) in strictly protected national parks than in areas with partial or no protection and in heavily protected game reserves relative to areas with no protection. Third, significantly more species fared poorly (densities declined or were too low to detect a decline) than fared well in areas with partial or no protection. Our results show that although heavy protection was generally more effective in maintaining large herbivore populations than partial or no protection, continued long-term monitoring is needed in Tanzania to inform managers whether large herbivores are experiencing declining population trends even within heavily protected areas.

Strict protectionism, resource extraction, protected-area community outreach, ecotourism, an integrated conservation and development program, comanagement schemes, and citizen-science initiatives are all being used to help conserve the remote Katavi-Rukwa ecosystem in western Tanzania. Biological and social research show that protectionism is successful in the conservation of large mammals but fails to capture diverse species communities; extractivism is appropriate for some resources but not for others; protected-area outreach can be effective for some communities; and devolved control over wildlife, in conjunction with ecotourism and citizen science, has considerable potential in the area. The long-term nature of the research provides the necessary time frame to evaluate outcomes of different conservation strategies, uncovers dynamics within communities that affect attitudes and responses to conservation initiatives, provides impartial recommendations because changing research personnel offers different viewpoints, and, probably most importantly, enhances trust among stakeholders. Currently, there are limited institutional mechanisms for ensuring the input of biological and social science in shaping conservation practice in Tanzania, and long-term research can help informally bridge the gap.

Objective: We report a case of Ovarian Vein Syndrome, describe its clinical symptoms and discuss its diagnosis and management including laparoscopic surgery treatment., Materials and Methods: A 36-year-old female with right kidney recurring pain was studied by means of abdominal RX, urography, CT, MRI and ultrasonography and finally diagnosed from Ovarian Vein Syndrome. The case was resolved with laparoscopic surgery., Conclusions: Ovarian Vein Syndrome is an uncommon disorder. Differential diagnosis must be done with external processes that cause ureteral obstruction. Surgery is the first line treatment when clinical symptoms are present and, in our opinion,laparoscopic surgery is the best approach to treat this pathology.

In the past four years, there have been several attempts to apply studies of animal behaviour to conservation. Knowledge of individuals' behaviour has the potential to alter understanding of how populations fare in fragmented habitats, the responses of populations to exploitation and disturbance, disease susceptibility, effective population size, captive breeding and reintroduction efforts, and population monitoring and modelling. It can even be useful in understanding human conservation actions.

Interspecific killing among mammalian carnivores is common in nature and accounts for up to 68% of known mortalities in some species. Interactions may be symmetrical (both species kill each other) or asymmetrical (one species kills the other), and in some interactions adults of one species kill young but not adults of the other. There is a positive significant relationship between the body masses of solitary killer species and body masses of their victim species, and grouping species kill larger victims than solitary species. Interactions and consumption of the victim appear more common when food is scarce or disputed. In response to killers, victim species may alter their use of space, activity patterns, and form groups. Consequences of interspecific killing include population reduction or even extinction, and reduction and enhancement of prey populations, and may therefore have important implications for conservation and management of carnivores and their prey.

International, co-operative links between dental schools are an increasingly common occurrence, especially in relation to elective visits for under-graduates. However, in this feature for FDI World Norman Whitehouse and Gillian Jones from the Cardiff Dental School in Wales, UK, describe how they came to meet and assist Teresa Rios Caro in Peru, in rather different circumstances, and how language need not be a barrier when goodwill prevails.

Pursuit-deterrent signals - signals used by prey that apparently convince predators not to pursue them - were discovered 15 years ago, but their existence continues to rest on shaky empirical evidence. First, pursuit-deterrent signals are usually inferred by eliminating competing hypotheses rather than testing predictions derived from the pursuit-deterrent hypothesis directly. Second, the strength of selection pressures maintaining such signals in prey populations are unknown because behavioral ecologists infrequently observe natural predation attempts. Third, the nature of information passing between prey and predators is open to misinterpretation because measures are rarely taken to separate signals that advertise perception of the predator from those that advertise perception and the prey's condition.

We derive a simple operational definition of teaching that distinguishes it from other forms of social learning where there is no active participation of instructors, and then discuss the constituent parts of the definition in detail. From a functional perspective, it is argued that the instructor's sensitivity to the pupil's changing skills or knowledge, and the instructor's ability to attribute mental states to others, are not necessary conditions of teaching in nonhuman animals, as assumed by previous work, because guided instruction without these prerequisites could still be favored by natural selection. A number of cases of social interaction in several orders of mammals and birds that have been interpreted as evidence of teaching are then reviewed. These cases fall into two categories: situations where offspring are provided with opportunities to practice skills ("opportunity teaching"), and instances where the behavior of young is either encouraged or punished by adults ("coaching"). Although certain taxonomic orders appear to use one form of teaching more often than the other, this may have more to do with the quality of the current data set than with inherent species-specific constraints. We suggest several directions for future research on teaching in nonhuman animals that will lead to a more thorough understanding of this poorly documented phenomenon. We argue throughout that adherence to conventional, narrow definitions of teaching, generally derived from observations of human adult-infant interactions, has caused many related but simpler phenomena in other species to go unstudied or unrecorded, and severely limits further exploration of this topic.

Life history theory predicts that animals whose activities impose time, energy or survivorship costs at one stage of their lives will subsequently suffer incremental decreases in fitness unless there are compensatory benefits. Play, a widespread activity among juvenile mammals and several orders of birds' appears costly, yet its adaptive significance is poorly understood despite over 15 years of detailed study. Four issues have plagued understanding of the function of play: lack of a consensus on its definition, difficulties in selectively depriving animals of play opportunities and in meeting the challenge of interpreting negative results, paucity of empirical data on the costs of play, and failure to pay sufficient attention to field and naturalistic studies. Despite these problems, sex differences in play and partner preferences of participants now suggest that play serves to improve future adult motor skills in a number of species., (Copyright © 1988. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)