Ray Turner aims his camera with great care at a precise spot on a nearby ridge at Saguaro National Park, east of Tucson, Arizona. First, Turner makes sure that two large saguaros—one with four armlike branches reaching out and up, candelabra-style, and the other just a column with no branches yet—are aligned with the same Santa Catalina mountain peaks in the background in exactly the same position as in previous pictures. Then, carefully, Turner checks his position and camera direction with his compass and global positioning system. Finally, he snaps several pictures of the saguaros and their surroundings, just as he has done periodically since 1962.

The native fish fauna of the lower Colorado River, in the western United States, includes four “big-river” fishes that are federally listed as endangered. Existing recovery implementation plans are inadequate for these critically imperiled species. We describe a realistic, proactive management program founded on demographic and genetic principles and crafted to avoid potential conflicts with nonnative sport fisheries. In this program, native species would breed and their progeny grow in isolated, protected, off-channel habitats in the absence of nonnative fishes. Panmictic adult populations would reside in the main channel and connected waters, exchanging reproductive adults and repatriated subadults with populations occupying isolated habitats. Implementation of the plan would greatly enhance recovery potential of the four listed fishes.

Most modern estimates of dissolved nitrogen and phosphorus delivery to the ocean use Meybeck's estimates from approximately 30 large rivers. We have derived an extended database of approximately 165 sites with nutrient loads. For both dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) and dissolved inorganic phosphorus (DIP), the logarithmic yields (log [load/area]) can be parameterized as functions of log (population density) and log (runoff/area) (R² for DIN and DIP approximately 0.6). Landscape production of DIN and DIP is largely assimilated. Even though DIN and DIP follow substantially different biogeochemical cycles, loading for DIN and DIP is tightly coupled (R² for log DIN versus log DIP approximately 0.8), with a constant loading ratio of about 18:1. Estimates of DIN and DIP fluxes are distributed globally around the world coastlines by using basin population density and runoff at 0.5° increments of latitude and longitude. We estimate that total loads for the 1990s are about three times Meybeck's estimates for the 1970s.

The 21st century will offer great opportunities, but also challenges, for the field of evolutionary biology, particularly in areas related to molecular genetic technologies, the environment, biodiversity, and public education. The coming decades promise to be both the best and the worst of times for the evolutionary disciplines.

Animal, plant, and microbial ecophysiologists have diverged greatly in the last few decades in the principal research questions they address (e.g., global change versus evolution), in the methods they use, and even in the professional societies to which they belong. Two symposia in 2001 brought these diverse groups together, with presentations by researchers who study two or three kingdoms in intimate interaction. The second symposium, the subject of this report, was sponsored by the Ecological Society of America's Physiological Ecology section. Several of the presentations showed, among other things, commonalities in chemical signaling among kingdoms, as well as exploitation of such signals and other metabolic pathways by parasites and their hosts. These and other important findings from such interkingdom and interdisciplinary research can help explain why current functional groups exist.

In 15 experiments from 1993 to 2002, we led cranes, geese, and swans on their first southward migration with either ultralight aircraft or vehicles on the ground. These experiments reveal that large birds can be readily trained to follow, and most will return north (and south) in subsequent migrations unassisted. These techniques can be used to teach birds new (or forgotten) migration paths. Although we are constantly improving our training techniques, we now have an operational program that can be broadly applied to those species whose juveniles learn migration routes from their parents.

“Living fossils” are organisms that, while still resembling their extinct progenitors in fundamental ways, have escaped the fate of these ancestors by specializing in ways that gave them an edge in survival. An example is provided by the butterfly Baronia brevicornis, the lone survivor of an ancient lineage; B. brevicornis may have beaten the odds against extinction by having evolved a form of defense, namely, mimicry of distasteful butterflies. In this article we argue that defense, particularly chemical defense, is likely to have often played a role in the survival of living fossils; consequently, the screening of such organisms for medicinals may have a better than average chance of paying off.

The life-sciences community has grown increasingly concerned that dangerous microbes or their products might be mishandled or misused, with serious harm done to human or ecosystem health locally, regionally, or globally. The community has sought to address this concern in cooperation with responsible governments, but it has also sought to act in ways not chiefly dependent on governmental initiatives or intergovernmental agreements. Concurrently, it has sought to obviate policies materially restricting scientific, entrepreneurial, or commercial freedoms. I ask whether the enhancement of biosecurity and the advancement of bioscience should be accepted as divergent or might yet be made complementary, so as to be accomplished jointly. To encourage discussion of this latter possibility, I propose an institutional innovation, a transnational, nongovernmental life-sciences organization called here “The Biosecurity Trust.”