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The aim of this study was to determine the serogroups, antimicrobial resistance and genetic diversity of Escherichia coli isolates from samples of bivalve mollusks collected along Santa Catarina coast, Brazil, and from the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, USA. One hundred forty‐one E. coli isolates were characterized for serogroups with 181 specific O antisera and antimicrobial susceptibility using the disk diffusion method. The genetic diversity was assessed using pulsed‐field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). The results showed that among the isolates, 19.9% were classified as multi‐drug resistant (MDR) and resistance was most frequently observed to cephalothin, nitrofurantoin, and ampicillin. The predominant serogroups were O6, O8, and O38. Some serogroups were recognized as pathogenic E. coli . PFGE dendrograms indicated extensive genetic diversity among the isolates. Although characteristics of the E. coli isolates were highly variable, it is important to note that E. coli belonging to pathogenic serogroups and MDR isolates are present in mollusks of both study areas. This is the first report on the phenotypic and genotypic characterization of E. coli from mollusks from Santa Catarina and the Chesapeake Bay that should encourage studies focusing on comparison of isolates across countries.

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Tendo em vista a importância regional da precipitação pluviométrica como variável climática que mais impacta as principais atividades humanas, este trabalho objetivou identificar e determinar regiões homogêneas dos padrões pluviométricos no Estado do Paraná. Para tanto, utilizou-se técnicas multivariadas de análise de componentes principais e análise de agrupamento, bem como métodos geoestatísticos para espacialização de séries pluviométricas georreferenciadas de 49 estações meteorológicas distribuídas pelo Paraná, no período de 1980 a 2009, Os dois primeiros componentes principais explicaram 86,74% da variância total dos dados. O primeiro componente apresentou correlações mais fortes com os meses de abril a novembro, caracterizando um período menos chuvoso. O segundo componente, incluindo os meses de dezembro a março, evidenciou um período mais chuvoso no Paraná. Três regiões homogêneas em relação à variabilidade pluviométrica foram definidas: uma região mais ao leste do Estado, uma região a sudoeste e uma terceira região compreendendo as demais localidades do Estado.

Temporal activity patterns in animals emerge from complex interactions between choices made by organisms as responses to biotic interactions and challenges posed by external factors. Temporal activity pattern is an inherently continuous process, even being recorded as a time series. The discreteness of the data set is clearly due to data-acquisition limitations rather than a true underlying discrete nature of the phenomenon itself. Therefore, curves are a natural representation for high-frequency data. Here, we fully model temporal activity data as curves integrating wavelets and functional data analysis, allowing for testing hypotheses based on curves rather than on scalar and vector-valued data. Temporal activity data were obtained experimentally for males and females of a small-bodied marsupial and modelled as wavelets with independent and identically distributed errors and dependent errors. The null hypothesis of no difference in temporal activity pattern between male and female curves was tested with functional analysis of variance (FANOVA). The null hypothesis was rejected by FANOVA and we discussed the differences in temporal activity pattern curves between males and females in terms of ecological and life-history attributes of the reference species. We also performed numerical analysis that shed light on the regularity properties of the wavelet bases used and the thresholding parameters.