Restrictions on roaming Until the past century or so, the movement of wild animals was relatively unrestricted, and their travels contributed substantially to ecological processes. As humans have increasingly altered natural habitats, natural animal movements have been restricted. Tucker et al. examined GPS locations for more than 50 species. In general, animal movements were shorter in areas with high human impact, likely owing to changed behaviors and physical limitations. Besides affecting the species themselves, such changes could have wider effects by limiting the movement of nutrients and altering ecological interactions. Science , this issue p. 466

Satellite telemetry is an increasingly utilized technology in wildlife research, and current devices can track individual animal movements at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions. However, as we enter the golden age of satellite telemetry, we need an in-depth understanding of the main technological, species-specific and environmental factors that determine the success and failure of satellite tracking devices across species and habitats. Here, we assess the relative influence of such factors on the ability of satellite telemetry units to provide the expected amount and quality of data by analyzing data from over 3,000 devices deployed on 62 terrestrial species in 167 projects worldwide. We evaluate the success rate in obtaining GPS fixes as well as in transferring these fixes to the user and we evaluate failure rates. Average fix success and data transfer rates were high and were generally better predicted by species and unit characteristics, while environmental characteristics influenced the variability of performance. However, 48% of the unit deployments ended prematurely, half of them due to technical failure. Nonetheless, this study shows that the performance of satellite telemetry applications has shown improvements over time, and based on our findings, we provide further recommendations for both users and manufacturers.

Within the first 10 years of diabetes duration, the prevalence of retinopathy is low and the progression infrequent. Most patients have a non-proliferative form which can be reversible and rarely requires interventions. Patients with DM2 without retinopathy and good glycaemic control do not run into additional risk from expanding funduscopy intervals to biennial.

Francisella tularensis is the aetiological agent of tularemia. Hares, rabbits, and small rodents are the main hosts, but humans can be infected and develop severe clinical symptoms. In Germany, tularemia in humans was a rare disease during the last four decades, but since 2005, this zoonosis seems to be re-emerging. However, only very little is known about the prevalence in the host populations.

Habitat management should be an important part of the brown hare (Lepus europaeus) conservation, but the habitat requirements of this species are not fully recognised. The aim of our research was to estimate these requirements by analysing the effect of various agricultural landscape structure features on the distribution of hares in five agricultural areas in Germany and Poland. The local density of hares was assessed in the spring and autumn of 2006 by using the method of spotlight–strip counts on 9–15 subareas in each research region. The structure of agricultural landscape has been described for each subarea: the share of grain, other crops and grasses as well as the density of crop edges and uncultivated places with wild vegetation. The density of hares was considerably higher in Germany than in Poland (18.8–48.4 vs. 4.1–9.5 indiv./km2). The hare density was positively correlated with non-grain crops in an area, with crop edges in two areas and with wild vegetation without trees in two areas, and negatively correlated with grassfields in two areas. The occurrence of wild vegetation without trees affected the hare density only in the study areas, where this habitat was relatively rare (<3 km/km2). It was suggested that proper projects aimed at habitat management for brown hares should be elastic, i.e. the projects should be modified depending on the structure of local landscapes. Moreover, the protection and creation of structures with wild vegetation among cropland seem to be considerable methods of brown hare or generally wildlife conservation; therefore, such measures should be an important part of agro-environmental packages.