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Sublingual Immunotherapy (SLIT) is a potential efficacious and safe treatment option for patients with respiratory, IgE-mediated allergic diseases. A combined tolerability, dose finding study with a sublingual liquid birch pollen preparation (SB) was conducted.
Although temporal heterogeneity is a well-accepted driver of biodiversity, effects of interannual variation in land-use intensity (LUI) have not been addressed yet. Additionally, responses to land use can differ greatly among different organisms; therefore, overall effects of land-use on total local biodiversity are hardly known. To test for effects of LUI (quantified as the combined intensity of
Nutrient fluxes to coastal areas have risen in recent decades, leading to widespread hypoxia and other ecological damage, particularly from nitrogen (N). Several factors make N more limiting in estuaries and coastal waters than in lakes: desorption (release) of phosphorus (P) bound to clay as salinity increases, lack of planktonic N fixation in most coastal ecosystems, and flux of relatively P-ric
Aphids are among the most severe invertebrate pests of crops and cause high economic losses. The control of aphids by natural enemies is an essential ecosystem service with high relevance to management strategies applied in agricultural plant production and horticulture. However, the current knowledge on the effectiveness of specialist and generalist predators in aphid control with respect to host
We analysed Mg/Ca, Sr/Ca and Ca isotope ratios of benthonic foraminifers from sediment core tops retrieved during several research cruises in the Atlantic Ocean, in order to improve the understanding of isotope fractionation and element partitioning resulting from biomineralisation processes and changes in ambient conditions. Species include foraminifers secreting tests composed of hyaline low mag
We discuss the climatic and environmental changes during the last millennium in NE Europe based on a ca. 8-m long high-resolved and well-dated marine sediment record from the deepest basin of Gullmar Fjord (SW Sweden). According to the Pb-210- and C-14-datings, the record includes the period of the late Holocene characterised by anomalously cold summers and well-known as the Little Ice Age (LIA).
Background: There is much interest in how the Amazon rainforest may respond to future rainfall reduction. However, there are relatively few ecosystem-scale studies to inform this debate. Aims: We described the carbon cycle in a 1 ha rainforest plot subjected to 8-10 consecutive years of ca. 50% through-fall reduction (TFR) and compare these results with those from a nearby, unmodified control plot
Warming experiments are increasingly relied on to estimate plant responses to global climate change(1,2). For experiments to provide meaningful predictions of future responses, they should reflect the empirical record of responses to temperature variability and recent warming, including advances in the timing of flowering and leafing(3-5). We compared phenology (the timing of recurring life histor
Plants have a remarkable capacity to adapt to local environmental conditions, which can result in ecotypic differentiation. Patterns of differentiation can, however, also be influenced by the extensive phenotypic plasticity exhibited by many plant species. In this study, we evaluated the distinctness of two putative ecotypes of the parasitic herb Rhinanthus angustifolius. We compared population me
The carbon cycle of a lake is a balance between supply from the atmosphere and catchment, and the net demand exerted by primary producers, minus losses back to the atmosphere and to sediment storage. Evaluating the sum of these processes and reconstructing them from sediment records of lake history requires a range of methods and a multi-proxy approach. One promising technique is to explore the ca
Much of the Baltic Sea is currently classified as 'affected by eutrophication'. The causes for this are twofold. First, current levels of nutrient inputs (nitrogen and phosphorus) from human activities exceed the natural processing capacity with an accumulation of nutrients in the Baltic Sea over the last 50-100 years. Secondly, the Baltic Sea is naturally susceptible to nutrient enrichment due to
Recent shifts in phenology in response to climate change are well established but often poorly understood. Many animals integrate climate change across a spatially and temporally dispersed annual life cycle, and effects are modulated by ecological interactions, evolutionary change and endogenous control mechanisms. Here we assess and discuss key statements emerging from the rapidly developing stud
In cases in which experimental data on chemical-specific input parameters are lacking, chemical regulations allow the use of alternatives to testing, such as in silico predictions based on quantitative structureproperty relationships (QSPRs). Such predictions are often given as point estimates; however, little is known about the extent to which uncertainties associated with QSPR predictions contri
We investigated the distribution, storage and landscape partitioning of soil amorphous silica (ASi) in a central Canadian region dominated by tundra and peatlands to provide a first estimate of the amount of ASi stored in Arctic permafrost ecosystems. We hypothesize that, similar to soil organic matter, Arctic soils store large amounts of ASi which may be affected by projected climate changes and
The evolution of natural organisms is ultimately driven by the invasion and possible fixation of mutant alleles. The invasion process is highly stochastic, however, and the probability of success is generally low, even for advantageous alleles. Additionally, all organisms live in a stochastic environment, which may have a large influence on what alleles are favorable, but also contributes to the u
Long-term phenology monitoring has documented numerous examples of changing flowering dates during the last century. A pivotal question is whether these phenological responses are adaptive or not under directionally changing climatic conditions. We use a classic dynamic growth model for annual plants, based on optimal control theory, to find the fitness-maximizing flowering time, defined as the sw
The role of temporal changes and spatial variability in predation risk and prey's means of mitigating such risks is poorly understood in the context of potential threats of global climate change for migratory birds. Yet nest predation, for example, represents a primary source of reproductive mortality in birds. To assess risk birds must spend time prospecting potential breeding sites for cues or s
Hypoxia is emerging as a major threat to marine coastal biota. Predicting its occurrence and elucidating the driving factors are essential to set successful management targets to avoid its occurrence. This study aims to elucidate the effects of warming on the likelihood of hypoxia. High-frequency dissolved oxygen measurements have been used to estimate gross primary production (GPP), net ecosystem
