Search Results (683)

Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha (Walbaum, 1792) is a non-native species in southern South America, where self-sustaining populations are established. After spawning migrations, adults die and provide substantial subsidies to freshwater food webs. We report the first direct evidence of predation on spawning Chinook salmon by South American sea lions Otaria byronia (de Blainville, 1820) in a river of southern Chile, up to 160 km upstream from estuaries. Sea lions appear to be exploiting a novel prey resource, indicating behavioral plasticity with potential ecological consequences for native species and riverine trophic dynamics. We discuss the implications of this previously unreported predator–prey interaction for the ecology of invaded freshwater systems in South America. Full article

The long-tailed goral (Naemorhedus caudatus) is facing severe habitat fragmentation along the Baekdudaegan Mountain Range, South Korea, due to expanding anthropogenic infrastructures and ASF fence installations. To evaluate the evolutionary impacts of these barriers, we assessed the genome-wide genetic diversity and structural connectivity of South Korean goral populations using a high-resolution triple-digest restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (3-RADseq) framework. Out of 36 biological samples collected across regional demes, 34 individuals were successfully genotyped, yielding an initial variant pool of 68,041 raw single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that filtered down to 9908 high-quality independent SNPs. Bayesian model clustering and principal coordinate analysis consistently identified K = 2 as the optimal number of genetic clusters, resolving a deep, distinct genetic split between the continuous Northern and Southern populations. This pronounced genetic structuring indicates severely restricted contemporary gene flow, heightening vulnerability to genetic drift and inbreeding depression within isolated terminal patches. Our genomic evidence suggests that single-protected-area approaches are insufficient; effective conservation priorities must focus on restoring landscape continuity and ecological corridors to revive historical migration pathways and preserve the adaptive potential of this endangered mountain ungulate. Full article

Variations in urban surface runoff are often attributed to static infrastructure, neglecting the non-stationary hydrological responses induced by rapid urbanization and intricate micro-topography. This study introduces a Pressure–Trend–Pulse (PTP) framework to examine surface runoff dynamics in Kunming, China. By integrating continuous Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) simulations (2005–2024), Sen’s slope estimation, the Mann–Kendall test, robust residual analysis, and Self-Organizing Map (SOM) clustering, we quantify these multi-dimensional changes. The findings indicate: (1) runoff displays a structural north–south gradient, with the generation centroid migrating northward at a rate of 2.3 km per decade; (2) non-stationary positive trends (0.16 mm/year) are exclusively concentrated in northern sub-basins, which constitute 26.74% of the total area, thereby exacerbating long-term cumulative pressure; and (3) detrended residual analysis reveals high-frequency pulse volatility predominantly in the southern sink areas. Overlaying 139 historical waterlogging points confirms that trend-driven and pulse-driven risks account for 30.22% and 13.67% of urban disasters, respectively. Furthermore, approximately 22% of waterlogging occurrences fall within non-significant downstream zones, implying a potential upstream-downstream source–sink decoupling. The PTP framework highlights the necessity of differentiated resilience planning: upstream source-control and downstream adaptive buffering. Full article

The refugee rentier state seeks to manipulate mass population movements to obtain economic and political/strategic ‘rents’, asserting itself in a way that challenges the premises of Global South marginality, disempowerment and exclusion within the international system. This article develops the concept of the refugee rentier state, which it understands as a political economy framework for analysing how host states transform refugee populations into sources of bargaining power within asymmetric systems of global governance, while showing how this “trading” feeds into economic vulnerabilities and exclusions associated with forced labour arrangements. It shows how refugee hosting can function as a strategic asset through which states extract economic and political/strategic rents from wealthier counterparts. Drawing on Turkey’s engagement with the European Union in the European refugee “crisis”, the article examines how refugee rentier strategies operate within, rather than outside, established migration governance regimes, giving rise to economic informality and partial labour market integration. In applying the rentier state model to EU–Turkey interactions, it situates refugee rentierism within the structural logic of EU migration externalisation and the institutional weaknesses of international refugee protection, while considering how they feed into the vulnerability of displaced populations, and specifically exposure to economic exclusion and marginalisation within transit countries. Full article

This article examines how media discourse in South Korea constructed Filipino caregivers as a legitimate yet conditional solution to the country’s care crisis. Moving beyond approaches that treat media coverage as a neutral reflection of policy debate, it analyzes news discourse as part of the broader politics of immigrant integration, showing how narratives of care, foreignness, affordability, and utility helped define the terms under which migrant caregivers could be welcomed. Drawing on a qualitative discourse analysis of English- and Korean-language newspaper coverage, the article traces how Filipino caregivers were alternately represented as desirable care providers, disciplined service workers, classed household resources, and ultimately precarious migrants whose social legitimacy remained revocable. The findings show that media and policy languages worked together to normalize a form of conditional belonging in which migrant caregivers were incorporated as useful labor but not recognized as fully deserving social subjects. Across the coverage, affordability emerged as a key discursive filter through which rights, value, and inclusion were negotiated, while competing narratives pushed the care regime toward more selective, informalized, and stratified forms. The article argues that secondary citizenship in this case was not only a legal or labor-market condition but also a discursive accomplishment produced through the intertwined narration of care needs, migrant labor, and unequal integration. Full article

South Africa has been receiving a high number of undocumented immigrants for years. As Africa’s second largest economy and the biggest in the South African Development Community region, it has witnessed a surge in illegal migration. Some undocumented immigrants marry local women, establishing spousal and familial relations. The government has taken a legal stand against undocumented immigrants. It deports thousands annually. A grassroots movement, Operation Dudula, has initiated efforts to locate undocumented immigrants. Its modus operandi has been condemned for lacking ubuntu. A void is left when undocumented immigrants are deported, leaving their families in South Africa. Some South African women have turned to TikTok to express their views on migration and familyhood. This study attempts to answer these questions: What are the TikTok discursive practices of South African women in spousal relations with African immigrants? In what ways do the women legitimise the relationships? How does TikTok function as a subaltern counter-public formation? Data were gathered through digital archival research and subjected to a multimodal critical discourse analysis. The findings show that the women celebrate the relations as an achievement. They construct them as pathways to prosperity. The women also invoked racial discourses to legitimise the relations. Through TikTok, they recontextualised discourses on migration by deconstructing dominant narratives that project African immigrants through lenses of criminality. Full article

For rural adolescent girls in the Bolivian Andes, adolescence is not a “protected” transitional life stage but a gendered laboring condition. This article explores the lived experiences of adolescent girls in a rural Quechua community in Cochabamba, drawing on the initial phase of a longitudinal Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) project (2023–2024). By integrating Silvia Federici’s theory of social reproduction with Axel Honneth’s recognition theory, the study conceptualizes a “laboring subjectivity” defined by a ch’ixi reality where two dimensions of labor exist in constant, dynamic interaction. The findings reveal these dimensions of labor: “Working to Do,” which encompasses the invisible, naturalized reproductive and agricultural work and unremunerated affective work required to sustain family life as a form of cultural pedagogy; and “Working to Be,” which refers to the subjective labor girls perform to negotiate recognition. Through this structural arrangement, Honneth’s spheres of love, rights, and social esteem are systematically compromised, creating a distinct recognition deficit as girls carry adult responsibilities without structural protection. Ultimately, this article argues that seasonal migration to regions such as El Trópico functions as an existential terrain where girls seek the symbolic and economic recognition denied within the local rural order. By centering adolescent girls as active laboring subjects, the research challenges Western developmental biases in youth studies and offers a nuanced reframing of the nexus between labor, mobility, and identity formation in the Global South. Full article

In the context of global warming, thermal environmental problems in coastal urban ag-glomerations have become increasingly prominent. This study focuses on the urban ag-glomeration around Hangzhou Bay, constructs annual heat island intensity classification maps based on MODIS summer land surface temperature (LST) data from 2000 to 2020, analyzes the spatiotemporal patterns of heat islands, and investigates their driving mechanisms using the Extreme Gradient Boosting and Shapley Additive exPlanations (XGBoost-SHAP) model. The results show that: (1) the high-frequency area of strong heat islands expanded by 62.10% during the study period, extending from early built-up areas to newly developed coastal zones, with the spatial pattern transitioning from point-like distribution to areal agglomeration; (2) significant differences exist between the north and south coasts, where strong heat island center migration on the north coast is consistent with impervious surface expansion, whereas the south coast is significantly influenced by coastal wetland siltation; (3) impermeable surfaces and wind speed are key factors affecting LST, with impermeable surfaces acting as the primary driver of temperature increase, while wind speed plays a significant role in moderating temperatures. This study provides a scientific basis for thermal environment regulation in coastal urban agglomerations. Full article

The Ordovician platform margin belts in the Tarim Basin are key targets for deep carbonate hydrocarbon exploration. Their sequence architecture and spatial differences exert critical controls on the distribution of high-quality reservoirs. Taking the Early–Middle Ordovician platform margin belts in the Lunnan–Fuman–Gucheng area as the research object, this study systematically characterizes the sequence framework, sedimentary architecture, and segmented differential characteristics based on seismic, drilling, logging, and thin section data, using sequence stratigraphy, seismic facies analysis, and sedimentary mapping. The results show that five sequence boundaries are identified, dividing the Lower–Middle Ordovician into two second-order sequences and four third-order sequences. Seven types of mound-shoal seismic facies are developed, and three structural models are recognized from north to south: aggradation–weak retrogradation in the Lunnan section, weak aggradation–strong retrogradation in the Fuman section, and strong aggradation–weak retrogradation in the Gucheng section. It is revealed that differential subsidence caused by back-arc extension of the Altyn orogenic belt and the paleogeomorphic barrier effect of the Tadong Low Uplift collectively controlled the segmented architecture and migration evolution of the platform margin belts. The findings clarify the differential structural patterns of platform margins and provide a geological basis for hydrocarbon exploration in Ordovician platform margin reef-shoal complexes in the Tarim Basin. Full article

Metropolitan hinterlands are zones of intense urban–rural factor flows and spatial restructuring, where understanding rural settlement evolution is crucial for revealing human–land relationship transformations. Taking Changsha County, the core hinterland of the Changsha–Zhuzhou–Xiangtan metropolitan area in central China, as a case study, we integrated landscape pattern indices, kernel density estimation, centroid migration, the Optimal Parameters-based Geographical Detector (OPGD), and Geographically Weighted Random Forest (GWRF) to analyze the spatiotemporal evolution of rural settlements from 1990 to 2020 and identify the factors associated with the spatial differentiation of rural settlement scale in 2020. The results showed that: (1) The scale of rural settlements continuously expanded, with the total area increasing by 69.7% while patch density declined by 26.7%, exhibiting a “dense south, sparse north” pattern. High-value kernel density zones progressively clustered toward the southwestern concentric zone, and the settlement centroid persistently migrated toward the urban core. (2) The output value of secondary and tertiary industries per unit area, NDVI, and living facility adequacy were identified as the core driving factors; GDP per capita, distance to cropland, and distance to major roads also exerted notable effects, and strong synergistic interactions were detected among these factors. (3) GWRF-SHAP analysis revealed pronounced spatial heterogeneity: NDVI exhibited a south-promotion, north-suppression bidirectional effect; distance to cropland showed the most stable positive influence; road proximity was significant only at transportation hubs; the output value of secondary and tertiary industries displayed a polarized “central driving, north–south suppression” pattern; and socioeconomic factors generally stimulated expansion in suburban areas while inhibiting it in remote hinterlands. This spatial divergence can be interpreted through the “south-industry, north-agriculture” structure: suburban industrial corridors are associated with externally oriented attraction, whereas remote agricultural hinterlands are more closely related to endogenous, resource-based upgrading. The study proposes a compound explanatory framework of “natural baseline constraints–locational guidance–socioeconomic dominance,” providing a scientific basis for differentiated spatial governance of rural settlements in metropolitan hinterlands. Full article

Background/Objectives: Despite overall excellent outcomes for Wilms tumour, regional variations in stage at diagnosis and care pathways remain a concern across Europe. We evaluated stage distribution, three-year survival, and treatment patterns in Italy, considering hospital care as a proxy for healthcare capacity and migration. Methods: Data were obtained from 26 population-based cancer registries (PBCRs), covering 148 patients (ages 0–14) diagnosed between 2013 and 2017, representing about 80% of the Italian population. Stage was classified according to the Toronto guidelines. Information on treatment and diagnosed/treating hospitals was collected. Stage at diagnosis was further refined using probabilistic linkage with the clinical registry 1.01 Model. Overall survival, defined as all-cause mortality, was estimated using the Kaplan–Meier method. Results: Most patients presented with localized disease (77%), 32% Stage I, while 19% were Stage IV. Three-year survival analysis showed significant differences between stages, ranging from 98% in patients with Stage I to 78% in the ones with Stage IV. No significant disparity across the Italian regions was observed in stage distribution or survival. Diagnoses and treatments were mostly (>90%) centralized in the same region for patients residing in the Centre or North of Italy. However, the cross-regional health migration from the South was of about 30% for diagnosis and larger for treatments. Conclusions: This study shows that standardized staging improves data comparability and highlights challenges in managing metastatic cases and regional care pathways. The results support the use of clinical and PBCR information to interpret survival patterns and guide improvements in paediatric oncology care. Full article

This study applies a synoptic seasonal climatological framework, extended vertically through the troposphere, to investigate the South Asian monsoon using daily mean data (1948–2024) from the NCEP–NCAR Reanalysis. A seasonal synoptic circulation framework was developed using self-organizing maps (SOMs) to classify four distinct seasons—winter, pre-monsoon, monsoon, and post-monsoon—and their transitional phases. Diagnostics including temperature and moisture advection and vertically integrated moisture transport (VIMT) were incorporated to examine circulation–environment interactions. The results highlight the pre-monsoon-to-monsoon transition as the most critical seasonal shift, marked by rapid land heating, steep pressure gradients, and northward ITCZ migration that initiates southwesterly monsoon winds. Classical land–sea thermal contrasts initiate the low-level monsoon wind reversal, while vertical circulation assessment suggests that mid- to upper-tropospheric thermal gradients, supported by latent heating and Hadley-type overturning, help organize and sustain monsoon circulation strength. Additionally, South Asian monsoon circulation is shifting from well-defined seasonal regimes toward more transitional states. The results reveal widespread warming, weakened VIMT during major monsoon-related phases, and uneven moisture redistribution, suggesting that climate change is reshaping the monsoon seasonal cycle through both thermodynamic and circulation-driven processes. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that monsoon dynamics arise not from a single mechanism but from interconnected processes operating across atmospheric layers. This vertically integrated synoptic circulation approach thus provides a more comprehensive framework for understanding monsoon processes. Full article

Aeolian sand bodies unrelated either to coastal barrier systems of Holocene or earlier age or to modern beaches have been identified along the central New South Wales coast of southeast Australia. Some of these deposits cap headlands or are located above high sea-cliffs. Others lie below modern sea-levels, whilst one substantial dune field extends 12 km inland. Many of these have previously been interpreted as Early Holocene cliff-top dunes, the product of the migration of beach sands up aeolian sand ramps at the foot of the sea-cliffs of the region and onto the cliff tops. The rising sea-levels of the Middle Holocene eroded the ramps and cut off the supply of sand to the dunes, allowing them to stabilise. But re-investigation shows that these dune fields accumulated at times of low Quaternary sea-levels, with a particle-size distribution suggestive of an inland rather than a coastal origin. We therefore propose an alternative model for the accumulation of these features. At times of low sea-level, sediments exposed on the inner shelf were reworked onto the adjacent coast by onshore winds, where they accumulated in locations unconnected to the modern or the earlier Holocene coastal aeolian sedimentary regime. This model challenges the conventional story that the dominant glacial maximum winds across southeastern Australia were from the west (and thus offshore). This pattern of sediment accumulation and its associated wind regime may have been more stable (continuing for over 30,000 years) and more long-lived (repeated through at least the last two glacial cycles) than has previously been believed. Although the cliff-top dune model has been widely applied, we question its suitability in its type location and suggest a more cautious approach to its application elsewhere. We argue that the products of the landward aeolian reworking of sediment exposed on the continental shelf have been overlooked, despite their potential for the preservation of long-term environmental records. Full article

The patron saint celebrations of the colonias of Afro-Colombian migrants from the South Pacific region in Cali (Colombia) provide a significant context for understanding the perseverance of paisanaje (a shared experience of origin) bonds and ritual vitality in migration contexts. Organized consistently since the 1960s, these celebrations bring together dispersed communities year after year, activating and reshaping memories, emotions, and collective identities. Building on this celebratory perseverance, this article explores the factors that produce and sustain the emotional and social commitments that transcend the celebration itself. Drawing on the theory of interaction rituals, the concepts of collective effervescence, and embodied memory, this study proposes interpreting these celebrations as spaces where emotion, memory, and social time intertwine. This is based on the understanding that the ritual experience enacts the community through a shared repetition that brings the past to life and projects the expectation of reunion. For this analysis, this study draws on research conducted between 2015 and 2018 and a reflective re-examination of this material in 2026, which included participant observation at 10 celebrations and semi-structured interviews with members of 7 hometown communities or colonias. The results show that longing—the tension between the joy of reunion and the melancholy for what is absent—acts as a constitutive emotional state and the primary amplifier of the ritual’s emotional energy, adding precision to Collins’s model of how energy accumulates and enables the continuity of communal bonds. Full article

Introduction: The Lebranche mullet (Mugil liza) is a commercially important fish species in southeastern and southern Brazil, which serves as the primary spawning ground for the Southern stock that supports the Brazilian industrial seine fleet. However, this stock’s distribution extends into Argentine waters (northern Patagonian shelf), and the connectivity between mullets caught in Brazil and their breeding areas across South America remains poorly understood. The authors hypothesized that adult mullets landed by the Brazilian fleet consist of two distinct groups: A local group originating in Brazilian waters (BR1) and a migratory group (BR2) that uses nursery areas in Argentina (AR). BR2 presumably returns to its original nursery grounds after spawning, to recover reproductive tissues, following a different migratory pattern than BR1. Objectives: To test this, the study analyzed the micro-chemical life history of 134 otoliths from mullets aged 0+ to 11 years using LA-ICP-MS. Methodology: Two elemental ratios (Ba/Ca and Sr/Ca) were measured from the otolith core to the edge and modelled using a generalized additive model for scale and shape (GAMLSS). Life history transitions were evaluated by pairwise comparisons of fitted values among ages. Results: GAMLSS showed that Ba/Ca ratios differed significantly among groups (AR ≠ BR1 ≠ BR2). In contrast, Sr/Ca ratios were similar between AR and BR2 during the first four years of life, significantly differing from those of BR1. Using empirically established thresholds for estuarine vs. marine habitats, the study determined that BR2 individuals leave nursery areas between ages 5 and 6, migrate back around age 8, and live there one last time after age 10 (the species’ maximum age). BR1 leaves nurseries after age 4 and returns between ages 5 and 6, exhibiting a shorter reproductive cycle. Importantly, the analysis of reproductive tissue mass showed that the weight after age 7 approximately matched the weight at age 3. After recovery, reproductive tissues doubled in weight before the second migration to spawn at sea. Conclusions: These findings provide crucial insights into M. liza’s life cycle, highlighting the need for shared stock management not only with neighboring nations (Argentina and Brazil) but also on a regional scale. Full article