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Predation has received considerable theoretical and empirical support in population regulation. The effect of predators, however, could be achieved in direct (killing) or indirect effects (such as displacement). In this paper, we explored the relationship between Eurasian kestrels Falco tinnunculus and skylarks Alauda arvensis in Mediterranean grasslands. First, we analysed the presence of skylarks in the kestrel diet over 9 years. We also compared a grassland area of experimentally increased kestrel density and a second grassland as control area to evaluate the direct or indirect effect on skylark abundance. We also considered two different habitats, grazed and ungrazed plots. If skylark abundance decreased as the kestrel breeding season progressed in high-density kestrel area compared with the control area, it would suggest a direct effect (predator hypothesis). If skylark abundance remains constant in both areas of contrasting kestrel density, it would suggest that skylarks avoid kestrels (avoidance hypothesis). We found that skylark abundance decreased in the kestrel area from the beginning of kestrel nest-box installation to recent years. The rate of skylark consumption decreased in a 9-year period as kestrel abundance increased, although the total amount skylark consumption did not show a decreasing trend. In addition, skylarks were more abundant in the kestrel-free area than in the kestrel area. Finally, we found that skylark abundance did not change through the kestrel breeding period in relation to grazing. We suggest that an increased breeding density of kestrels during their breeding period may force the skylarks to breed in other areas, which may explain the decline of their abundance.

The European land leech Xerobdella lecomtei was discovered in 1868 and is one of the rarest animals on Earth. During the 1960s, several individuals of these approx. 40 mm long, cold-adapted terrestrial annelids that inhabit the moist soils of birch forests around Graz, Austria, were investigated. Only one original research paper has been published on the biology of this species. Between 2001 and 2005, we re-investigated the morphology of preserved specimens and searched for living individuals in their natural habitat that appeared to be intact. We found only one juvenile individual (length approx. 10 mm), indicating that this local leech population became largely extinct over the past four decades. The feeding behaviour of our 'lonesome George of the annelids' was studied and is described here in detail. After its death, the Xerobdella individual was used for chemical extraction and molecular studies (deoxyribonucleic acid [DNA] barcoding, based on one gene, the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I). In addition, novel DNA barcodes for a land leech from Madagascar and a recently discovered species from Europe were obtained. Our phylogenetic tree shows that X. lecomtei is not a member of the tropical land leeches (family Haemadipsidae), as previously thought, but represents a separate line of descent (family Xerobdellidae). The decline of the local leech population around Graz correlates with a rise in average summer temperatures of +3 degrees C between 1961 and 2004. This warming led to a drastic reduction in the moisture content of the soil where X. lecomtei lives. We suggest that human-induced climate change without apparent habitat destruction can lead to the extinction of populations of cold-adapted species that have a low colonization ability.

Previous studies have identified the tropopause height (TH) as a promising fingerprint of climatic change. In the present paper, we report variations in TH for the Eurasian region over the period 1973-1998 and analyse the influence of the Northern Annular Mode (NAM) on these variations. As previous studies indicate that the greatest increases in TH occur in the extratropics, we focused our attention on this area. We applied a set of homogenization procedures to radiosonde data and considered three different scenarios that take into account change points and the main volcanic eruptions over the study period. Our results demonstrate that the number of stations with positive TH trends is very sensitive to the quality of data and the methods used to remove inhomogeneities. Consequently, when change points were included in the analysis, the number of stations with positive trends decreased markedly. Furthermore, stratospheric NAM appears to control TH in stations located at latitudes higher than 55 degrees N.