Locomotor strategies in terrestrial tetrapods have evolved from the utilisation of sinusoidal contractions of axial musculature, evident in ancestral fish species, to the reliance on powerful and complex limb muscles to provide propulsive force. Within tetrapods, a hindlimb-dominant locomotor strategy predominates, and its evolution is considered critical for the evident success of the tetrapod transition onto land.

Coastal resilience is important to coastal communities. Coastal resilience can be defined as the capacity for a coastal community to absorb a disturbance while at the same time undergo changes that help retain that community’s services, structures, and sense of identity. Hazards that would require coastal resilience include natural and man-made disturbances such as tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides, flooding, and oil spills.

Sustained and coordinated vaccination efforts have brought polio eradication within reach. Anticipating the eradication of wild poliovirus (WPV) and the subsequent challenges in preventing its re-emergence, we look to the past to identify why polio rose to epidemic levels in the mid-20th century, and how WPV persisted over large geographic scales.

With the recent opening of the Northwest Passage above the Arctic Coast of the United States and Canada, increased ship traffic from shipping, research, and tourism will increase risk of ships running aground or becoming trapped within the ice in the Arctic Sea.

Prince William Sound (Figure 1) is located in southcentral Alaska. It covers 65,000 square kilometers (personal communication Scott Pegau, 2013) and there are 3,800 miles of coastline (Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 2013) containing environmentally sensitive areas that are important for commercial harvests.

It is difficult to describe host–microbe interactions in a manner that deals well with both pathogens and mutualists. Perhaps a way can be found using an ecological definition of tolerance, where tolerance is defined as the dose response curve of health versus parasite load. To plot tolerance, individual infections are summarized by reporting the maximum parasite load and the minimum health for a population of infected individuals and the slope of the resulting curve defines the tolerance of the population.

The Taku River ecosystem supports a vital fishery to many individuals and user groups. It is a transboundary river, with its headwaters in British Columbia, Canada, and is therefore subject to the Pacific Salmon Treaty. There are a large number of potential mines, both along the Taku River or its tributaries
and their drainage areas. Chieftain Metals Corporation plans to revive the Tulsequah and Big Bull mines. This construction poses risk to the drainage, associated fisheries, and coastal communities of the river.

The Arctic Ocean sea ice extent has been rapidly declining since 1979. Positive feedback loops are expected to increase the rate of melting, posing a serious threat to the entire Arctic marine ecosystem. The Arctic Ocean ecosystem, including the Chukchi Sea, is currently benthic dominated, but is expected to become pelagic dominated due to changes in algal and zooplankton dominance.

Very little research has been done on the effects changing ocean pH has on the food source of shellfish. However, since one of the issues shellfish have with changing ocean pH is that they have less energy to take care of other vital needs like obtaining food, researching how changing ocean pH affects the phytoplankton could be significant.