Search results for "BASAL"

INTRAGUILD INTERACTIONS BETWEEN EGG PARASITOIDS: FROM LABORATORY TO FIELD INVESTIGATIONS

Field studies on egg parasitoid guilds of herbivore stink bugs, serious pests for a wide number of crops, have shown that Trissolcus spp. and Ooencyrtus spp. can naturally co-occur in the same host, and generally the former parasitize more eggs than the latter. In many countries, to control such pests, biological control programs based on egg parasitoids have been used obtaining inconstantly success. Thereby, understanding the competitive interactions among Trissolcus and Ooencyrtus species may be useful in order to improve biological control of such pests but only few researchers have investigated the effects of competitive interactions among these egg parasitoids. The aim of this thesis w…

Multiple-batch spawning: a risk-spreading strategy disarmed by highly intensive size-selective fishing rate

2022

Can the advantage of risk-managing life-history strategies become a disadvantage under human-induced evolution? Organisms have adapted to the variability and uncertainty of environmental conditions with a vast diversity of life-history strategies. One such evolved strategy is multiple-batch spawning, a spawning strategy common to long-lived fishes that ‘hedge their bets' by distributing the risk to their offspring on a temporal and spatial scale. The fitness benefits of this spawning strategy increase with female body size, the very trait that size-selective fishing targets. By applying an empirically and theoretically motivated eco-evolutionary mechanistic model that was parameterized for …

Implications of fisheries‐induced evolution for population recovery: Refocusing the science and refining its communication

2019

The argument that sufficiently high fishing mortality (selective or not) can effect genetic change in fished populations has gained considerable traction since the late 1970s. The intervening decades have provided compelling experimental and model‐based evidence that fisheries‐induced evolution (FIE) can cause genetic changes in life history, behaviour and body shape, given sufficiently high trait heritability, selection intensity and time. Fisheries‐induced evolution research has also identified or inferred negative implications to population recovery and sustainable yield, prompting calls for evolutionarily enlightened management to reduce the probability of FIE and mitigate its risks. Su…

Temperature variability in the Iberian Range since 1602 inferred from tree-ring records

2017

Abstract. Tree rings are an important proxy to understand the natural drivers of climate variability in the Mediterranean Basin and hence to improve future climate scenarios in a vulnerable region. Here, we compile 316 tree-ring width series from 11 conifer sites in the western Iberian Range. We apply a new standardization method based on the trunk basal area instead of the tree cambial age to develop a regional chronology which preserves high- to low-frequency variability. A new reconstruction for the 1602–2012 period correlates at −0.78 with observational September temperatures with a cumulative mean of the 21 previous months over the 1945–2012 calibration period. The new IR2Tmax reconstr…

Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: the evolution of gigantism

2010

The herbivorous sauropod dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods were the largest terrestrial animals ever, surpassing the largest herbivorous mammals by an order of magnitude in body mass. Several evolutionary lineages among Sauropoda produced giants with body masses in excess of 50 metric tonnes by conservative estimates. With body mass increase driven by the selective advantages of large body size, animal lineages will increase in body size until they reach the limit determined by the interplay of bauplan, biology, and resource availability. There is no evidence, however, that resource availability and global physicochemical parameters were different enough in the Mesozoic to ha…

Marbles of Sicily (Italy)

2008

EFFECTIVENESS OF BASALT FIBRE-REINFORCED CEMENTITIOUS SYSTEMS IN CONFINING MASONRY MEMBERS: AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION

2020

The use of composites based on fibre-reinforced polymers (FRPs) to strengthen masonry columns has become a common practice in the last decades. FRPs, however, exhibit some shortcomings when applied to masonry substrates, due to the organic nature of their matrix. For this reason, increasing attention is paid today to composites based on fibre-reinforced cementitious matrices (FRCMs), in which the polymeric matrix is replaced with an inorganic matrix (such as cementitious mortars). Cementitious matrices guarantee higher breathability and compatibility with the substrate, less sensitivity to debonding at the interfaces, and higher resistance to fire and high temperatures. Moreover, due to the…

A Critical Review of Alien Limb-Related Phenomena and Implications for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies

2021

Consensus criteria on corticobasal degeneration (CBD) include alien limb (AL) phenomena. However, the gist of the behavioral features of AL is still “a matter of debate.” CBD-related AL has so far included the description of involuntary movements, frontal release phenomena (frontal AL), or asomatognosia (posterior or “real” AL). In this context, the most frequent symptoms are language and praxis deficits and cortical sensory misperception. However, asomatognosia requires, by definition, intact perception and cognition. Thus, to make a proper diagnosis of AL in the context of CBD, cognitive and language dysfunctions must be carefully verified and objectively assessed. We reviewed the current…

Sex-specific selection on energy metabolism - selection coefficients for winter survival

2010

Selection for different fitness optima between sexes is supposed to operate on several traits. As fitness-related traits are often energetically costly, selection should also act directly on the energetics of individuals. However, efforts to examine the relationship between fitness and components of the energy budget are surprisingly scarce. We investigated the effects of basal metabolic rate (BMR, the minimum energy required for basic life functions) and body condition on long-term survival (8 winter months) with manipulated densities in enclosed populations of bank voles (Myodes glareolus). Here, we show that survival selection on BMR was clearly sex-specific but density-independent. Both…

Preprinting is positively associated with early career researcher status in ecology and evolution.

2021

Abstract The usage of preprint servers in ecology and evolution is increasing, allowing research to be rapidly disseminated and available through open access at no cost. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) often have limited experience with the peer review process, which can be challenging when trying to build publication records and demonstrate research ability for funding opportunities, scholarships, grants, or faculty positions. ECRs face different challenges relative to researchers with permanent positions and established research programs. These challenges might also vary according to institution size and country, which are factors associated with the availability of funding for open acces…