Search results for "Biological interaction"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Mixotrophic phytoplankton dynamics in a shallow Mediterranean water body: how to make a virtue out of necessity
2018
Mixotrophy is a combination of photosynthesis and direct access to organic carbon sources, mainly through osmotrophy or phagotrophy. This strategy is adopted by several, phylogenetically distinct, phytoplankton groups and is commonly occurring in marine, brackish and freshwater ecosystems. Traditionally, it has been put in relation to both scarcity of inorganic nutrients and poor light conditions. However, we observed blooms of the mixotrophic, toxic haptophyte Prymnesium parvum in different periods of the year and under variable resources availability. The analysis of a 6.5-year data set of phytoplankton weekly records from a Sicilian shallow lake (Biviere di Gela, south-eastern Sicily) al…
Competitive interactions in insect parasitoids: effects of microbial symbionts across tritrophic levels
2023
Competition for hosts is a common ecological interaction in insect parasitoids. In the recent years, it has become increasingly evident that microorganisms can act as ‘hidden players’ in parasitoid ecology. In this review, we propose that parasitoid competition should take into consideration the microbial influence. In particular, we take a tritrophic perspective and discuss how parasitoid competition can be modulated by microorganisms associated with the parasitoids, their herbivore hosts, or the plants attacked by the herbivores. Although research is still in its infancy, recent studies have shown that microbial symbionts can modulate the contest outcome. The emerging pattern is that micr…
Ex ante evaluation of cropping systems for weed-mediated pests and environmental benefits with simulation–based indicators
2016
SPEEAGESTADAGROSUP; International audience; Integrated crop protection tolerates residual weed floras if they are not harmful for crop production. These weeds can host harmful crop pests, among which parasitic plants such as broomrape (Phelipanche ramosa). They can also contribute to reduce soil erosion as well as nitrate and pesticide leaching. To evaluate these weed impacts of management practices ex ante, we developed indicators for the weed dynamics model FLORSYS (Colbach et al., 2014) and then used the model to predict weed-mediated broomrape risk and environmental benefits in cropping systems from five French regions. Materials and Methods FLORSYS is a virtual field on which cropping …