Search results for "Brood"

Individual learning in the refinement of nest defence responses of the Yellow Warbler (Dendroica petechia)

2006

Reed Warbler Hosts Do Not Fine-Tune Mobbing Defenses During the Breeding Season, Even When Cuckoos Are Rare

2021

Hosts of brood parasitic cuckoos often employ mobbing attacks to defend their nests and, when mobbing is costly, hosts are predicted to adjust their mobbing to match parasitism risk. While evidence exists for fine-tuned plasticity, it remains unclear why mobbing does not track larger seasonal changes in parasitism risk. Here we test a possible explanation from parental investment theory: parents should defend their current brood more intensively as the opportunity to replace it declines (re-nesting potential), and therefore “counteract” any apparent seasonal decline to match parasitism risk. We take advantage of mobbing experiments conducted at two sites where reed warblers (Acrocephalus sc…

Diverse partner selection with brood recombination in genetic programming

2018

The ultimate goal of learning algorithms is to find the best solution from a search space without testing each and every solution available in the search space. During the evolution process new solutions (children) are produced from existing solutions (parents), where new solutions are expected to be better than existing solutions. This paper presents a new parent selection method for the crossover operation in genetic programming. The idea is to promote crossover between two behaviourally (phenotype) diverse parents such that the probability of children being better than their parents increases. The relative phenotype strengths and weaknesses of pairs of parents are exploited to find out i…

Chronic toxicity of diazinon todaphnia magna:Effects on survival, reproduction and growth

1995

The sublethal effect of 0.15, 0.18, 0.22, 0.25 and 0.30 μg/L diazinon on the survival, reproduction and growth of D. magna was monitored for 21 days. Neonates (≤ 24 h) were obtained from the stock cultures and raised individually in 50 mL glass beakers. All daphnids were transfered every other day to a new beaker containing fresh medium, food and the appropriate pesticide concentration. The animals were maintained in an environmental chamber at 22±1°C on a 12L: 12D photoperiod and were fed daily on 5 x 105 cell/mL of the green algae Nannochloris oculata. The parameters used to determine the effect of the pesticide on reproduction were: mean total young per female, mean brood size, mean numb…