Search results for "Diet Analysis"
showing 7 items of 7 documents
Mineral analysis of human diets by spectrometry methods
2016
Abstract Mineral element determination in human diets is very important for human health, due to the presence in foods of essential and toxic elements or their incorporation in the manipulation and cooking food process. Different instrumental techniques have been used to determine mineral elements in human diets, but atomic spectroscopy and mass spectrometry based ones are the most commonly employed. Sampling procedures for diet analysis are the main critically step for mineral element determination, being employed different standardised protocols. This review summarised critically the state-of-the-art of mineral analysis in human diets, considering sampling, sample preparation and determin…
Data from: Exposing the structure of an Arctic food web
2016
How food webs are structured has major implications for their stability and dynamics. While poorly studied to date, arctic food webs are commonly assumed to be simple in structure, with few links per species. If this is the case, then different parts of the web may be weakly connected to each other, with populations and species united by only a low number of links. We provide the first highly resolved description of trophic link structure for a large part of a high-arctic food web. For this purpose, we apply a combination of recent techniques to describing the links between three predator guilds (insectivorous birds, spiders, and lepidopteran parasitoids) and their two dominant prey orders …
Data from: Plant – herbivorous beetle networks: molecular characterization of trophic ecology within a threatened steppic environment
2015
DNA barcoding facilitates many evolutionary and ecological studies, including the examination of the dietary diversity of herbivores. In this study, we present a survey of ecological associations between herbivorous beetles and host plants from seriously threatened European steppic grasslands. We determined host plants for the majority (65%) of steppic leaf beetles (55 species) and weevils (59) known from central Europe using two barcodes (trnL and rbcL) and two sequencing strategies (Sanger for mono/oligophagous species and Illumina for polyphagous taxa). To better understand the ecological associations between steppic beetles and their host plants, we tested the hypothesis that leaf beetl…
Exposing the structure of an Arctic food web
2015
15 pages; International audience; How food webs are structured has major implications for their stability and dynamics. While poorly studied to date, arctic food webs are commonly assumed to be simple in structure, with few links per species. If this is the case, then different parts of the web may be weakly connected to each other, with populations and species united by only a low number of links. We provide the first highly resolved description of trophic link structure for a large part of a high-arctic food web. For this purpose, we apply a combination of recent techniques to describing the links between three predator guilds (insectivorous birds, spiders, and lepidopteran parasitoids) a…
Comparative Analysis of Lanner and Peregrine Trophic Niche in the Mediterranean
2017
Predators are highly sensitive to availability and changes of their prey, which are limiting factors for successful reproductive performances. We studied the diet of the increasing Peregrine falcon (F. p. brookei) and the declining Lanner falcon (F. b. feldeggii) populations in Sicily. The two species coexist in the same habitats of this large Mediterranean island and require similar feeding resources. We described the type and diversity of prey taken by both species in order to understand whether differences in foraging ecology could explain their diverse population status. During 2014-2016, we collected prey remains and pellets in 15 Peregrine and 6 Lanner nests and we compared the curren…
Data from: Diet of the insectivorous bat Pipistrellus nathusii during autumn migration and summer residence
2013
Migration is widespread among vertebrates. Yet bat migration has received little attention and only in the recent decades knowledge of it has been gained. Migration can cause significant changes in behaviour and physiology, due to increasing energy demands and aerodynamic constraints. Dietary shifts, for examples, have been shown to occur in birds before onset of migration. For bats it is not known if a change in diet occurs during migration, although especially breeding season related dietary preference has been documented. It is known that fat-rich diets, and subsequent accumulation of high fat deposits, do increase the flight range of migratory bats. Some bat species can be regarded as l…
Tracking mite trophic interactions by multiplex PCR
2020
Background A thorough knowledge of trophic webs in agroecosystems is essential to achieve successful biological pest control. Phytoseiid mites are the most efficient natural enemies of tetranychid mites, which include several important pests worldwide. Nevertheless, phytoseiids may feed on other food sources including other microarthropods, plants and even other phytoseiids (intraguild predation), which can interfere with biological control services. Molecular gut content analysis is a valuable tool for characterizing trophic interactions, mainly when working on microarthropods such as mites. We have designed new primers for Phytoseiidae, Tetranychidae and Thysanoptera identification and th…