Search results for "ITO"
showing 10 items of 25573 documents
Evolution of life-history traits and mating strategy in males: a case study on two populations of a Drosophila parasitoid.
2016
10 pages; International audience; Abiotic and biotic factors affect life-history traits and lead populations to exhibit different behavioural strategies. Due to the direct link between their behaviour and fitness, parasitoid females have often been used to test the theories explaining these differences. In male parasitoids, however, such investigations are vastly understudied, although their mating strategy directly determines their fitness. In this study, we compared the pattern of life history traits and the mating strategy of males in two populations of the Drosophila parasitoid Asobara tabida, exposed to different biotic and abiotic conditions, with the major difference being that one o…
Fuzzy quantification of common and rare species in ecological communities (FuzzyQ)
2021
International audience; Most species in ecological communities are rare, whereas only a few are common. This distributional paradox has intrigued ecologists for decades but the interpretation of species abundance distributions remains elusive.We present Fuzzy Quantification of Common and Rare Species in Ecological Communities (FuzzyQ) as an R package. FuzzyQ shifts the focus from the prevailing species-categorization approach to develop a quantitative framework that seeks to place each species along a rarity-commonness gradient. Given a community surveyed over a number of sites, quadrats, or any other convenient sampling unit, FuzzyQ uses a fuzzy clustering algorithm that estimates a probab…
Classification of the European marsh vegetation (Phragmito‐Magnocaricetea) to the association level
2020
Aims: To create a comprehensive, consistent and unequivocal phytosociological classification of European marsh vegetation of the class Phragmito-Magnocaricetea. Location: Europe. Methods: We applied the Cocktail method to a European data set of 249, 800 vegetation plots. We identified the main purposes and attributes on which to base the classification, defined assignment rules for vegetation plots, and prepared formal definitions for all the associations, alliances and orders of the class Phragmito-Magnocaricetea using formal logic. Each formula consists of the combination of “functional species groups”, cover values of individual species, and in the case of high-rank syntaxa also of “disc…
Reconstruction of Atlantic herring ( Clupea harengus ) recruitment in the North Sea for the past 455 years based on the δ 13 C from annual shell incr…
2019
Understanding the recruitment variability of the Atlantic herring North Sea stock remains a key objective of stock assessment and management. Although many efforts have been undertaken linking climatic and stock dynamic factors to herring recruitment, no major attempt has been made to estimate recruitment levels before the 20th century. Here, we present a novel annually resolved, absolutely dated herring recruitment reconstruction, derived from stable carbon isotope geochemistry (δ¹³C), from ocean quahog shells from the Fladen Ground (northern North Sea). Our age model is based on a growth increment chronology obtained from fourteen shells. Ten of these were micromilled at annual resolution…
Synthesis of habitat restoration impacts on young-of-the-year salmonids in boreal rivers
2019
River restoration offers the potential to enhance biological integrity, often measured as fish population changes. We used a meta-analytical approach to synthesize density responses to in-stream habitat restoration by young-of-the year (YOY) brown trout and Atlantic salmon in 28 rivers (overall 32 restoration projects) in Finland. We also examined which local and watershed-scale factors most influenced restoration success. Finally, we conducted an expert survey to obtain an independent estimate of a sufficient density enhancement for restoration to be considered successful. Despite strong context-dependency, habitat restoration had an overall positive effect on YOY salmonid density. When co…
Coping with Difficult Weather and Snow Conditions : Reindeer herders’ views on climate change impacts and coping strategies
2016
Winter is a critical season for reindeer herding, with the amount and quality of snow being among the most important factors determining the condition of reindeer and the annual success of the livelihood. Our first aim was to model the future (2035–2064) snow conditions in northern Finland, especially the quantities related to ground ice and/or ice layers within the snow pack, exceptionally deep snow and late snow melt. Secondly, we studied the strategies by which herders cope with the impacts of difficult weather and snow conditions on herding by interviewing 21 herders. SNOWPACK simulations indicate that snow cover formation will be delayed by an average of 19 days and snow will melt 16 d…
Long-term changes in winter abundance of the barbastelle Barbastella barbastellus in Poland and the climate change - Are current monitoring schemes s…
2020
Warmer winters may lead to changes in the hibernation behaviour of bats, such as the barbastelle Barbastella barbastellus, which prefers to hibernate at low temperatures. The species is also known for its large annual fluctuations in the number of wintering individuals, so inference about population trends should be based on long-term data. Prior to 2005, analyses indicated stable or even increasing barbastelle population in Poland. We analysed the results of 13 winter bat counts (2005–2017) of the species from 15 of the largest hibernacula, and additional site of 47 small bunkers, in Poland. The total number of wintering individuals remained stable during the study period, because the barb…
Inbreeding reveals mode of past selection on male reproductive characters in Drosophila melanogaster
2013
Directional dominance is a prerequisite of inbreeding depression. Directionality arises when selection drives alleles that increase fitness to fixation and eliminates dominant deleterious alleles, while deleterious recessives are hidden from it and maintained at low frequencies. Traits under directional selection (i.e., fitness traits) are expected to show directional dominance and therefore an increased susceptibility to inbreeding depression. In contrast, traits under stabilizing selection or weakly linked to fitness are predicted to exhibit little-to-no inbreeding depression. Here, we quantify the extent of inbreeding depression in a range of male reproductive characters and then infer t…
A Knowledge-Based System as a Sustainable Software Application for the Supervision and Intelligent Control of an Alcoholic Fermentation Process
2020
One goal of specialists in food processing is to increase production efficiency in accordance with sustainability by optimising the consumption of raw food materials, water, and energy. One way to achieve this purpose is to develop new methods for process monitoring and control. In the winemaking industry, there is a lack of procedures regarding the common work based on knowledge acquisition and intelligent control. In the present article, we developed and tested a knowledge-based system for the alcoholic fermentation process of white winemaking while considering the main phases: the latent phase, exponential growth phase, and decay phase. The automatic control of the white wine&rsquo
DNA-Based Identification of Larvae Offers Insights into the Elusive Lifestyles of Native Olive Seed Wasps in South Africa
2020
Wild and cultivated olives in the Western Cape of South Africa are direct or indirect hosts to a high diversity of Braconidae and Chalcidoidea wasps. Olive-associated Braconidae are known to parasitise the larvae of Bactrocera oleae (Rossi), and probably also Bactrocera biguttula (Bezzi). The lifestyle of olive-associated Chalcidoidea is not fully understood, and may include phytophagous, parasitoid and hyperparasitoid species. Some chalcids could represent olive seed wasps (OSW), a generic term that designates the seed feeders responsible for losses in commercial olive production. In order to obtain direct DNA-based evidence for the lifestyle of four putative OSW – Eupelmus spermophilus Si…