Search results for "Moth"
showing 10 items of 2617 documents
Forage silica and water content control dental surface texture in guinea pigs and provide implications for dietary reconstruction.
2019
Significance Ingesta leave characteristic wear features on the tooth surface, which enable us to reconstruct the diet of extant and fossil vertebrates. However, whether dental wear is caused by internal (phytoliths) or external (mineral dust) silicate abrasives is controversially debated in paleoanthropology and biology. To assess this, we fed guinea pigs plant forages of increasing silica content (lucerne < grass < bamboo) without any external abrasives, both in fresh and dried state. Abrasiveness and enamel surface wear increased with higher forage phytolith content. Additionally, water loss altered plant material properties. Dental wear of fresh grass feeding was similar to lucerne brows…
Epifaunal and infaunal responses to submarine mine tailings in a Norwegian fjord.
2019
Abstract Disposal of mine tailings in marine shallow water ecosystems represents an environmental challenge, and the present paper reports results from a field study in Fraenfjorden, Norway, which is subject to such disposal. Structural and functional responses of benthic infauna and epifauna were investigated along a gradient from heavy tailings deposition to reference conditions. The tailings clearly impacted the faunal composition, with lowered species number close to the outfall. Total abundance of infauna increased in the most impacted area due to dominance of opportunistic species, whereas the epifauna was reduced and represented by a few scattered specimens only. In the most impacted…
Chemical Composition and Broad-Spectrum Insecticidal Activity of the Flower Essential Oil from an Ancient Sicilian Food Plant, Ridolfia segetum
2021
Several species of the family Apiaceae are aromatic herbs that produce essential oils usable on an industrial scale for pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food purposes. In particular, some essential oils, such as green insecticides for example, may replace synthetic insecticides, keeping most of their efficacy and avoiding environmental pollution or human poisoning. In the present study, we explored the insecticidal potential of Ridolfia segetum (L.) Moris essential oil (EO) against three different pests: Culex quinquefasciatus Say, Musca domestica L., and Spodoptera littoralis (Boisduval). For this purpose, the EO was obtained by hydrodistillation of flowers and its composition was achieved by…
Phytochemical profiles, phototoxic and antioxidant properties of eleven Hypericum species - A comparative study
2018
Hypericum is one out of the nine genera belonging to the botanical family Clusiaceae Lindl (syn. Hypericaceae Juss.; APG III, 2009). The genus contains 484 species spread worldwide, one of which, Hypericum perforatum, is largely used in folk medicine. The aim of this study was to evaluate the chemical composition, along with the antioxidant and phototoxic activity, of 11 Hypericum species grown in Sicily (H. perforatum L., H. aegypticum L., H. androsaemum L., H. calycinum L., H. hircinum L., H. hirsutum L., H. montanum L., H. patulum Thunb., H. perfoliatum L., H. pubescens Boiss., H. tetrapterum Fr.). Samples of flowering tops collected from these Hypericum species were extracted and analys…
Interactions between ecological traits and host plant type explain distribution change in noctuid moths.
2009
The ecological traits of species determine how well a species can withstand threats to which it is exposed. If these predisposing traits can be identified, species that are most at risk of decline can be identified and an understanding of the processes behind the declines can be gained. We sought to determine how body size, specificity of larval host plant, overwintering stage, type of host plant, and the interactions of these traits are related to the distribution change in noctuid moths. We used data derived from the literature and analyzed the effects of traits both separately and simultaneously in the same model. When we analyzed the traits separately, it seemed the most important deter…
Antibiotics accelerate growth at the expense of immunity
2021
Antibiotics have long been used in the raising of animals for agricultural, industrial or laboratory use. The use of subtherapeutic doses in diets of terrestrial and aquatic animals to promote growth is common and highly debated. Despite their vast application in animal husbandry, knowledge about the mechanisms behind growth promotion is minimal, particularly at the molecular level. Evidence from evolutionary research shows that immunocompetence is resource-limited, and hence expected to trade off with other resource-demanding processes, such as growth. Here, we ask if accelerated growth caused by antibiotics can be explained by genome-wide trade-offs between growth and costly immunocompete…
Larval intraspecific competition for food in the European grapevine moth Lobesia botrana.
2014
AbstractEffective pest management with lower amounts of pesticides relies on accurate prediction of insect pest growth rates. Knowledge of the factors governing this trait and the resulting fitness of individuals is thus necessary to refine predictions and make suitable decisions in crop protection. The European grapevine moth, Lobesia botrana, the major pest of grapes in Europe, is responsible for huge economic losses. Larvae very rarely leave the grape bunch on which they were oviposited and thus cannot avoid intraspecific competition. In this study, we determined the impact of intraspecific competition during the larval stage on development and adult fitness in this species. This was tes…
Do Grapholita funebrana Infestation Rely on Specific Plum Fruit Features?
2019
The effective control of the plum fruit moth, Grapholita funebrana (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) still represents a difficult challenge for organic plum farming. Little information is available on the susceptibility of plum cultivars to this moth pest. We investigated the roles of several fruit parameters (i.e., shape, volume, hardness, fruit colour, and physiochemical properties) on the susceptibility of four different plum cultivars (Angeleno, Friar, President and Stanley) to G. funebrana attack. Field data demonstrated the importance of some fruit parameters (i.e., elongation index, sugar degree, titratable acidity, cover colour percentage) on susceptibility to G. funebrana infestation. Und…
Chemical fingerprints suggest direct familiarisation rather than phenotype matching during olfactory recognition in Australian sea lions (Neophoca ci…
2019
International audience; Olfaction is one of the most commonly used senses for communication among animals and is of particular importance to mother-offspring recognition in mammals. The use of smell in offspring recognition has been well studied, however, we often lack information about the underlying mechanistic basis for olfactory recognition. Using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), we examine chemical profiles of two different colonies of Australian sea lions (Neophoca cinerea) and assess similarity of chemical fingerprints in mother-pup pairs. This analysis allows us to examine whether a chemical base for phenotype matching exists in this species. Our results showed no GC-de…
Castniidae of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Wrocław: new findings from Friedrich Wilhelm Niepelt's collection with comments on K…
2021
Further results of our research into the Giant Butterfly-Moths (Castniidae) of the Museum of Natural History (University of Wrocław) are presented. Castniids of the Niepelt collection had previously been reviewed. However, while curating other sections of the Lepidoptera collection, we discovered 18 misplaced specimens belonging to nine taxa of Castniidae, several of them bearing typical labels by Niepelt. Among them, two are of particular interest, insofar as they are associated with the world-class botanists August Weberbauer (1871–1948) and Karl Adolf Georg Lauterbach (1864–1937).