Search results for "Research"
showing 10 items of 25967 documents
New challenges and opportunities of food fermentation processes: Application of conventional and innovative techniques.
2019
International audience
Changes in body mass and hormone levels between wintering and spring staging areas in Dark-bellied brent geese Branta bernicla bernicla
2006
International audience; Wintering migratory geese generally replenish protein stores lost during migration before building up their fat stores (Gauthier et al. 1992). Dark-bellied brent geese Branta bernicla bernicla winter mainly along the coasts of France, England and the south-western part of the Netherlands, and stage from March till late May mainly in the Wadden Sea, stretching from the northern Netherlands to Denmark (Ebbinge et al. 1999). During spring, geese accumulate body stores needed both for their long-distance migration to the breeding grounds and for reproduction (Spaans et al. 1993, Ebbinge and Spaans 1995). Dark-bellied brent geese, migrating about 5000 km between the winte…
An Insight in the Reproductive Biology of Therophilus javanus (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, and Agathidinae), a Potential Biological Control Agent agains…
2017
Therophilus javanus is a koinobiont, solitary larval endoparasitoid currently being considered as a biological control agent against the pod borer Maruca vitrata, a devastating cowpea pest causing 20–80% crop losses in West Africa. We investigated ovary morphology and anatomy, oogenesis, potential fecundity, and egg load in T. javanus, as well as the effect of factors such as age of the female and parasitoid/host size at oviposition on egg load. The number of ovarioles was found to be variable and significantly influenced by the age/size of the M. vitrata caterpillar when parasitized. Egg load also was strongly influenced by both the instar of M. vitrata caterpillar at the moment of parasit…
Detection and Characterization of Wolbachia Infections in Natural Populations of Aphids: Is the Hidden Diversity Fully Unraveled?
2011
Copyright © 2011 Augustinos et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Aphids are a serious threat to agriculture, despite being a rather small group of insects. The about 4,000 species worldwide engage in highly interesting and complex relationships with their microbial fauna. One of the key symbionts in arthropods is Wolbachia, an a-Proteobacterium implicated in many important biological processes and believed to be a potential tool for biological control. Aphids were thought not to harbour W…
Reviewing research priorities in weed ecology, evolution and management: a horizon scan.
2018
Weedy plants pose a major threat to food security, biodiversity, ecosystem services and consequently to human health and wellbeing. However, many currently used weed management approaches are increasingly unsustainable. To address this knowledge and practice gap, in June 2014, 35 weed and invasion ecologists, weed scientists, evolutionary biologists and social scientists convened a workshop to explore current and future perspectives and approaches in weed ecology and management. A horizon scanning exercise ranked a list of 124 pre-submitted questions to identify a priority list of 30 questions. These questions are discussed under seven themed headings that represent areas for renewed and em…
Towards sustainable and multifunctional agriculture in farmland landscapes: Lessons from the integrative approach of a French LTSER platform
2018
International audience; Agriculture is currently facing unprecedented challenges: ensuring food, fiber and energy production in the face of global change, maintaining the economic performance of farmers and preserving natural resources such as biodiversity and associated key ecosystem services for sustainable agriculture. Addressing these challenges requires innovative landscape scale farming systems that account for changing economic and environmental targets. These novel agricultural systems need to be recognized, accepted and promoted by all stakeholders, including local residents, and supported by public policies. Agroecosystems should be considered as socio-ecological systems and alter…
Pea Efficiency of Post-drought Recovery Relies on the Strategy to Fine-Tune Nitrogen Nutrition
2020
International audience; As drought is increasingly frequent in the context of climate change it is a major constraint for crop growth and yield. The ability of plants to maintain their yield in response to drought depends not only on their ability to tolerate drought, but also on their capacity to subsequently recover. Post-stress recovery can indeed be decisive for drought resilience and yield stability. Pea (Pisum sativum), as a legume, has the capacity to fix atmospheric nitrogen through its symbiotic interaction with soil bacteria within root nodules. Biological nitrogen fixation is highly sensitive to drought which can impact plant nitrogen nutrition and growth. Our study aimed at dyna…
Bank vole alarm pheromone chemistry and effects in the field
2021
Chemical communication plays an important role in mammalian life history decisions. Animals send and receive information based on body odour secretions. Odour cues provide important social information on identity, kinship, sex, group membership or genetic quality. Recent findings show, that rodents alarm their conspecifics with danger-dependent body odours after encountering a predator. In this study, we aim to identify the chemistry of alarm pheromones (AP) in the bank vole, a common boreal rodent. Furthermore, the vole foraging efficiency under perceived fear was measured in a set of field experiments in large outdoor enclosures. During the analysis of bank vole odour by gas chromatograph…
The Potential Role of Medicinal Mushrooms in the Prevention and Treatment of Gynecological Cancers: A Review
2019
A review of scientific information about the potential role of medicinal mushrooms in the prevention and treatment of gynecological cancers, human immunodeficiency virus, and human papillomavirus infections is reported here. The results of in vivo and in vitro experiments on 16 different species of Basidiomycetes and three Ascomycetes, which possess chemopreventive potential and are effective in clinical application in combination with chemotherapy, are also discussed. Medicinal mushroom extracts confirm an evident efficacy on the reduction of tumor cell proliferation and side effects in patients with gynecological tumors who are undergoing chemotherapy treatments. This review, the first on…
Recovery of plant communities after ecological restoration of forestry-drained peatlands
2017
Ecological restoration is expected to reverse the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Due to the low number of well-replicated field studies, the extent to which restoration recovers plant communities, and the factors underlying possible shortcomings, are not well understood even in medium term. We compared the plant community composition of 38 sites comprising pristine, forestry-drained, and 5 or 10 years ago restored peatlands in southern Finland, with special interest in understanding spatial variation within studied sites, as well as the development of the numbers and the abundances of target species. Our results indicated a recovery of community composition 5–10 years after re…