Search results for "war"
showing 10 items of 11970 documents
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…
High-Pressure Carbon Dioxide Use to Control Dried Apricot Pests, Tribolium castaneum and Rhyzopertha dominica, and Assessing the Qualitative Traits o…
2021
One of the new ways of warehouse pest control is the carbon dioxide treatment, which had no residues on the target products. In the present research, at first, CO2 gas was applied to control two important pest species infesting dried apricots. Dry apricots infested with adults of Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) or Rhyzopertha dominica (F.) were exposed to CO2 gas pressures correspond to 9.1, 16.7, 23.1, 28.6, and 33.4 mol% for 24 h. The results showed higher mortality rates with increasing the gas pressures in all the experiments. The minimum and maximum losses of the pests were determined at concentrations of 9.1 and 33.4 mol%, respectively. Evaluation of CO2 gas effects on the quality charac…
Coupling agent-based with equation-based models to study spatially explicit megapopulation dynamics
2018
International audience; The incorporation of the spatial heterogeneity of real landscapes into population dynamics remains extremely difficult. We propose combining equation-based modelling (EBM) and agent-based modelling (ABM) to overcome the difficulties classically encountered. ABM facilitates the description of entities that act according to specific rules evolving on various scales. However, a large number of entities may lead to computational difficulties (e.g., for populations of small mammals, such as voles, that can exceed millions of individuals). Here, EBM handles age-structured population growth, and ABM represents the spreading of voles on large scales. Simulations applied to t…
Biogeochemical cycling and ecological thresholds in a High Arctic lake (Svalbard)
2019
Lakes are a dominant feature of the Arctic landscape and a focal point of regional and global biogeochemical cycling. We collected a sediment core from a High Arctic Lake in southwestern Svalbard for multiproxy paleolimnological analysis. The aim was to find linkages between the terrestrial and aquatic environments in the context of climate change to understand centennial-long Arctic biogeochemical cycling and environmental dynamics. Two significant thresholds in elemental cycling were found based on sediment physical and biogeochemical proxies that were associated with the end of the cold Little Ice Age and the recent warming. We found major shifts in diatom, chironomid and cladoceran comm…
Phytoplankton assemblages respond differently to climate warming and eutrophication : A case study from Pyhäjärvi and Taihu
2016
Abstract Long-term monitoring data from two lakes located at different latitudes were used to test the hypothesis that phytoplankton communities respond differently to environmental changes (e.g., global warming and anthropogenic activities, mainly eutrophication). Lake Pyhajarvi (temperate area) and Lake Taihu (subtropical area) are both shallow and productive lakes. Presence/absence data indicated that phytoplankton taxa present did not change significantly in the two lakes over the last two decades. However, biomass data showed that dominance relationships of species changed in both lakes. Results of assemblage ordination indicated that climate change played a vital role in mediating phy…
Novel Wood Resistance Measurement Method Reducing the Initial Transient Instabilities Arising in DC Methods Due to Polarization Effects
2019
A novel method for measuring the electrical resistance in wood is presented. It is based on applying an Alternating Current (AC) to two electrodes rammed into the wood. The method reduces the transient time for value stabilization. In case of Direct Current (DC) resistance measurement methods, typically used in wood measurement, an initial transient exists, invalidating the measured value during an initial transient period. This measurement method uses an electronic circuit based on a relaxation oscillator where the wood automatically sets the oscillation frequency depending on its electrical resistance. Compared to other AC methods, this circuit greatly simplifies the measurement process, …
Synthetic cartography for mapping biodiversity in the Mediterranean region: Sicily as a case study
2018
This paper proposes a new hierarchical land classification system for the mapping of species distribution at national or regional scales. Our integrative framework incorporates two hierarchical levels inferred from historical, climatic, geomorphological and geological attributes. The feasibility of this proposal is based on the use of historical collections and literature data, as well as on its ability to combine old low-precision data with more recent records of higher resolution. The system is set up for vascular plants, but it can also be used for other taxonomic groups. Furthermore, it has the potential for application to the whole Mediterranean region because it is based on informatio…
Nanism (dwarfism) in fish: a comparison between red mullet Mullus barbatus from the southeastern and the central Mediterranean
2007
The gradient of environmental conditions from west to east in the Mediterranean results in very low primary productivity in the eastern area of this sea. This impoverishment is expressed also in higher trophic levels and has been accounted for by several faunistic phenomena. One of these is 'Levantine nanism' (dwarfism); this is characterized by smaller body size of specimens in the Levantine basin compared with conspecifics in the western Mediterranean. Nanism has been hypothesized for various taxonomic groups in the Mediterranean, but no quantitative study has yet been carried out to confirm it. In the present study male and female red mullet Mullus barbatus from trawl surveys carried out…
Measuring the effects of temperature rise on Mediterranean shellfish aquaculture
2018
Abstract Shellfish aquaculture represents a worldwide valuable segment of the aquaculture market, spreading along the Mediterranean coasts, and is sensitive to the still unforeseen, poorly-known effects of climate change. Threats due to temperature rise can threaten the deployment and development of this sector, up until now recognised as the best candidate to mitigate the effects of fishery overexploitation. Here, we investigate the effects of temperature increase on the model species, Mytilus galloprovincialis, measuring outcomes from valve fragility (thickness) and condition index. Evidence of a reduction in the thickness of valves and the modulation condition of the mussels along with t…
Circummed pine forest database: An electronic archive for mediterranean and submediterranean pine forest vegetation data
2019
Large thematic databases of vegetation plots are increasingly needed for vegetation studies and biodiversity research. In this paper, we present the CircumMed Pine Forest Database (GIVD ID: EU-00-026), which in November 2018, comprised records from 6317 pine-dominated vegetation plots (relevés) and associated vegetation types from 20 countries of the Mediterranean Basin, Near East and Crimea. These vegetation plots were collected through a detailed literature search for plots not previously included in the European Vegetation Archive (EVA), in order to fill geographic gaps in data coverage. The database comprises Mediterranean (including Oromediterranean) pine-forest vegetation plots from b…