The multicoloured Asian lady beetle Harmonia axyridis (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) may potentially exploit a range of "alternative" food sources. The nutritional value of three common non-prey food groups, i.e. fruit, fungi and pollen, is examined in this study. Development, reproduction and survival of the species were assessed in the laboratory on diets of apple, pear and raspberries and the fungi Oidium lycopersicum, Botrytis cinerea, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum and Rhizoctonia solani. When fed exclusively on these foods this ladybird failed to complete its development or reproduce. However, larval and adult survival was prolonged by 4 to 8 days and 55 to 67 days, respectively, when fruit was offered compared with only water. During a field study H. axyridis adults were collected monthly from March to October at two locations near Ghent, Belgium. Gut analysis demonstrated that, despite the continued presence of aphids, over 90% of all the adults collected contained pollen throughout the year. The pollen belonged to 53 different pollen types. Monthly average numbers of pollen grains in the gut varied from 5 to 233 grains. In contrast, there were about 35,000 grains in the guts of H. axyridis females that successfully developed and reproduced in the laboratory on diet that consisted of only pollen. This suggests that in the field in the majority of cases pollinivory mainly only provided complementary nutrients for this coccinellid. The use of alternative non-prey foods like pollen and fruit may play a role in sustaining populations of this coccinellid at times when the optimal prey is absent.
Methods of analyses of biological time series are presented and compared to the traditional techiiiques based on the Fourier transform. Paranietric methods are used for computation of the autoregressive estimator, for the model order selection and for the spectrum estirnation. A nonlinear analysis deals with the state-space trajectory reconstruction and with the fractal and embedding dirnension estirnation. Experimental resiilts compare the abilities of traditional, pararnetric and nonlinear methods to distinguish different cognitive States of the human operator by an analysis of an EEG curve.
We reviewed the distribution of Robertsonian (Rb) races of Mus musculus domesticus in central and southern Italy. This Rb system is called the Apennine system and includes four races (Cittaducale, ICDE, 2n=22; Ancarano, IACR, 2n=24; Campobasso, ICBO, 2n=22; Colfiorito, ICOL, 2n=33–34) surrounded by standard populations with karyotype 2n=40. Here we evaluate the relationships between the altitudinal distribution of races, and the indoor vs. outdoor behaviour of populations, inferred from literature data on the diet of the barn owl Tyto alba. We assume that a higher prevalence of mice in owl pellets reflects a higher outdoor occurrence of mice. The IACR and ICDE races were found at higher altitudes than the standard populations, while the ICBO race is present at lower altitudes like the standard race. The standard race has indoor and outdoor populations; in all the Rb races an indoor life has been suggested by our data. This behaviour is only partly due to altitude, since the ICBO race also lives at sea level. We speculated that indoor life is an intrinsic characteristic of the ICBO race irrespective of the environment. This pattern reinforces the idea that indoor life, through its population dynamics, has played a significant role in the evolutionary history of Rb races.
The relationship between species richness of plants and animals and altitude can be either hump-shaped, a monotonic decrease or increase. In this study the altitudinal distribution of moths on one of the highest mountains in South Korea was investigated. Moths were captured using a UV-light trap from May to October in 2007 and 2008. This revealed that the relationship between the total numbers of moth species and individuals and altitude is hump-shaped. A significant relationship was also recorded between the size of the area at each altitude and moth abundance and richness. However, the evenness index yielded a consistent decrease with increase in altitude because of the dominance of few species at high altitudes. Non-metric multidimensional scaling identified two major axes for the moth assemblage on Mount Jirisan. The correlations between the axes and variables demonstrated that the first axis was strongly correlated with altitude and aspect and the second axis with forest and site location.
The altitudinal gradient in diversity of dung beetles (Scarabaeidae) was studied in a Mediterranean mountain chain located in Central Anatolia to (i) determine if there are altitudinal differences between the main taxonomic groups, (ii) describe the seasonal variations in these assemblages and (iii) assess whether closed habitats influence dung beetle diversity differentially at different altitudes. Beetles were collected throughout a year at 14 localities between 469 and 1810 m above sea level in three different types of habitats. Dung beetle assemblages at 400 to 1200 m did not vary greatly in species richness, abundance and biomass. However, they varied in composition, with the assemblages dominated by species of Scarabaeinae up to 900 m, whereas in the mid-mountain assemblages (from 900 m to 1600 m) the numbers of species of Aphodiinae was higher. The decline with increase in altitude in richness, abundance and biomass of both small and large species of Scarabaeinae up to 1500 m, together with the constancy of these parameters in the case of Aphodiinae, accounts for the changes in the composition from the lowland to mid-mountain localities. Unlike at other Mediterranean localities, the open/closed structure of the habitat only slightly influences these assemblages independently of altitude or season. The general seasonal pattern follows the classical Mediterranean bimodal pattern associated with summer drought, but the patterns are more complex when the seasonal responses of the different groups and at different localities are analysed separately. We propose that the interplay between local climatic conditions (mainly temperature) and evolutionary conserved species preferences accounts for both the current seasonal and altitudinal gradients and the changes in species composition in terms of Aphodiinae and Scarabaeinae.
One of the best documented effects of climate change on biodiversity are shifts in phenology. However, long-term data quantifying and projecting the expected changes in phenology associated with climate warming are limited to a few well-recorded areas in the world. In the absence of temporal recording, an alternative approach is to determine the phenological response of species along marked gradients in climate or along latitudinal or altitudinal transects (space-for-time substitution). We studied the phenology (timing and duration of the flight period) of butterflies in 2006 along an altitudinal gradient (900-1680 m; estimated temperature lapse rate = -6.6°C/km) in the Serranía de Cuenca (central Spain) at the assemblage and individual species levels. Timing of the flight period was later for assemblages at high than at low altitudes. A similar trend of an increasing delay in the flight period with altitude was recorded for some individual species. However, there were also some exceptions to this pattern regardless of the number of sites and the altitudinal ranges of the species, suggesting possible local adaptation to regional climate. The duration of the flight period was shorter at high altitudes for assemblages, but this trend was not mirrored in the response of individual species. The results partly support substituting space-for-time when assessing the potential effect of climate change on phenophases such as the timing of the flight period, but we recommend extreme caution in extrapolating the results in the absence of information on how the responses of populations differ. and Juan Ignacio De Arce Crespo, David Gutiérrez.
On the basis of solid-state aluminium-27 nuclear magnetic resonance measurements a new organo-aluminium complex in coal substance was discovered in the solid extracts obtained both from the Ostrava-Karviná bituminous coal and the North Bohemian Basin brown coal. In the 27 Al MAS NMR spectra it was found that the significant chemical shift at 13.6-14.6 ppm corresponds with that obtained for the aluminium hexaphenoxide complex (14.2 ppm). Therefore, organo-aluminium complex with hexa-coordination to oxygen is present in coal substance., Pavel Straka., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy