The article deals with reduplication in Tamil. It arranges various types of reduplication into five groups, according to one formal criterion – what is reduplicated. Then it focuses on phonetic reduplication, i.e. partial reduplication where the second word (the reduplicate) copies the phonetic structure of the base word to produce a rhyming pair. It classifies the examples of phonetic reduplication into several subgroups. The first large group contains pairs of fully lexical words, which have been put together because they sound similar and produce a rhyming pair. Here, phonetic reduplication accompanies semantic reduplication. The second large group contains pairs of words in which the second word is a bound word and has no meaning by itself. The eminent example in this category is in relation to echo words. These pairs usually have some emotive connotation and speakers use them to express their attitude towards something. Here, phonetic reduplication can be considered the main formative principle. At the end, the author proposes that phonetic reduplication might have played a role n the formation of numerous onomatopoetic words.
Of 31 species of coprophagous beetles from the following families: Aphodiidae, Geotrupidae, Scarabaeidae, individuals of 25 species carried deutonymphs of Uropoda orbicularis (Müller, 1776). The mite's preferences for attaching to specific parts of an insect's body were determined by examining 4,318 specimens of beetles from the following families: Aphodiidae, Geotrupidae, Scarabaeidae, Hydrophilidae and Histeridae. We recorded 14,507 cases of phoresy (5,822 deutonymphs and 8,685 of pedicels without mites) on 2,056 insects. Elytra and the third pair of legs were the areas most frequently occupied by the mites. The mite's preferences for attaching to specific parts of an insect body are reported for the first time.
A survey of soil fauna in Poland revealed 30 cases of centipedes carrying mites of the sub-order Uropodina. The 155 phoretic deutonymphs collected belonged to two species of Uropodina - Oodinychus ovalis (C.L. Koch, 1839) and Uroobovella pulchella (Berlese, 1904). These mites displayed a high degree of selectivity in their choice of carrier. The only species of centipede transporting mites was Lithobius forficatus (Linnaeus, 1758), despite the presence of 30 other species in the same habitats. It is possible that the large size and relatively fast speed of movement of this centipede make it a very good mite carrier. The majority of the mites were located on the sides of the centipedes, on segments near the anterior end. The high selectivity in the choice of carrier as well as the point of attachment suggests adaptation by the mites for phoresy by L. forficatus.
Phorids parasitizing Coccinella septempunctata, the seven spot ladybird, attend host prepupae and parasitize them at the point of ecdysis to the pupal stage. In this system, oviposition rates would be maximized through the choice of older pre-pupal hosts in preference to young ones. Field study revealed that old pre-pupal hosts were indeed more likely to be attended by phorids than young pre-pupae. We tested the hypothesis that this was due to a preference by simultaneously offering phorids an old and a young prepupal host in a choice test. The results suggest that phorids do indeed distinguish between host prepupae on the basis of age, choosing the older prepupa.