The aphid Uroleucon ambrosiae (Thomas) is one of the principal pests found on greenhouse lettuce crops, and there is no efficient biological control agent of this pest in Brazil. This work evaluates the aphid U. ambrosiae as a host for the parasitoid Praon volucre (Haliday), aimed at using P. volucre as a potential biological control agent of U. ambrosiae on lettuce. As Macrosiphum euphorbiae (Thomas) is a common host of P. volucre in the field, the development of the parasitoid was compared on these two aphid species. Twenty nymphs of the 2nd instar were kept with P. volucre for one hour at 22 ± 1°C, 70 ± 10% RH and a 12 h photophase. The size of the aphid's tibiae at the moment of oviposition indicated that there was no significant size difference between U. ambrosiae (0.6 ± 0.02 mm) and M. euphorbiae (0.7 ± 0.03 mm). When mummies were formed, M. euphorbiae had significantly longer tibia (1.5 ± 0.03 mm) than U. ambrosiae (1.4 ± 0.02 mm). No significant differences were detected in the percentage emergence (74.9 ± 7.92 and 87.5% ± 3.31 for U. ambrosiae and M. euphorbiae, respectively), or proportion of female offspring (56.2 ± 7.62 and 44.2 ± 7.14%). The development time from oviposition to adult and longevity of females and males of P. volucre reared on the two host species were not different. High parasitism levels were recorded for both host aphid species, but the percentage parasitism of M. euphorbiae (54.4 ± 4.40) was higher than of U. ambrosiae (35.6 ± 5.30). Female parasitoids reared on M. euphorbiae had longer tibiae (0.78 ± 0.01 mm) than those reared on U. ambrosiae (0.72 ± 0.01 mm). Our results demonstrate that the alternative host species U. ambrosiae, compared to the natural host species M. euphorbiae, affects the female's size, but did not affect parasitoid development time, longevity, emergence or sex ratio. The parasitoid P. volucre seems to be a good candidate for using as a biological control agent of U. ambrosiae on lettuce in Brazil.
a1_This study describes the parasitoid species complex associated with seven closely related species of sexual (Siederia rupicollella, S. listerella, Dahlica lazuri, D. charlottae and D. lichenella) and parthenogenetic (Dahlica fennicella and D. triquetrella) Naryciinae (Lepidoptera: Psychidae) in Central Finland. A thorough ecological analysis of all the species of parasitoids recorded was combined with analyses of molecular data. Mitochondrial and nuclear DNA data were obtained from all the species in order to (1) detect cryptic species associated with host specialization, (2) assign undescribed males to females, and (3) verify the morphological identification of closely related species. A DNA barcoding technique was employed to identify host species from parasitized larval remains. By sampling more than 10,000 host larvae, of which 25.7% were parasitized, nine parasitoid species were identified morphologically, including both koinobionts (Ichneumonidae: Diadegma incompletum, Macrus parvulus, Trachyarus borealis, T. solyanikovi, T. fuscipes, T. brevipennis and Braconidae: Meteorus affinis) and idiobionts (Ichneumonidae: Orthizema flavicorne, Gelis fuscicornis). Ecological characteristics such as time and mode of host attack, time of emergence and level of specialization differed widely. The results show that differences in parasitoid biology need to be taken into account when studying differences in percentage parasitism of sexual and parthenogenetic Naryciinae. The molecular data revealed that one parasitoid species M. parvulus may consist of two cryptic forms associated with the sexual and parthenogenetic hosts, respectively. The data further establishes that T. brevipennis and some T. fuscipes are in fact morphotypes of one species. The large variation in mitochondrial DNA within species and its inconsistency with nuclear DNA demonstrate that current species and genus delimitation is inadequate in the, a2_Trachyarus species group. Our study shows that it is essential to use DNA barcoding methods when investigating host-parasitoid complexes., and Jelmer A. Elzinga, Kees Zwakhals, Johanna Mappes, Alessandro Grapputo.
We give an expository account of a Weierstrass type representation of the non-zero constant mean curvature surfaces in space and discuss the meaning of the representation from the point of view of partial differential equations.
The acute destructive pneumonias (ADP) occupy up to 80% of the total number of pneumonias. They require constant improvement of treatment strategy. Nowadays the use of surfactants is a part of most treatment protocols. The aim was to study the features of the solid phase bronchoalveolar lavage in children with the ADPs in the dynamics of complex treatment with exogenous surfactant. Material and methods: We examined 39 patients of contaminated surgery. We identified 2 groups of patients. The patients of first group (n=27) had pulmonary pleural form of ADP, the second group (n=12) had pulmonary form of ADP. All patients got classical treatment and the earlier draining of pleural cavity. We used as an antiseptic reamberin 1.5% by 10 ml/kg and endobronchially injected exogenous surfactant Bl in dose12 mg/kg body weight a day, 6 mg/kg every 12 hours. All the children were made a bronchoscopy to obtain BAL to study the crystallization properties. The solid phase of BAL was studied by method of cuneal dehydration. Results: All facies before treatment were divided into two groups according to classification of facies of biological fluids. Only the facies of the second and the third types were detected there. It was revealed that the sizes of the zones of the facies were different in the comparison groups before treatment and after. And the level of crystalline structures and amorphous aggregates were different in the groups with different degrees of inflammation. Conclusion: So, we can assume that the change in surfactant system is characterized by changes in the morphological structure of solids phases of BAL. And the morphological structure of BAL depends on the chemical composition of BAL., Yuliya Modna, Tatiana Tananakina, Elina Dyka, Ievgen Mozhaiev, Pavlo Borodin, and Literatura
Backpropagation which uses gradient descent on the steepness of the sigmoid function (BPSA) has been widely studied (e.g. Kruschke et al. [1]). However, most of these studies only analysed the BPSA empirically where no adequate measurements of the network’s quality characteristics (e.g. efficiency and complexity) were given. This paper attempts to show that the BPSA is more efficient than the standard BPA by quantitatively comparing the convergence performance of both algorithms on several benchmark application problems. The convergence performance is measured by the values of the neural metrics [2] evaluated in the training process.
The period function of a planar parameter-depending Hamiltonian system is examined. It is proved that, depending on the value of the parameter, it is either monotone or has exactly one critical point.