Climate change leading to increased periods of low water availability as well as increasing demands for food in the coming years makes breeding for drought tolerant crops a high priority. Plants have developed diverse strategies and mechanisms to survive drought stress. However, most of these represent drought escape or avoidance strategies like early flowering or low stomatal conductance that ...

The experiments which have provided insight into the role of the pineal gland and melatonin in sheep reproduction are reviewed. There is now strong evidence that timed daily melatonin administration and continuous administration via implants are equally effective in promoting the same physiological consequences as short daylength. Thus melatonin treatments lasting six weeks can result in an adv...

In migrant birds, survival estimates for the different life-history stages between fledging and first breeding are scarce. First-year survival is shown to be strongly reduced compared with annual survival of adult birds. However, it remains unclear whether the main bottleneck in juvenile long-distant migrants occurs in the postfledging period within the breeding ranges or en route. Quantifying ...

We determined the prevalence and intensity of blood parasites in breeding gray catbirds (Dumatella carolinensis) at Killbuck Wildlife Area in Wayne and Holmes Counties, Ohio (USA) from June through August 2000. Of 98 catbirds sampled, 40 (40.8%) had detectable infections of Haemoproteus beckeri. Overall prevalence of H. beckeri in this population is high relative to that reported in earlier blo...

Many wildlife studies use chemical analyses to explore spatio-temporal variation in diet, migratory patterns and contaminant exposure. Intrinsic markers are particularly valuable for studying non-breeding marine predators, when direct methods of investigation are rarely feasible. However, any inferences regarding foraging ecology are dependent upon the time scale over which tissues such as feat...

Most animal populations have distinct breeding and non-breeding periods, yet the implications of seasonality on population dynamics are not well understood. Here, we introduce an experimental model system to study the population dynamics of two important consequences of seasonality: sequential density dependence and carry-over effects (COEs). Using a replicated seasonal population of Drosophila...

--No significant diurnal variation in mean weight was detected in trapped European Sparrowhawks (Accipiter nisus). Weights of males fluctuated rather little through the year, but were highest in March and lowest in August. During the breeding cycle, males lost weight slightly in the prelay/early laying periods, when they were feeding females in preparation for egg production, and in the late ne...

introduction agricultural research is important and one of the determinant factors of development of technologies in agricultural sector. among agricultural research disciplines, breeding programs, especially, wheat breeding programs are one of the applied approaches in improving of production and food security. based on a study by byerlee & traxler (1995), economic benefits and internal rate o...

the adrenal gland of notopterus notopterus (pallas) consisted of interrenal and chromaffin cells, distributed around the main branches of posterior cardinal vein in most anterior part of the pronephric kidney. seasonal histological characteristics of the interrenal and chromaffin cells in relation to testicular activity of n. notopterus were studied by adopting different staining techniques. th...