Abstract Background Iroko gall bug, Phytolyma fusca Walker, is a major insect pest of Milicia excelsa (Iroko) seedling hampering its propagation in West Africa. an indigenous forest timber tree the tropical rain Africa with very high value international trade due to wood quality. Sustainable management P . infestations on seedlings have not been achieved their cryptic nature and multivoltine ge...

Because botanical taxonomies are prototypical classifications it would seem that it should be easy to formalize them as concept lattices or type hierarchies. On closer inspection, however, one discovers that such a formalization is quite challenging to obtain. First, botanical taxonomies consist of several interrelated hierarchies, such as a specimen-based plant typology, a name hierarchy and a...

Ratcheting surfaces are a common motif in nature and appear in plant awns and grasses. They are known to proffer selective advantages for seed dispersion and burial. In two simple model experiments, we show that these anisotropically toothed surfaces naturally serve as motion rectifiers and generically move in a unidirectional manner, when subjected to temporally and spatially symmetric excitat...

The use of pesticides in modern agriculture is unavoidable because they are required to control weeds. Pesticides are poisonous; hence, they are dangerous if misused. Understanding the fate of pesticides will be useful to use them safely. Therefore, contaminations of water and soil resources could be avoided. The fates of pesticides in soils are influenced by their sorption, decomposition and m...