From February 19-23 of this year, the 8th International Abstract State Machines Workshop took place in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on the Canary Islands (Spain), organized by us as part of Eurocast 2001. The intensive three-days program consisted of 24 contributed papers and three invited lectures, by Yuri Gurevich ("Abstract State Machines: Theory and Applications"), Joseph Sifakis ("Some Trend...

The 'western seed bug', known as Leptoglossus occidentalis , is considered a global invasive species that has experienced recent rapid expansion worldwide, becoming an important pest for coniferous forests. With the 'Canary Islands early-warning network detection and intervention of exotic species' (RedEXOS), this was detected first time in Canarian rchipelago urban area eastern part sland Gran...

BACKGROUND Feeding innovation occurs when individuals choose a novel, unknown type of food and/or acquire new feeding skills. Here we studied feeding innovation and social transmission of the new feeding habit in canaries. Adult canaries eat a wide variety of seeds but avoid larger ones such as those of sunflowers. We determined whether adults of both sexes are equally prone to innovate when co...

Haemonchus contortus appears to be the most economically important helminth parasite for small ruminant production in many regions of the world. The two sheep breeds native to the Canary Islands display distinctly different resistant phenotypes under both natural and experimental infections. Canaria Hair Breed (CHB) tends to have significantly lower worm burden and delayed and reduced egg produ...

The question of how plant species foreign to a biological system can disperse and turn into an environmental problem is very important for the control of the invasive plant species, especially for insular ecosystems, which are more susceptible to biological invasions. We analyzed the role played by the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in the seed dispersal of the invasive scrub Acacia fa...

A new species Pythium canariense (CI-07), isolated from soil samples taken in the San Nicolas region of the Canary islands (Gran Canaria, Spain), is being described here. This species is characterised by its spherical to pyriform, intercalary to catenulate sporangia, smooth-walled terminal oogonia supplied with monoclinous and diclinous antheridia which at times are branched and wrap around the...

Male songbirds such as canaries produce complex learned vocalizations that are used in the context of mate attraction and territory defense. Successful mate attraction or territorial defense requires that a bird be able to recognize individuals based on their vocal performance and identify these songs in a noisy background. In order to learn more about how birds are able to solve this problem, ...

The androgen concentration in birds' eggs varies with laying order, breeding conditions, and mate attractiveness. In passerine birds, mate attractiveness depends upon song quality. The aim of our study was to evaluate the effect of one criterion used by females to assess male song quality that is to say the presence of sexually attractive phrases on yolk androgen deposition. Twenty-five female ...