The yellow dung fly Scathophaga stercoraria (L.) (Diptera: Scathophagidae) is a widespread and locally abundant fly associated with the dung of large mammals, especially farm animals. This species has recently become a standard test organism for evaluating toxic effects of veterinary pharmaceuticals in livestock dung. In this context, a review of its natural history and a general description of...

Dung beetle community dynamics are determined by regional rainfall patterns. However, little is known about the temporal dynamics of these communities in tropical dry forests (TDFs). This study was designed to test the following predictions: 1) Peak diversity of dung beetle species occurs early in the wet season, with a decrease in diversity (α and β) and abundance throughout the season; 2) Nes...

Dung beetle community structures changes due to the effects of destruction, fragmentation, isolation and decrease in tropical forest area, and therefore are considered ecological indicators. In order to assess the influence of type of maize cultivated and associated maize management on dung beetle communities in Atlantic Forest fragments surrounded by conventional and transgenic maize were eval...

Mucorales comprises fungi commonly isolated as saprobes from soil, dung, stored grains and plants. Although these fungi have been studied in several countries, there are relatively a few reports of them in semi-arid areas. Therefore, the aims of the present study were to assess and compare the Mucorales communities in dung from different species and breeds of herbivores in the semi-arid of Pern...

Anthelmintics, veterinary medicines for the control of endoparasites, enter into the environment largely through faeces of the treated animals. Sheep dung is a patchily distributed, ephemeral resource, with a functionally important decomposer community. The nature of this community and the pharmacokinetics of anthelmintics in sheep mean that the ecotoxic impacts of these drugs in sheep dung may...

Whenever males can monopolize females and/or resources used by females, the opportunity for sexual selection will be great. The greater the variation among males in reproductive success, the greater the intensity of selection on less competitive males to gain matings through alternative tactics. In the yellow dung fly, Scathophaga stercoraria, males aggressively compete for access to receptive,...

Hierarchical argumentation frameworks organise Dung argumentation frameworks into a hierarchy so that argumentation over preference information in a level n Dung framework is used to resolve conflicts between arguments in a level n1 framework. In this paper we formalise and extend value based argumentation [1] in a hierarchical argumentation framework and illustrate application of the resulting...

The smooth-spored species inhabiting dung, mainly of the Peziza fimeti group, were studied morphologically and through ITS sequence comparison. The results established that Peziza varia is also able to fruit on dung, clarifying a long-standing situation regarding two conflicting interpretations given in P. fimeti literature.

Endothermy in insects is normally associated with flight but has been observed during strictly terrestrial activity in beetles (Bartholomew & Casey 1977a, b). A study by Bartholomew & Heinrich (1978) in Kenya showed that dung beetles are conspicuously endothermic during flight, ball making and ball rolling, and sometimes while walking. Endothermy during terrestrial activity is probably advantag...