Populations of leopards and tigers in the Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, India, appear to be declining. To identify the cause of this decline, we examined the diets and the relative densities of leopards and tigers, comparing scat from this park with that from the Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary, a park known to have high leopard and tiger densities. Results suggested that the leopard density...

Codling moth (Cydia pomonella L.) is an internal feeding pest of apples and can cause substantial economic losses to fruit growers due to larval feeding which in turn degrades fruit quality and can result in complete crop loss if left uncontrolled. Although this pest originally developed in central Asia, it was not known to occur in China until 1953. For the first three decades the spread of co...

A life-history in which an organism depends on ants is called myrmecophily. Among Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies), many species of lycaenid butterflies are known to show myrmecophily at the larval stage. Descriptions of myrmecophily among moth species, however, are very few and fragmentary. Here, we report the ant-associated behaviour of the tiny Japanese arctiid moth, Nudina artaxidia. Fie...

A preliminary conclusion of the research is that there does not appear to be significant genetic differences in developmental times between the codling moth populations in walnuts and apples. Codling moths were collected from walnuts and placed onto artificial diet as a rearing medium. Data obtained from these individuals were consistent with the data obtained from colonies of codling moth coll...

Metacercariae survival patterns and their distribution in second intermediate odonate hosts were examined for 4 species of frog lung flukes. Surveys of aquatic larvae and recently emerged teneral dragonflies and damselflies indicated that prevalence and mean abundance of Haematoloechus spp. metacercariae were significantly lower in teneral dragonflies than larval dragonflies, while there was no...

The classical theory of locomotion in sharks proposes that shark pectoral fins are oriented to generate lift forces that balance the moment produced by the oscillating heterocercal tail. Accordingly, previous studies of shark locomotion have used fixed-wing aircraft as a model assuming that sharks have similar stability and control mechanisms. However, unlike airplanes, sharks are propelled by ...

The leopard Panthera pardus, categorized globally as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List, has the widest distribution of any wild felid species, although in Asia it has declined dramatically and five subspecies are Endangered or Critically Endangered. In China at least three subspecies have been reported to occur throughout much of the country, and in  the population was estimated to be ,...

applying a precise forecasting method is necessary to achieve acceptable results in ipm programs. performances of the wing and delta pheromone traps for forecasting the codling moth phenology were compared with physiological time data based on degree-hours. six pheromone traps (three wing and three delta style) were applied for the monitoring of the codling moth population. traps were placed in...

Sweet cherries, Prunus avium L., from the United States must be fumigated to control codling moth, Cydia pomonella (L.) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), before exporting them to Japan. However, the status of sweet cherry as a true host for codling moth has been debated because of the limited survival of the pest. Previously, laboratory methods have been developed to rear the codling moth on sweet ch...

Laboratory, greenhouse and field studies were conducted on Oomyzus sokolowskii Kurdjumov, a parasite of diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella (L.), to judge its suitability for introduction in the field to control the plutellid. Oomyzus sokolowskii preferred the third and fourth instar diamondback moth larvae over fresh pupae for parasitization. It is thus a larval parasite. Within the range of...