The Formosan red-bellied tree squirrel (Callosciurus erythraeus.) is a pest animal that causes serious damage to many conifer plantations in Taiwan. Poisoning has been the major means to control the damage. The feasibility of forestry control through habitat manipulation has been evaluated during the past 5 years. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of forest-tending oper...

This paper describes a dynamic simulation model that allows for comprehensive assessment of integrated weed management programmes for the control of annual barnyardgrass (Echinochloa crus-galli complex) in Philippine rice farming systems. The main outputs of the model include weed seed and plant densities and seasonal and annualised profit over the simulated planning horizon. Results broadly in...

Seeding rangeland following wildfire is a central tool managers use to stabilize soils and inhibit the spread of invasive plants. Rates of successful seeding on arid rangeland, however, are low. The objective of this study was to determine the degree to which water availability, invasive plant abundance, and seeding technology influence postfire seedling establishment. Across four fire complexe...

Tropical dry forests (TDFs) have been widely transformed by human activities worldwide and the ecosystem services they provide are diminishing. There has been an urgent call for conservation and restoration of the degraded lands previously occupied by TDFs. Restoration experiences aim to recover species diversity and ecological functions. Different restoration strategies have been used to maxim...

In this work we demonstrate a rapidly deployable weed classification system that uses visual data to enable autonomous precision weeding without making prior assumptions about which weed species are present in a given field. Previous work in this area relies on having prior knowledge of the weed species present in the field. This assumption cannot always hold true for every field, and thus limi...

An assessment of the oil palm plantation management and fruit supply, under the Indian contract-growers scheme was conducted in this study. Data was collected from about 96 plantations on the age of plantation, size of plantation, cost of establishment, maintenance practices and cost , yield of fresh fruit bunches, profitability of the scheme for the farmers and so on. It was observed that most...

* To whom correspondence should be addressed: [email protected]. Abstract—The overwhelming complexity of biological systems prevents exhaustive description of the processes and mechanisms that cause system functionality. There are large numbers of processes to be considered with options for manifold hypotheses describing each. The long-term goal of this project, for a particular biological sys...

The ancient mutualism between fungus-growing ants and the fungi they cultivate for food is a textbook example of symbiosis. Fungus-growing ants' ability to cultivate fungi depends on protection of the garden from the aggressive microbes associated with the substrate added to the garden as well as from the specialized virulent garden parasite Escovopsis. We examined ants' ability to remove alien...

Tradescantia fluminensis, commonly referred to as ‘tradescantia’, is an invasive weed of canopydepleted forest remnants. Previous research suggests that a reduction of tradescantia biomass to ~80 gm-2 (~40% cover) is compatible with native forest regeneration. I assessed herbicide application, hand weeding and artificial shading as methods for the control of tradescantia in two lowland podocarp...