Avian brood parasites reduce the reproductive success of the host, which favours the evolution of antiparasitic defences, such as aggression towards parasites or rejection of their eggs. The red-crested cardinal, Paroaria coronata, is a potential good-quality host of the shiny cowbird, Molothrus bonariensis. However, the frequency of cowbird parasitism in cardinal nests is very low and there ar...

There is increasing evidence that geographic and climatic clines drive the patterns of plant defence allocation and defensive strategies. We quantified early growth rate and both constitutive and inducible chemical defences of 18 Pinaceae species in a common greenhouse environment and assessed their defensive allocation with respect to each species' range across climatic gradients spanning 31° ...

Understanding how resource abundance limits adaptive evolution and influences species interactions is an important step towards developing insight into the role of microevolutionary processes in establishing macroevolutionary patterns. We examined how variation in resource abundance (forest area of lodgepole pine Pinus contorta ssp. latifolia) influenced patterns of co-adaptation and coevolutio...

Indirect responses are defensive strategies by which plants attract natural enemies of their herbivores that act as plant defending agents. Such defences can be either constitutively expressed or induced by the combined action of mechanical damage and low- or high-molecular-weight elicitors from the attacking herbivore. Here, we focus on two induced indirect defences, namely the de novo product...

To accelerate research on adversarial examples and robustness of machine learning classifiers, Google Brain organized a NIPS 2017 competition that encouraged researchers to develop new methods to generate adversarial examples as well as to develop new ways to defend against them. In this chapter, we describe the Alexey Kurakin, Ian Goodfellow, Samy Bengio Google Brain Yinpeng Dong, Fangzhou Lia...

As physicians and neuroscientists, we are concerned about the clinical and scientific limitations of chip-in-the-brain technology. Until these problems are overcome, we argue that less invasive methods could be used. Implantation of an electronic chip requires opening the skull and inserting the chip into the cortex, where it records spikes from a few dozen neurons (out of millions) for an unpr...

Abstract Herbivores select host plants depending on plant quality and the presence of predators competitors. Competing herbivores change quantity through consumption, but they can also induction defences, this affects performance that arrive later plant. Some herbivores, such as spider mite Tetranychus evansi , do not induce, suppress later-arriving profit from suppression. It has been suggeste...

1 Below-ground organisms influence above-ground interactions in both natural and agricultural ecosystems. Among the most important below-ground organisms are mycorrhizal fungi, comprising ubiquitous and ancient plant mutualists that have significant effects on plant growth and fitness mediated by resource exchange with plants. In the present study, we focus on the effects of arbuscular mycorrhi...

Plant quality for herbivores is usually evaluated with molecular and physiological techniques herbivore performance bioassays. These assays are done either on intact plants or detached plant parts, such as leaves, leaflets, leaf discs. It thus far unclear how experiments parts compare. may change in because of the mechanical wounding inflicted, which induce defences. Moreover, defences often sy...

Conifers exhibit a number of chemical and anatomical mechanisms to defend against pests and pathogens. Theory predicts an increased investment in plant defences under limited nutrient availability, but while this has been demonstrated for chemical defences, it has rarely been shown for anatomical defensive structures. In a long-lived woody plant, we tested the hypothesis that limited nutrient a...