Economic models of consumer demand and labor supply begin with an individual economic agent choosing actions that maximize his or her utility function subject to a budget constraint. How can we reconcile this individualistic theory of the consumer with the reality that people tend to live, eat, work, and play in families? Economists have dealt with a possible multiplicity of decision makers in ...

Elevated risk of disease transmission is considered a major cost of sociality, although empirical evidence supporting this idea remains scant. Variation in spatial cohesion and the occurrence of social interactions may have profound implications for patterns of interindividual parasite transmission. We used a social network approach to shed light on the importance of different aspects of group-...

Adults of the brown planthopper (BPH) and the whitebacked planthopper (WBPH) that migrated into Korea from China were not parasitized by the mermithid, Agamermis unka. BPH and WBPH collected from Korean rice fields were parasitized. Parasitism of BPH in the lst-3rd, 4th, and 5th instars, and adults was 31.5%, 61.5%, 66.4%, and 45.5%, respectively, whereas parasitism of the same stages of WBPH w...

The second case of a bite by the “triangulate false widow” Steatoda triangulosa is reported on human being. occurred in San Vicente, Buenos Aires, Argentina female 31 years old victim, who woke up felling nuisance and spotting spider her arm. inflicted two bites causing typical steatodism symptoms including local radiating pain malaise which lasted for about day. In addition, appearance an eryt...

Almost all spiders building vertical orb webs face downwards when sitting on the hubs of their webs, and their webs exhibit an up-down size asymmetry, with the lower part of the capture area being larger than the upper. However, spiders of the genus Cyclosa, which all build vertical orb webs, exhibit inter- and intraspecific variation in orientation. In particular, Cyclosa ginnaga and C. argent...

to carve it into neat joints and steaks. But as men multiplied upon the earth, and tribes were formed, warfare arose,, and men began to seek out the most vital parts of the humani body. Offerings andi sacrifices were made to propitiate the gods before these wars; and whenl cannibalism was evolved, human flesh, the scarcest andC Imlost valued form of food, was the natural offering at the altar, ...

There is a rapid increase in the demand for natural hypopigmenting agents from marine sources for cosmeceutical and pharmaceutical applications. Currently, marine macroalgae are considered as a safe and effective source of diverse bioactive compounds. Many research groups are exploring marine macroalgae to discover and characterize novel compounds for cosmeceutical, nutraceutical, and pharmaceu...

The current study examined the role of thought suppression in spider phobia. Spider phobic (n = 41) and non-phobic (n = 40) subjects were asked to monitor their thoughts for three 5 min periods. During the first period, all subjects were instructed to "think about anything". During the second period, half of the subjects received suppression instructions (i.e., subjects were explicitly asked "n...

Nephila are large, conspicuous weavers of orb webs composed of golden silk, in tropical and subtropical regions. Nephilids have a sparse fossil record, the oldest described hitherto being Cretaraneus vilaltae from the Cretaceous of Spain. Five species from Neogene Dominican amber and one from the Eocene of Florissant, CO, USA, have been referred to the extant genus Nephila. Here, we report the ...

Alopecosa ogorodica sp.n. (♂♀), a new wolf-spider species (Lycosidae) from the Russian Mountain Altai is described. New data, diagnosis, description and drawings on Arctosa meitanensis Yin et al., 1993 are provided.