A caterpillar is a tree with the property that the vertices of degree at least 2 induce a path. We show that for every graph G of order n, either G or Ḡ has a spanning caterpillar of diameter at most 2 log n. Furthermore, we show that if G is a graph of diameter 2 (diameter 3), then G contains a spanning caterpillar of diameter at most cn (at most n).

Predicting the impact of carnivores on plants has challenged community and food web ecologists for decades. At the same time, the role of predators in the evolution of herbivore dietary specialization has been an unresolved issue in evolutionary ecology. Here, we integrate these perspectives by testing the role of herbivore diet breadth as a predictor of top-down effects of avian predators on h...

A graph G of order n is called arbitrarily vertex decomposable if for each sequence (a1, . . . , ak) of positive integers such that a1+. . .+ak = n there exists a partition (V1, . . . , Vk) of the vertex set of G such that for each i ∈ {1, . . . , k}, Vi induces a connected subgraph of G on ai vertices. D. Barth and H. Fournier showed that if a tree T is arbitrarily vertex decomposable, then T ...

A strong k-edge-coloring of a graph G is an assignment of k colors to the edges of G in such a way that any two edges meeting at a common vertex, or being adjacent to the same edge of G, are assigned different colors. The strong chromatic index of G is the smallest number k for which G has a strong k-edge-coloring. A Halin graph is a planar graph consisting of a tree with no vertex of degree tw...

In the drug design process, one wants to construct chemical compounds with certain properties. In order to establish the mathematical basis for the connections between molecular structures and physicochemical properties of chemical compounds, some so-called structure-descriptors or ”topological indices” have been put forward. Among them, the Wiener index is one of the most important. A long sta...

This paper studies the computational complexity of the Proper interval colored graph problem (picg), when the input graph is a colored tree. We show that the problem is hard for the class of caterpillar trees. To prove our result we make use of a close relationship between intervalizing problems and graph layout problems. We deene a graph layout problem the Proper colored layout problem (pclp)....

A caterpillar graph is a tree which on removal of all its pendant vertices leaves a chordless path. The chordless path is called the backbone of the graph. The edges from the backbone to the pendant vertices are called the hairs of the caterpillar graph. Ortiz and Villanueva (C.Ortiz and M.Villanueva, Discrete Applied Mathematics, 160(3): 259-266, 2012) describe an algorithm, linear in the size...

There are two main paradigms for querying semi structured data: regular path queries and XPath. The aim of this paper is to provide a synthesis between these two. This synthesis is given by a small addition to tree walk automata and the corresponding caterpillar expressions. These are evaluated on unranked finite sibling-ordered trees. At the expression level we add an operator whose meaning is...

A (simple undirected) graph G = (V,E) with m edges is graceful if it has a distinct vertex labeling f : V −→ {0, 1, 2, 3, . . . ,m} which induces a set of distinct edge labels {|f(u)− f(v)| | uv ∈ E, u, v ∈ V }. The famous Ringel-Kotzig conjecture [9, 15] is that all trees are graceful. The base of a tree T is obtained from T by deleting its one-degree vertices. A caterpillar is a tree whose ba...

Insect herbivores frequently move about on their host plants to obtain food, avoid enemies and competitors, and cope with changing environmental conditions. Although numerous plant traits influence the movement of specialist herbivores, few studies have examined movement responses of generalist herbivores to the variable ecological conditions associated with feeding and living on an array of ho...