The functional response study of the ten most common arthropod predators of cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa zea) eggs was conducted in the laboratory. Crab spider (Misumenops spp.) and assassin bug (Zelus renardii) did not consume any bollworm eggs under laboratory conditions and the scymnus lady beetle (Scymnus loewii) consumed very few (avg. 0.5 eggs per beetle) bollworm eggs in a 24-hour period...

Optimal mating frequencies differ between sexes as a consequence of the sexual differentiation of reproductive costs per mating, where mating is normally more costly to females than males. In mating systems where sexual reproduction is costly to females, sexual conflict may cause both direct (i.e. by reducing female fecundity or causing mortality) and indirect (i.e. increased risk of mortality,...

We introduce a novel attack concept against trace and revoke schemes called pirate evolution. In this setting, the attacker, called an evolving pirate, is handed a number of traitor keys and produces a number of generations of pirate decoders that are successively disabled by the trace and revoke system. A trace and revoke scheme is susceptible to pirate evolution when the number of decoders th...

1. Plants respond to herbivore damage by inducing defences that can affect the abundance of herbivores and predators. These tritrophic interactions may be influenced by heterogeneity in plant neighbourhood. 2. In the present study, the effects of induced responses on the abundance of herbivores (flea beetles and aphids), omnivores (pirate bugs and thrips), and predators (lady beetles and spider...

Although chemical pesticides play a vital role in controlling the number of harmful insects, they also contribute to accelerate pollution soil, air and water. Due frequent use, insects become resistant active ingredients very quickly; destroy natural enemies pests, have effect on humans. Accordingly, application biological protection, that is, use living organisms (predators parasites) plant pr...

Introduction Insecticidal RNAi is a targeted pest insect population control measure. The specificity of insecticidal can theoretically be enhanced by using symbiotic bacteria with narrow host range to deliver RNAi, an approach termed symbiont-mediated (SMR), technology we have previously demonstrated in the globally-invasive species Western Flower Thrips (WFT). Methods Here examine distribution...

Traitor tracing schemes are used to fight piracy when distributing securely some data to multiple authorized receivers: if some receivers collude and share their decryption keys to build some pirate decoder, a tracing procedure should be able to find at least one of these “traitors” from the pirate decoder. In this paper, we consider powerful pirate decoders, which may sometimes refuse to decry...

Stateful pirate decoders are history recording and abrupt pirate decoders. These decoders can keep states between decryptions to detect whether they are being traced and are then able to take some counter-actions against the tracing process, such as “shutting down” or erasing all internal information. We propose the first constant ciphertext rate scheme which copes with such pirate decoders. Ou...

I describe the Open University-owned 0.43m robotic observatory PIRATE, based in Mallorca. PIRATE is a cost-effective facility contributing to topical astrophysical research and an inspiring platform for distance education students to learn practical science.