SUMMARY There is increasing world-wide concern about the impact of the introduction of exotic species on ecological communities. Since many exotic plants depend on native pollinators to successfully establish, it is of paramount importance that we understand precisely how exotic species integrate into existing plant-pollinator communities. In this manuscript, we have studied a global data base ...

In recent years, ecological research has suggested several mechanisms by which biodiversity might affect the risk of acquiring infectious diseases (i.e., the decoy, dilution or amplification effects), but the topic remains controversial. While many experimental studies suggest a negative relationship between biodiversity and disease, this relationship is inherently complex, and might be negativ...

Descriptions of 247 forest stands at Waipoua Forest, Northland, were used to explore relationships between species richness (alpha-diversity) of the vascular flora and stand environmental characteristics, both in terms of total flora and within a number of the component synusiae. The Waipoua forests, with an average of 52 species per forest stand, are comparatively species-rich compared to othe...

This paper proposes a model for the structure and content of a university World Wide Web site, by a process of: (1) identifying who the site is serving and the information needs of these individuals or groups; (2) identifying institutional information needs; (3) relating this data to the content provided; (4) presenting the content in a manner suited to the characteristics and information needs...

Original oak (Quercus) forests in the southwestern Carpathian Mountains, Slovakia, were replaced by non-forest cover or managed stands often containing introduced non-native tree species. We compared the composition, richness, and abundance of litter-dwelling beetle (Coleoptera) communities in 30 stands across three management types: (i) reserved stands that most closely approximate the pre-cle...

s of Conference Papers Conceptual Developments in Reversal Theory Michael J. Apter Georgetown University, Apter International Presenting Author: Michael J. Apter This paper will introduce some new concepts and terms that have been developed recently. These do not contradict any previous tenets of reversal theory, but rather refine some of its central ideas, and provide a vocabulary for describi...

Learning of recursive functions refutably means that for every recursive function, the learning machine has either to learn this function or to refute it, i.e., to signal that it is not able to learn it. Three modi of making precise the notion of refuting are considered. We show that the corresponding types of learning refutably are of strictly increasing power, where already the most stringent...

the influence of long-term mixed organic and inorganic contamination on soil microbial activity, community structure and genetic diversity was investigated in soil samples from a coke oven plant located in upper silesia, poland. the tested soils were heavily contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (pahs) and heavy metals. the microbial communities were characterized using the phospho...

In this thesis I explore the prerequisites for the successful management of wildlife richness in Finnish forests. Wildlife richness is a concept describing species richness and species abundance of well-known game species, which have social, cultural and economical value. The management of wildlife richness is described here as a sequence of actions, where 1) monitoring information of populatio...

Vascular epiphytes are important components of biological diversity in tropical forests. We measured the species richness and abundance of vascular epiphytes along four vertical crown zones and five horizontal orientations on 376 trees, as well as the diameter at breast height (DBH) of host trees in tropical cloud forests in Bawangling, Hainan, China. The relationship between vascular epiphyte ...