BACKGROUND Conserving biodiversity in tropical landscapes is a major challenge to scientists and conservationists. Current rates of deforestation, fragmentation, and land use intensification are producing variegated landscapes with undetermined values for the conservation of biological communities and ecosystem functioning. Here, we investigate the importance of tropical variegated landscapes t...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to evaluate the anti-aging effect of a newly prepared insect-derived compound, dung beetle glycosaminoglycan (GAG), given intraperitoneally to old SD rats as part of their diet for 1 month. Insect GAG administration was found to be related to a reduction in oxidative damage, hepato-cellular biomarker levels, protein carbonyl content, and malondialdehyde concentration...

ndoor air pollution in developing world from bio-mass smoke is considered to be a significant source of public health hazard, particularly to the poor and vulnerable women and children. About 50 % of the world's population is estimated to use solid bio-fuels like animal dung, crop residues, wood and coal for cooking daily meals and heating homes. Exposure from bio-mass smoke is estimated to cau...

Forests in Southeast Asia are rapidly being logged and converted to oil palm. These changes in land-use are known to affect species diversity but consequences for the functional diversity of species assemblages are poorly understood. Environmental filtering of species with similar traits could lead to disproportionate reductions in trait diversity in degraded habitats. Here, we focus on dung be...

Recent work suggests that the yellow dung fly mating system may include alternative patroller-competitor mating tactics in which large males compete for gravid females on dung, whereas small, non-competitive males search for females at foraging sites. Small males obtain most matings off pasture, yet the behavioural mechanism(s) giving rise to this pattern are unknown. We investigated the male a...

Recent research has focused on the different types of compass cues available to ball-rolling beetles for orientation, but little is known about the relative precision of each of these cues and how they interact. In this study, we find that the absolute orientation error of the celestial compass of the day-active dung beetle Scarabaeus lamarcki doubles from 16° at solar elevations below 60° to a...

This paper focuses on biological relationships between mammalian species richness and the community structure of dung beetles in cool-temperate forests in the northernmost part of mainland Japan. The composition of beetle assemblages was evaluated at 3 sites in undisturbed beech forests with different mammalian fauna. In spring and summer 2009, beetles were collected at each site using pitfall ...

This study was conducted to evaluate the Enhancement of Remediation by Eleusine indica through augmentation of soil with cow dung. The soil was contaminated artificially with 50kg, 75kg and 100kg crude oil. over 8 weeks period. The study included an assessment of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metal (Cd and Pb) accumulation in soil of Eleusine indica.More PAHs was lost fr...