The recent paper published in New Phytologist, Wang et al. (2014; this issue pp. 679–683), purports in its title that ‘A novel 5enolpyruvoylshikimate-3-phosphate (EPSP) synthase transgene for glyphosate resistance stimulates growth and fecundity in weedy rice (Oryza sativa) without herbicide’ and in the paper claims that weedy rice expressing the transgene is more competitively fit than the wil...

Insect pests are a serious threat to agricultural productivity. Genetically-modified crops offer promising alternative, and Bacillus thuringiensis endotoxin genes have played major role in this respect. However, overcome insect tolerance issues broaden the target range, it is critical identify alternative insecticidal toxins working through novel mechanisms. In our previous study, kinase from C...

A research study was conducted to investigate the number of ovarian eggs and estimate potential egg production of A. leptodactylus. In this study, mean number ovarian eggs 420.41±42.51 with the average total length to 121.93±4.27 mm (n=58). The mean pleopodal eggs were 322.04±29.61 with average total length of 119.14±3.94 mm (n=67). Comparison of the fecundity rate in different population of A....

Fecundity generally refers to the ability to reproduce. In biology and demography, fecundity is the potential reproductive capacity of an organism or population measured by the number of eggs or seeds. Fecundity under both genetic and environmental control is the major measure of fitness, is well studied in population ecology and can increase or decrease according to current conditions and cert...

Studies of invertebrate-parasite interactions frequently report that infection reduces host fecundity. The extent of the reduction is likely to be determined by a wide range of host and parasite factors. We conducted a laboratory experiment to evaluate the role of parasite genetics and infection genetic diversity on the fecundity of mosquitoes carrying malaria parasites. The malaria vector Anop...

Pre-adult development time, dry weight at eclosion, and daily fecundity over the first 10 days of adult life were measured in five species of Drosophila from the melanogaster and immigrans species groups. Overall, the three species of the melanogaster group (D. melanogaster, D. ananassae, D. malerkotliana) developed faster, were lighter at eclosion, and produced more eggs per unit weight at ecl...

Life history responses to environmental conditions include a combination of fecundity–survival schedules and behavioral strategies that yield the highest fitness in a given environment. In this study, we examined the pattern of covariation in avian life history strategies along an elevational gradient by comparing variation in life history traits, including most components of parental care, bet...