We show for the first time, to our knowledge, that ants can measure the size of potential nest sites. Nest size assessment is by individual scouts. Such scouts always make more than one visit to a potential nest before initiating an emigration of their nest mates and they deploy individual-specific trails within the potential new nest on their first visit. We test three alternative hypotheses f...

Suitability of degraded areas as breeding habitats can be tested through assessment of nest predation rates. In this study we estimated nest success in relation to several potential predictors of nest survival in the Stripe-tailed Yellow-finch (Sicalis citrina) breeding in abandoned mining pits at Brasília National Park. We monitored 73 nests during the 2007-breeding season. Predation was the m...

I present data indicating that Polistes dominulus females overwinter in multi-colony groups, recognize natal nest fragments after overwintering, and select nesting cavities based on cavity volume. In a seminatural environment, seven fi eld-captured P. dominulus colonies completed the colony cycle, and the resulting reproductive females were observed in hibernacula groups, on natal nest fragment...

The design of the Parallel Ocean Program (POP) is described with an emphasis on portability. Performance of POP is presented on a wide variety of computational architectures, including vector architectures and commodity clusters. Analysis of POP performance across machines is used to characterize performance and identify improvements while maintaining portability. A new design of the POP model,...

Current storage appliances have been traditionally designed to meet either the storage demands of a local or a wide area network. The grid is unique in that it escapes this limitation and allows users to share resources both within and between local area networks. However, this freedom creates many new challenges to storage appliances that would be used on the grid. NeST is a user-level softwar...

Center for Information Technology Integration University of Michigan 519 West William Street Ann Arbor, MI 48103-4943 CITI Technical Report 91–7 NESTMOD: The NetMod–NEST Interface U. Amin [email protected] D. Bachmann [email protected] K. Deboo [email protected] T. Teorey [email protected] NESTMOD is a combined analytical modeling and simulation tool, based on the existing tools Net...

Some bird species are selective in the materials they choose for nest building, preferring, for example, materials of one colour to others. However, in many cases the cause of these preferences is not clear. One of those species is the zebra finch, which exhibits strong preferences for particular colours of nest material. In an attempt to determine why these birds strongly prefer one colour of ...

It is becoming apparent that birds learn from their own experiences of nest building. What is not clear is whether birds can learn from watching conspecifics build. As social learning allows an animal to gain information without engaging in costly trial-and-error learning, first-time builders should exploit the successful habits of experienced builders. We presented first-time nest-building mal...

Advances in understanding avian nesting ecology are hindered by a prevalent lack of agreement between nest-site characteristics and fitness metrics such as nest success. We posit this is a result of inconsistent and improper timing of nest-site vegetation measurements. Therefore, we evaluated how the timing of nest vegetation measurement influences the estimated effects of vegetation structure ...

Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) nest on dynamic, erosion-prone beaches. Erosive processes and resulting nest loss have long been presumed to be a hindrance to clutch survival. In order to better understand how leatherbacks cope with unstable nesting beaches, I investigated the role of beach erosion in leatherback nest site selection at Playa Gandoca, Costa Rica. I also examined t...