Communities of plant-parasitic nematodes collected from five different vegetation types (canopy woodland, savannah, gallery forest, cultivated perennial, and annual plants) and soils (yellowish red latosols, dark red latosols, arenosols, acrisols, and gleysols) were studied. Ninety percent of the soil samples collected from savannah contained at least four genera of plant-parasitic nematodes. T...

This report documents the talks and discussions at the Dagstuhl Seminar 15211 “Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms”. This seminar, now in its 8th edition, is the main meeting point of the highly active theory of randomized search heuristics subcommunities in Australia, Asia, North America, and Europe. Topics intensively discussed include rigorous runtime analysis and computational complexity theo...

We present a set of models for simulating vegetation dynamics in disturbance-prone ecosystems with different complexity levels, integrated in a modelling environment for generating landscapes and analysing landscape patterns and simulation results (LASS). Three spatially explicit simulation models with different degrees of complexity are included in LASS: a qualitative simulation model (presenc...

Non-native species introductions are widespread and can affect ecosystem functioning by altering the structure of food webs. Invading plants often modify habitat structure, which may affect the suitability of vegetation as refuge and could thus impact predator-prey dynamics. Yet little is known about how the replacement of native by non-native vegetation affects predator-prey dynamics. We hypot...

ecological studies based on field data have shown that vegetation phenology follows a relatively well-defined temporal pattern. this pattern, that is reflecting the cumulative temperature from the date of the beginning of the growth, can be represented by the use of a suitable model. due to the spatial, temporal, and ecological complexity of these processes a simple method to monitor phenologic...

Due to complexity, vegetation analysis and reconstruction of remote sensing data are challenging problems. Using architectural tree models combined with model inputs estimated from aerial image analysis, this paper presents an analysis– synthesis approach for urban vegetation detection, modeling, and reconstruction. Tree species, height, and crown size information are extracted by aerial image ...

Water availability is a major environmental driver affecting riparian and wetland vegetation. The interaction between water table fluctuations and vegetation in a stochastic environment contributes to the complexity of the dynamics of these ecosystems. We investigate the possible emergence of spatial patterns induced by spatio-temporal stochastic resonance in a simple model of groundwater-depen...

The pace of on-going climate change calls for reliable plant biodiversity scenarios. Traditional dynamic vegetation models use plant functional types that are summarized to such an extent that they become meaningless for biodiversity scenarios. Hybrid dynamic vegetation models of intermediate complexity (hybrid-DVMs) have recently been developed to address this issue. These models, at the cross...