Predicting the impact of carnivores on plants has challenged community and food web ecologists for decades. At the same time, the role of predators in the evolution of herbivore dietary specialization has been an unresolved issue in evolutionary ecology. Here, we integrate these perspectives by testing the role of herbivore diet breadth as a predictor of top-down effects of avian predators on h...

A six year field study was conducted from 2001–2002 to 2006–2007 at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India to study the losses in seed yield of different Brassica species (B. juncea, B. napus, B. carinata, B. rapa and Eruca sativa) by the infestation of insect pests. The experiment was conducted in two different sets viz. protected/sprayed and unprotected, in a randomized block design,...

We report risk factors associated with intraocular penetration of caterpillar hair seen at our institute from January 2005 to December 2007. Records of all patients with caterpillar hair induced ophthalmitis (CHIO) were retrospectively reviewed for clinical characteristics, anatomic location of lodgment of the caterpillar hair, treatment methods, and outcomes. Out of a total of 544 cases of CHI...

Caterpillar has for many years used telemetry as a key component in the data acquisition and analysis systems used to test and develop heavy equipment. The testing of construction and mining equipment at Caterpillar presents several unique challenges, such as the operating environment of the test machine, the large number of models in the product line, the need to change test machines on a dail...

PURPOSE A review of the salient characteristics of motor speech disorders and common assessment protocols revealed the need for a novel reading passage tailored specifically to differentiate between and among the dysarthrias (DYSs) and apraxia of speech (AOS). METHOD "The Caterpillar" passage was designed to provide a contemporary, easily read, contextual speech sample with specific tasks (e....

Pine caterpillar, Thaumetopoea pityocampa Schiff, is a phyto- and xylophagous lepidopteran, responsible for the delay in the growth or the death of various types of pines. Besides nature damage, pine caterpillar causes dermatological reactions in humans by contact with its irritating larvae hairs. Although the dermatitis occurs among outdoor professionals, it is primarily extraprofessional. Con...

In the drug design process, one wants to construct chemical compounds with certain properties. In order to establish the mathematical basis for the connections between molecular structures and physicochemical properties of chemical compounds, some so-called structure-descriptors or ”topological indices” have been put forward. Among them, the Wiener index is one of the most important. A long sta...

This paper studies the computational complexity of the Proper interval colored graph problem (picg), when the input graph is a colored tree. We show that the problem is hard for the class of caterpillar trees. To prove our result we make use of a close relationship between intervalizing problems and graph layout problems. We deene a graph layout problem the Proper colored layout problem (pclp)....

Anthocyanins and flavonols are secondary metabolites that can function in plant defence against herbivores. In Arabidopsis thaliana, anthocyanin and flavonol biosynthesis are regulated by MYB transcription factors. Overexpression of MYB75 (oxMYB75) in Arabidopsis results in increasing anthocyanin and flavonol levels which enhances plant resistance to generalist caterpillars. However, how these ...

Plants counteract attack by herbivorous insects using a variety of inducible defence mechanisms. The production of toxic proteins and metabolites that instantly affect the herbivore's development are examples of direct induced defence. In addition, plants may release mixtures of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that indirectly protect the plant by attracting natural enemies of the herbivore. R...