The role of bacteria in animal development, ecology and evolution is increasingly well understood, yet little is known of how animal behaviour affects bacterial communities. Animals that benefit from defending a key resource from microbial competitors are likely to evolve behaviours to control or manipulate the animal's associated external microbiota. We describe four possible mechanisms by whi...

Cerotoma trifurcata Förster (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) and Bean pod mottle virus (Comoviridae) (BPMV) both can reduce yield and seed quality of soybean, Glycine max (L.) Merr. Field experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of systemic, seed-applied, and foliar-applied insecticides for the management of this pest complex at three locations in central, northeastern, and northwestern Io...

Materials and Methods Varieties selected for the 2003 organic soybean variety trial included the following: IA3011, IA3021, IA3022, Pioneer 9305, Schillinger 240F.Y, and Schillinger 290F.HP. Plots measuring 20 × 40 feet were laid out in a completely randomized block design with four replications of each variety. Soybeans were planted at a depth of 2 inches on May 28, 2003, at a rate of 200,000 ...

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...

We examine the inbreeding load for adult life span and mortality rates of two seed beetle species, Callosobruchus maculatus and Stator limbatus. Inbreeding load differs substantially between males and females in both study populations of C. maculatus--life span of inbred females was 9-13% shorter than the life span of outbred females, whereas the life span of inbred males did not differ from th...

The genus Helibatus consists of two species: H. morio Mulsant & Rey, 1859 and newly described H. banaszkiewiczae sp. nov. The species differ from each other in the structure of the metaventral process. The genus is distributed in Southern Africa--a distribution map for the two known species is provided.

Predicting outcomes of transgene flow from arable crops requires a system perspective that considers ecological and evolutionary processes within a landscape context. In Europe, the arable weed Raphanus raphanistrum is a potential hybridization partner of oilseed rape, and the two species are ecologically linked through the common herbivores Meligethes spp. Observations in Switzerland show that...