Bacteria and Competing Herbivores Weaken Top–Down and Bottom–Up Aphid Suppression

Nectar bacteria, but not yeast, weaken a plant-pollinator mutualism.

Mutualistic interactions are often subject to exploitation by species that are not directly involved in the mutualism. Understanding which organisms act as such 'third-party' species and how they do so is a major challenge in the current study of mutualistic interactions. Here, we show that even species that appear ecologically similar can have contrasting effects as third-party species. We exp...

The genetics of indirect ecological effects—plant parasites and aphid herbivores

When parasitic plants and aphid herbivores share a host, both direct and indirect ecological effects (IEEs) can influence evolutionary processes. We used a hemiparasitic plant (Rhinanthus minor), a grass host (Hordeum vulgare) and a cereal aphid (Sitobion avenae) to investigate the genetics of IEEs between the aphid and the parasitic plant, and looked to see how these might affect or be influen...

Black carbon and its correlation with trace gases at a rural site in Beijing: Topdown constraints from ambient measurements on bottomup emissions

Isolation and Characterization of Plant Growth Promoting Antagonistic Bacteria from Cotton and Sugarcane Plants for Suppression of Phytopathogenic Fusarium Species

Background: Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) may be utilized to augment plant growth and suppress the plant pathogens. Objective: The present study was conducted to isolate and characterize the antagonistic bacteria indigenous to cotton and sugarcane rhizosphere in Pakistan, and to evaluate their ability to suppress phytopathogenic Fusarium spp. Out of 63 is...

Development of Topdown Courseware and Cellular Models

Frameworks for applying the cellular models, proposed by the authors years ago, are investigated aiming to reduce the complexity of courseware design. Development of topdown courseware involves the task of arranging the contents which are logically hypertextualized so that learners can walk through the courses with utmost ease. In many cases, the produced courseware must face with varieties of ...