Chemical warfare from an ecological perspective

Chemical warfare from an ecological perspective.

C weapons are recent acquisitions in humankind’s ever-growing arsenal of destruction. But bacteria and fungi have been practicing chemical warfare for a very long time. Among the numerous and structurally diverse antimicrobial agents that microbes produce are penicillin by the mold Penicillium notatum, many important antibiotics by streptomycetes, a wide range of bacteriocins by Escherichia col...

Chemical warfare

Leaf-cutting ants are well known for their highly complex social organization, which provides them with a strong defense against parasites invading their colonies. Besides this attribute, these insects have morphological, physiological and structural characteristics further reinforcing the defense of their colonies. With the discovery of symbiotic bacteria present on the integument of leaf-cutt...

Zoogeography: an Ecological Perspective

1. What is ecological zoogeography 2. Ecogeographical “rules” 2.1. Bergmann’s rule 2.2. Allen’s rule 2.3. Rapoport’s rule 3. Distribution of animals: patterns and causal factors 3.1. Species conceptualization and delimitation: their importance for zoogeography 3.2. Patterns of distribution 3.3. Endemisms and relicts 3.4. Abiotic ecological factors influencing species distribution 3.5. Biotic ec...

Antibiotics: an ecological perspective

The effects of antibiotics on the indigenous microbes of the gut have been the subject of extensive study ever since the discovery of these drugs in the 1940s and their subsequent commercial production. Yet nearly all of this work has concerned the effects of individual antibiotics on individual, cultivated strains of bacteria in the laboratory, or on specific species of bacteria cultivated fro...

Chemical Warfare Agents