The accuracy of a general practice data system has been measured and has improved considerably over three years. It is difficult to identify all the factors contributing to this change, but an overall effort to emphasize the importance of recording patient identifiers correctly has been effective. No directly comparable error rates have been reported elsewhere; consequently, relative accuracy c...

In October 1968, this Journal published a paper entitled 'Vocational Training for General Practice' which was mainly concerned with the need for such training at that time, and the future developments necessary to make achievement a possibility. In assessing the then current position, it was suggested that in its attempt to establish itself as a true academic discipline, General Practice had to...

Plants attacked by herbivorous insects emit volatile compounds that attract predators or parasitoids of the herbivores. Plant fitness increases when these herbivorous insects are parasitized by solitary parasitoids, but whether gregarious koinobiont parasitoids also confer a benefit to plant fitness has been disputed. We investigated the relationship between parasitoid load of the gregarious Co...

There has been a significant increase in studies of how global change parameters affect interacting species or entire communities, yet the combined or interactive effects of increased atmospheric CO2 and associated increases in global mean temperatures on chemically mediated trophic interactions are mostly unknown. Thus, predictions of climate-induced changes on plant-insect interactions are st...

The spider mite Tetranychus urticae Koch and the aphid Myzus persicae (Sulzer) both infest a number of economically significant crops, including tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). Although used for decades to control pests, the impact of green lacewing larvae Chrysoperla carnea (Stephens) on plant biochemistry was not investigated. Here, we used profiling methods and targeted analyses to explore th...

Host plant identity and host plant chemistry have often been shown to influence host finding and acceptance by natural enemies but comparatively less attention has been paid to the tritrophic effects of host plant and host plant chemistry on other natural enemy fitness correlates, such as survivorship, clutch size, body size, and sex ratio. Such studies are central to understanding both the sel...