We measured acorn production of five species of oaks (genus Quercus) over a ten year period (1980-1989) at Hastings Reservation in Monterey County, California. Crop production was highly variable and generally asynchronous between species. Variance in crop size decreased directly with increasing species diversity across sub-areas within the study site. Sources of variance in mean annual crop si...

Risk of exposure to Lyme disease is a function of the local abundance of nymphal Ixodes ticks that are infected with the etiological agent, the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi. We monitored abundance of white-footed mice (the principal B. burgdorferi reservoir in the eastern and central United States) and acorns (a critical food resource for mice), and Ixodes scapularis ticks, as well as ambien...

The seasonal and spatial pattern of diet composition of a population of wild rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus L. occupying a southern Portuguese montado was estimated using the n-alkane technique. The diet was analysed in terms of components that are relevant to habitat management. The dietary categories considered were gum cistus leaves and ̄owers, cork oak and holm oak seedlings and acorns, cere...

The maternal environment of a tree species can influence the development and resistance its offspring. Transgenerational induction is well known in plants but occurrence forest has been less reported. Quercus ilex L. (holm oak) widespread Mediterranean threatened by invasive Phytophthora cinnamomi Rands pathogen. P. on offspring infected Q. mother trees not studied. This study compared performa...

We investigated the role of changing abundance of spring foods on female American black bear (Ursus americanus) diet, milk composition, and cub survival in western Massachusetts. We hypothesized that diets would change, percentage milk fat would be higher, and cub survival would be higher in a year when overwintered hard mast was more abundant. We obtained paired samples of milk from 7 adult fe...

The effect of pre-sowing priming with N-hexanoyl-L-homoserine lactone (C6-HSL) solution (300 mg/L) on acorn germination and morpho-phenological characteristics Quercus robur Q. rubra was studied under laboratory conditions. After priming, 93.4% acorns germinated that exceeded the control by 32.2%, while number sprouted increased within error limits 5% more than amounted to 90%. According morpho...

Although prolonged seed retention, or serotiny, is believed to be an adaptation to highly variable environments such as the Mediterranean regions of California, no prior study has systematically investigated the prevalence of seed retention among California oaks (family Fagaceae), the dominant woody taxon in California foothill woodlands. We quantified the extent to which acorns were retained i...