Dieting to control body weight involves cycles of deprivation from palatable food that can promote compulsive eating. The present study shows that rats withdrawn from intermittent access to palatable food exhibit overeating of palatable food upon renewed access and an affective withdrawal-like state characterized by corticotropin-releasing factor-1 (CRF(1)) receptor antagonist-reversible behavi...

Climate change and biological invasions place new challenges on plants, their development, fitness, and competitiveness. To develop and evaluate strategies for sustainable ecosystem management and to respond to biodiversity loss, we need mechanistic understanding of the changes that are occurring in plant communities. Underlying drivers of change are plant–plant interactions which include compe...

Gonabad located at Khorasan Razavi and coordinates 580 30’ N 34o 35’ E. The highest point of the zone belongs to Peak of Siah Mountain (height of 2,863 meters above sea level) and the lowest place has height of 810 meters above sea level, which is located in North West in salt desert. The mean temperature of the warmest and coldest of year is 29.3 and 3.9 respectively. Mor...

The responses of rain-forest vegetation on Secretary Island (Fiordland National Park) which was subjected to low but sustained browsing by red deer, are compared with those of the full range of mountain vegetation in Mt Aspiring National Park where deer numbers had been reduced substantially from previously high numbers. On Secretary Island the most palatable species have continued to decline W...

Facilitation, an ecological interaction assembling plant communities worldwide, has been shown to modulate both species richness and ecosystem functions. Such a biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationship can be decomposed into different components not only related losses gains but also the identity of context in which they live. Using extension classical BEF approach named CAFE (comm...

Batesian mimicry evolves when the 'umbrella' of protection provided by resemblance to a conspicuous unpalatable model species is sufficient to overcome increased predation risk associated with greater conspicuousness. However, the shape and extent of this umbrella, that is, how the level of protection provided by mimicry changes with degree of resemblance between model and mimic, is poorly know...

The introduction of nurse species on degraded sites Permanently Protected Areas represents a useful strategy for vegetation recovery in riparian forest. Species the genus Baccharis (Asteraceae) have been documented as potential plants being able restructuring native plant community. This study was aimed to evaluate nursing role dracunculifolia community Atlantic rainforest short-time period. de...

The ecophysiological mechanisms underlying plant-plant interactions and forest regeneration processes in Mediterranean ecosystems are poorly understood, and the experimental evidence for the role of light availability in these processes is particularly scant. We analyzed the effects of high and low irradiances on 31 ecological, morphological and physiological variables in saplings of four late-...

Grazing can alter plant species interactions in natural rangelands, which turn might influence the productivity of ecosystem but we do not fully understand how spatial variability diversity-biomass relationships are modulated by grazing intensity. Here, hypothesized that co-occurrence rangelands is mainly driven niche segregation due to and heterogeneity local resources, grazing, therefore, mod...

Spiny plants comprise a large, ecologically and economically important functional group in Mediterranean rangelands. The increasing abundance of large annual thistles grazed grasslands entails major consequences for ecosystem services. This study aims to quantify the contribution spiny rangeland vegetation cover productivity identify management- climate-related drivers plant distribution perfor...