The general populace associates the arms race with nations preparing for or attempting to avoid conflicts by developing and divulging their military superiority. Unfortunately, it is not just nations that engage in excessive preparation: so do cities. For example, the City of Davis, California, population 66,000 residents and 40,000 students (University of California, Davis) acquired a Mine Res...

Death-feigning, also called tonic immobility, is found in a number of animal species across vertebrate and invertebrate taxa. To date, five hypotheses have been proposed for the adaptive significance of tonic immobility. These are that tonic immobility is effective for prey because (i) avoiding dead prey is safer for predators, (ii) immobility plays a role in physical defence, (iii) immobility ...

Information on the molecular basis of resistance and the evolution of resistance is crucial to an understanding of the appearance, spread, and distribution of resistance genes and of the mechanisms of host adaptation in natural populations. One potential important genetic constraint for the evolution of resistance is fitness cost associated with resistance. To determine whether host resistance ...

Stored-product insects often live in an environment of spatially separated food patches that vary considerably in size, quality, and persistence. The movement of individuals among patches of food influences the probability that stored products will become infested and pest populations will persist within storage facilities, thus affecting many aspects of pest management. We examined how a major...

Interactive effects of multiple environmental factors on metapopulation dynamics have received scant attention. We designed a laboratory study to test hypotheses regarding interactive effects of factors affecting the metapopulation dynamics of red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum. Within a four-patch landscape we modified resource level (constant and diminishing), patch connectivity (high and ...