It is quite difficult to select suitable ornamental plants for shady and low-light environments, but understanding the adaptations of plants that grow naturally in such conditions can lead to greater chances of success in horticulture. Shade-plants essentially follow strategies of optimum use of available energy and of conservation of energy. Adaptations to achieve these strategic goals include...

The prevalence of Centrocestus formosanus metacercariae was investigated in ornamental fish purchased from a pet shop in Chiang Mai, Thailand, including Carassius auratus (goldfish), Cyprinus carpio (Koi), Poecilia latipinna (Sailfin Molly), Danio rerio (Zebrafish), and Puntigrus tetrazona (Tiger barb). The parasite species was identified by the morphology of worms as well as by a molecular app...

BACKGROUND Trade in ornamental fishes represents, by far, the largest route for the importation of exotic vertebrates. There is growing pressure to regulate this trade with the goal of ensuring that species are sustainably harvested and that their point of origin is accurately reported. One important element of such regulation involves easy access to specimen identifications, a task that is cur...

Several mechanistic hypotheses have been proposed for how carotenoid pigmentation of integumentary structures can serve as an honest signal of individual quality. These hypotheses are founded on proposed links between carotenoids, immuno responsiveness, and oxidative stress, but an absence of biochemical information on the oxidative pathways of carotenoids has limited the sophistication of such...

Artistic diversiform leaf color is an important agronomic trait that affects the market value of ornamental kale. In the present study, genetic analysis showed that a single-dominant gene, Re (red leaf), determines the red leaf trait in ornamental kale. An F2 population consisting of 500 individuals from the cross of a red leaf double-haploid line 'D05' with a white leaf double-haploid line 'D1...

The predatory mite Neoseiulus fallacis (Garman) was evaluated as a biological control agent of herbivorous mites on outdoor-grown ornamental landscape plants. To elucidate factors that may affect predator efÞciency, replicated tests were conducted on 30 ornamental plant cultivars that varied in relationship to their generalized morphology (e.g., conifers, shade trees, evergreen shrubs, deciduou...

This article tackles some important issues relating to the analysis of a particular case of complex ancient graphic images, called “lettrines”, “drop caps” or “ornamental letters”. Our contribution focuses on proposing generic solutions for lettrine recognition and classification. Firstly, we propose a bottom-up segmentation method, based on auto-correlation features, ensuring the separation of...

Increasing environmental pollution in urban areas has been endangering the survival of carbonate stones in monuments and statuary for many decades. Numerous conservation treatments have been applied for the protection and consolidation of these works of art. Most of them, however, either release dangerous gases during curing or show very little efficacy. Bacterially induced carbonate mineraliza...

In recent years, the keeping of ornamental freshwater animals and plants in garden ponds has been growing in popularity. Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) is one of the preferred macrophytes seasonally imported mainly from South-eastern Asia throughout the world. This constitutes a secondary introduction inasmuch as the species is native to South America. Although many assemblages of aquati...

We examined the distribution of iridoviruses in 10 freshwater ornamental fish species hatched in Korea and imported from other Asian countries using both 1-step and 2-step polymerase chain reation (PCR). None of the 10 fish species analyzed were free of iridovirus as shown by 2-step PCR positive results, and 3 species yielded 1-step PCR positive results with associated mortality. Cloned PCR amp...