Mosquitoes use plant sugars and vertebrate blood as nutritional resources. When searching for blood hosts, some mosquitoes express preferential behavior for selected species. Here, we review the available knowledge on host preference, as this is expected to affect the life history and transmission of infectious pathogens. Host preference is affected by myriad extrinsic and intrinsic factors. In...

Agrobacterium-mediated plant genetic transformation requires a two-step process for its success: selection and regeneration of transformed tissues, and the elimination of the transformation vector, Agrobacterium. This study uses carbenicillin (CA), cefotaxime (CF) and vancomycin (VA) singly, or in combination, to eliminate Agrobacterium tumefaciens LBA4404 and AGLO growing on Agrobacterium-favo...

Centromeric protein A (CENP-A) is the epigenetic determinant of centromeres. This protein has been shown to be adaptively evolving in a number of animal and plant species. In a previous communication we were able to demonstrate that signs of adaptive evolution were detected in the comparison of CENP-A sequences from three percid fish species. In this study we isolated the CENP-A gene from eight...

Parasitoid host selection behaviour has been extensively studied in experimentally simplified tritrophic systems formed by one single food chain (one plant, one herbivore and one parasitoid species). The "Mother knows best" hypothesis predicts that the preference for a plant-host complex should be positively correlated with plant quality for offspring performance. We studied the host selection ...

Plants play a crucial role in foodstuff, medicine, industry, and environmental protection. The skill of recognising plants is very important in some applications, including conservation of endangered species and rehabilitation of lands after mining activities. However, it is a difficult task to identify plant species because it requires specialized knowledge. Developing an automated classificat...

The ability to discriminate between species using barcoding loci has proved more difficult in plants than animals, raising the possibility that plant species boundaries are less well defined. Here, we review a selection of published barcoding data sets to compare species discrimination in plants vs. animals. Although the use of different genetic markers, analytical methods and depths of taxon s...

The majority of plant pathogens are fungi and many of these adversely affect food security. This mini-review aims to provide an analysis of the plant pathogenic fungi for which genome sequences are publically available, to assess their general genome characteristics, and to consider how genomics has impacted plant pathology. A list of sequenced fungal species was assembled, the taxonomy of all ...

Ecological restoration on roadsides confers several ecological benefits, but also poses significant challenges. Native plants used in restoration efforts must survive compacted soil, harsh microclimates, prolific invasive species, and pollution from road salts and vehicle emissions. Criteria for both site and species selection need to be developed to assist practitioners in restoring roadside e...

We investigated the relationship between host-plant use by two tortoise beetles, Cassida nebulosa and C. piperata, in a field and their performance under laboratory conditions. Sixteen plant species were grown in the experimental field with C. nebulosa being observed to grow on three chenopodiaceous species (Chenopodium album, C. album var. centrorubrum, and C. ficifolium), while C. piperata gr...