Species engaged in multiple, simultaneous mutualisms are subject to trade-offs in their mutualistic investment if the traits involved in each interaction are overlapping, which can lead to conflicts and affect the longevity of these associations. We investigate this issue via a tripartite mutualism involving an ant plant, two competing ant species and a fungus the ants cultivate to build galler...

This paper presents a work inspired by the Pachycondyla apicalis ants behavior for the clustering problem. These ants have a simple but efficient prey search strategy: when they capture their prey, they return straight to their nest, drop off the prey and systematically return back to their original position. This behavior has already been applied to optimization, as the API meta-heuristic. API...

Biologists are interested in studying the relation between the genetic diversity of a population and its fitness. We adopt the notion of entropy as a measure of genetic diversity and correlate it with fitness of an evolutionary ecosystem simulation. EcoSim is a predator-prey individual based simulation which models co-evolving sexual individuals evolving in a dynamic environment. The correlatio...

The theory of warning signals dates back to Wallace but is still confusing, controversial and complex. Because predator avoidance of warningly coloured prey (aposematism) is based upon learning and reinforcement, it is difficult to understand how initially rare conspicuous forms subsequently become common. Here, we discuss several possible resolutions to this apparent paradox. Many of these ide...

anthocoris nemoralis (f.) (hemiptera: anthocoridae) is one of the most prominent predators of the pear psylla, cacopsylla pyricola (forster) (hemiptera: psyllidae) and is considered as a biological control agent against this pest. in order to investigate the effects of plant varieties on predation of c. pyricola by a. nemoralis, the functional response of both the sexes of a. nemoralis to pear ...

BACKGROUND In group-living animals, social interactions and their effects on other life activities such as foraging are commonly determined by discrimination among group members. Accordingly, many group-living species evolved sophisticated social recognition abilities such as the ability to recognize familiar individuals, i.e. individuals encountered before. Social familiarity may affect within...

THE ECOLOGICAL CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF PREY CHOICE AND ONTOGENETIC NICHE SHIFTS IN THE COMMON GOBY Angus Charles Jackson Foraging behaviour of the common goby, Pomatoschistus microp s was investigated in both the United Kingdom and Sweden, with the aim of establishing causes and consequences of prey choice and ontogenetic shifts in diet. Goby life-cycle could be clearly divided into two stag...

The recent recolonization of Central Europe by the European gray wolf (Canis lupus) provides an opportunity to study the dynamics of parasite transmission for cases when a definitive host returns after a phase of local extinction. We investigated whether a newly established wolf population increased the prevalence of those parasites in ungulate intermediate hosts representing wolf prey, whether...

This paper focuses on predator-prey models with juvenile/mature class structure for each of the predator and prey populations in turn, further classified by whether juvenile or mature individuals are active with respect to the predation process. These models include quite general prey recruitment at every stage of analysis, with mass action predation, linear predator mortality as well as delays...

One may find out the application‎ ‎of mathematics in the areas of ecology‎, ‎biology‎, ‎environmental‎ ‎sciences etc‎. ‎Mathematics is particulary used in the problem of‎ ‎predator-prey known as lotka-Volterra predator-prey equations.‎ ‎Indeed‎, ‎differential equations is employed very much in many areas‎ ‎of other sciences‎. ‎However‎, ‎most of natural problems involve some‎ ‎unknown functions...