Parasitic chytrid fungi can inflict significant mortality on cyanobacteria but frequently fail to keep cyanobacterial dominance and bloom formation in check. Our study tested whether oligopeptide production, a common feature in many cyanobacteria, can be a defensive mechanism against chytrid parasitism. The study employed the cyanobacterial strain Planktothrix NIVA-CYA126/8 and its mutants with...

A defensive k-alliance in a graph is a set S of vertices with the property that every vertex in S has at least k more neighbors in S than it has outside of S. A defensive k-alliance S is called global if it forms a dominating set. In this paper we study the problem of partitioning the vertex set of a graph into (global) defensive k-alliances. The (global) defensive k-alliance partition number o...

We present in this paper a picture of the neural systems controlling defense that updates and simplifies Gray's "Neuropsychology of Anxiety". It is based on two behavioural dimensions: 'defensive distance' as defined by the Blanchards and 'defensive direction'. Defensive direction is a categorical dimension with avoidance of threat corresponding to fear and approach to threat corresponding to a...

Honeybee defensive behavior is a useful selection criterion, especially in areas with Africanized honeybees (Apis mellifera L). In all genetic improvement programs the selected characters must be measured with precision, and because of this we evaluated a metabolic method for testing honeybee defensive behavior in the laboratory for its usefulness in distinguishing between honeybee ecotypes and...

Previous research has demonstrated that defensive pessimists perform best when allowed to think about negative outcomes prior to performance. Two competing hypotheses could account for this phenomenon: negative states dissipate or are harnessed. Existing findings have not directly tested defensive pessimists’ experience during performance, which is critical for resolving the issue. To this end,...