Linkages between detritus-based ("brown") food webs and producer-based ("green") food webs are critical components of ecosystem functionality, but these linkages are hard to study because it is difficult to measure release of nutrients by brown food webs and their subsequent uptake by plants. In a three-month greenhouse experiment, we examined how the detritus-based food web inhabiting rain-fil...

Nutrition is a potent mediator of developmental plasticity. If food is scarce, developing organisms may invest into growth to outgrow size-dependent mortality (short-term benefit) and/or into an efficient digestion system (long-term benefit). We investigated this potential trade-off, by determining the influence of food availability on juvenile body and organ growth, and on adult digestive effi...

one of the main objectives of development policies in different countries is food security. extensive researches around the world specially during last decades show the role of nutrition in health, food security, increase of efficiency and economic development. considering that a healthy diet and having access to sufficient and healthy foods are the basic human rights, governments are obliged t...

control of stored-product insect by gamma radiation could be enhanced by other possible techniques such as essential oils as effective alternatives to chemical insecticides. in this study, the efficiency of gamma radiation combined with perovskia atriplicifolia (benth) was verified to assess their enhanced antifeedant effect against the tribolium castaneum (herbst). flour disc bioassay was empl...

Growth performance, food efficiency and body composition of pikeperch (Sander lucioperca) were investigated with 1 or 2 g/kg L-carnitine added to the diet. Control diet did not contain L-carnitine. Two hundred pikeperch fingerlings (1.63 g, mean weight) were stocked in each 1 m3 concrete tank and fed equally 6 meals per day for 6 weeks. Higher increment in body weight (5.92 ± 0.37 g), the ...

Trophic assimilation efficiency (conversion of resource biomass into consumer biomass) is thought to be a limiting factor for food chain length in natural communities. In host-parasitoid systems, which account for the majority of terrestrial consumer interactions, a high trophic assimilation efficiency may be expected at higher trophic levels because of the close match of resource composition o...