The importance of intraspecific variation has emerged as a key question in community ecology, helping to bridge the gap between ecology and evolution. Although much of this work has focused on plant species, recent syntheses have highlighted the prevalence and potential importance of morphological, behavioral, and life history variation within animals for ecological and evolutionary processes. ...

Agrawal, A. A., Janssen, A., Bruin, J., Posthumus, M.A., Sabelis, W. M. 2002. An ecological cost of plant defense: attractiveness of bitter cucumber plants to natural enemies of herbivores. Ecology Letters 5: 377-385. The authors examine this tritrophic system from the bottom-up perspective by comparing the direct plant defense of producing the bitter compound, cucurbitacin, which repels the he...

Abstract The highly destructive Asian brown marmorated stink bug ( Halyomorpha halys, BMSB) invaded Europe, Caucasus region, and North South America. Efforts to control it are ongoing in the Palearctic European-Mediterranean Basin America by introducing redistributing two stenophagous scelionid egg parasitoids Trissolcus japonicus T. mitsukurii ) that attacked an adventive oligophagous pteromal...

Many studies have aimed to understand food webs by investigating components such as trophic links (one consumer taxon eats one resource taxon), tritrophic interactions (one consumer eats an intermediate taxon, which eats a resource), or longer chains of links. We show here that none of these components (links, tritrophic interactions, and longer chains), individually or as an ensemble, accounts...

ABSTRACT Citriculture is a growing industry in Pará state, Brazil, but information regarding fruit flies and their associated parasitoids this region lacking. To address gap knowledge, we collected oranges (Citrus sinensis), lime (C. common sweet limes limettioides), citrons medica) mandarins reticulata). We recorded field infestation by Anastrepha obliqua C. sinensis under natural conditions f...

Responses to previous reviews This LTREB proposal was submitted in January, 2008 and was not funded. The reviewer and panel comments were very helpful in drafting a revision and in contemplating the long-term research goals of the PI. All reviewer comments prompted changes in this proposal; the most notable concerns and criticisms (italicized and shortened) from the panel summary are directly a...