The biological control program for diffuse knapweed, Centaurea diffusa Lamarck, a Eurasian plant that has invaded large areas of grasslands in western North America, has gone on for over 35 years. This program involved the release of 12 biological control agents of which four are numerous and widely distributed; two species of Tephritid flies, Urophora affinis and Urophora quadrifasciata, the r...

The data presented in this paper were obtained to define more accurately the environment of Polymorphus minutus, an acanthocephalan parasite of ducks. This parasite inhabits a region of the duck's intestine extending from 60% to 80% of the intestinal length (Crompton & Whitfield, 1968). In the case of Momliformis dubius, an acanthocephalan parasite of rats, Edmonds (1965) found that nutrients a...

Many of the attempts to culture intestinal helminths in vitro appear to have been made with relatively little knowledge of the physico-chemical conditions which occur in the alimentary tract of vertebrates. For example, only a few measurements have been made on the osmotic pressure of the contents of the intestinal lumen and even fewer have been made on the degree of variation of the osmotic pr...

The tiny gastropod Coelodiscus minutus is superabundant in concretions of the Early Jurassic Posidonia Shale of South Germany which were formed under anoxic or extremely dysoxic conditions. Previous suggestions that C. minutus was a holoplanktonic organism are corroborated based on new evidence from exceptionally well-preserved specimens. The measurements of shell thickness show that the shell ...

Wood products are highly exposed to infestation by powder post beetles. Dinoderus minutus (bamboo borer) is a wood boring beetle that seriously damage dried bamboo and finished bamboo products. Management of D. minutus using pesticides showed negative effects on environment despite being very costly. By understanding influence of natural climatic conditions on their reproductive behaviour, coul...

Forty-five common shrews, Sorex araneus, caught in 1997; and 48 S. araneus, 21 masked shrews, Sorex caecutiens, and 25 pygmy shrews Sorex minutus trapped in 1998 at Kilpisjärvi in northern Finland were examined for microparasites. Bartonella sp. was found in blood smears of S. araneus both in 1997 (prevalence 15%) and 1998 (10%) but no blood parasites were found in S. caecutiens or S. minutus. ...

Subterranean rodents of the genus Ctenomys usually present an allopatric or parapatric distribution. Currently, two cases of sympatry have been recognized for the genus in the coastal dunes of southern Argentina and southern Brazil. In this context, they are ideal models to test hypotheses about the factors that delimit the patterns of space use and to understand interspecific interactions in s...

Acid phosphatases (AcPs) are known to provide phosphate to tissues that have high energy requirements, especially during development, growth and maturation. During spermatogenesis AcP activity is manifested in heterophagous lysosomes of Sertoli cells. This phagocytic function appears to be hormone-independent. We examined the expression pattern of AcP during the reproductive period of four spec...

Molecular phylogeography suggests that Micromys minutus, the sole extant species of the genus, colonized its extensive range quite recently, during the Late Pleistocene-Holocene period. Rich Pliocene and Pleistocene fossil records both from Europe and China suggest rather continuous and gradual in situ phenotype rearrangements from the Pliocene to the Recent periods. To elucidate the discrepanc...