The mechanisms of competition and resource domination were analysed in the Mediterranean ant Camponotus cruentatus. In a plot located in southern Spain mature colonies are overdispersed, which is indicative of territoriality in other species. Unexpectedly, however, workers from neighbouring colonies commonly foraged in areas that overlapped by more than 44%. This suggests that while mature colo...

Estimating a mosquito's vector competence, or likelihood of transmitting disease, if it takes an infectious bloodmeal, is an important aspect of predicting when and where outbreaks of infectious diseases will occur. Vector competence can be affected by rearing temperature and inter- and intraspecific competition experienced by the individual mosquito during its larval development. This research...

Can evolutionary and ecological dynamics operating at one level of the biological hierarchy affect the dynamics and structure at other levels? In social insects, strong hostility towards unrelated individuals can evolve as a kin-selected counter-adaptation to intraspecific social parasitism. This aggression in turn might cause intraspecific competition to predominate over interspecific competit...

Compositions of Aspergillus flavus populations determine the extent to which crops become contaminated with aflatoxins. In the current study, influences of diverse crop hosts on competition among A. flavus isolates were quantified with pyrosequencing. Maize, cotton, soyabean and sorghum supported different levels of sporulation, but intraspecific differences in sporulation were not detected on ...

Background: Classic predator–prey theory assumes that predatory mortality is additive with other sources of mortality, but predatory mortality can be non-additive. If predators preferentially kill individuals already ‘doomed’ from other mortality causes, then predation can be less than additive. If predators preferentially kill individuals more likely to survive, then predation can be greater t...

Resource diversity is critical to fitness in many insect species, and may determine the coexistence of competitive species and the function of ecosystems. Plant material provides the nutritional base for numerous aquatic systems, yet the consequences of diversity of plant material have not been studied in aquatic container systems important for the production of mosquitoes. To address how diver...

For more than a century ecologists have considered that competitive interactions between species are more intense at low latitudes [1,2]. This is frequently invoked as either an explanation or a consequence of higher species richness in the tropics, also suggesting that competition shifts from intra- to inter-specific towards the tropics [1]. Another common assumption is that within a community...

In populations of colony-breeding marine animals, foraging around colonies can lead to intraspecific competition. This competition affects individual foraging behavior and can cause density-dependent population growth. Where behavioral data are available, it may be possible to infer the mechanism of intraspecific competition. If these mechanics are understood, they can be used to predict the po...