Background The Mantispidae are a distinctive group of Neuroptera known for the adults' possession of raptorial forelegs. There are four recognised, extant subfamilies of Mantispidae: the Mantispinae, Symphrasinae, Calomantispinae and Drepanicinae. The life history and larval behaviour of the subfamily Mantispinae is best known: the immatures are spider egg predators. Among the three remaining s...

International efforts are underway to establish well-connected systems of marine protected areas (MPAs) covering at least 10% of the ocean by 2020. But the nature and dynamics of ocean ecosystem connectivity are poorly understood, with unresolved effects of climate variability. We used 40-year runs of a particle tracking model to examine the sensitivity of an MPA network for habitat-forming col...

The rapid decrease of several stocks of Pacific herring, Clupea pallasi, in Puget Sound, Washington, has led to concerns about the effects of industrial and nonpoint source contamination on the embryo and larval stages of this and related forage fish species. To address these concerns, the state of Washington and several industries have funded efforts to develop embryo and larval bioassay proto...

the quality of hg contaminated sediments in artisanal gold mining areas of tanzania have to date only been assessed through bulk chemical analysis. however, measurement of contaminant levels alone has a limited ability to predict adverse effects on living resources. in this study we investigated the possible effects of hg contaminated sediments from the river mabubi which drains the artisanal g...

The evolutionary causes of variation in host specialization among phytophagous insects are still not well understood and identifying them is a central task in insect /host plant biology. Here we examine host utilization of the chrysomelid beetle Oreina elongata that shows interpopulation variation in the degree of specialization. We focus on larval behaviour and on what selection pressures may ...

Sexual dimorphism in body size (sexual size dimorphism) is common in many species. The sources of selection that generate the independent evolution of adult male and female size have been investigated extensively by evolutionary biologists, but how and when females and males grow apart during ontogeny is poorly understood. Here we use the hawkmoth, Manduca sexta, to examine when sexual size dim...

For most of the family Porcellanidae, which comprises 283 species, larval development remains to be described. Full development has been only described for 52 species, while part of the larval cycle has been described for 45 species. The importance of knowing the complete larval development of a species goes beyond allowing the identification of larval specimens collected in the plankton. Morph...