Five insect biological control agents that attack flower heads of spotted knapweed, Centaurea stoebe L. subsp. micranthos (Gugler) Hayek, became established in western Montana between 1973 and 1992. In a controlled field experiment in 2006, seed-head insects reduced spotted knapweed seed production per seed head by 84.4%. The seed production at two sites in western Montana where these biologica...

Antibiotics are a relatively common disturbance to the normal microbiota of humans and agricultural animals, sometimes resulting in severe side effects such as antibiotic-associated enterocolitis. Gambusia affinis was used as a vertebrate model for effects of a broad-spectrum antibiotic, rifampicin, on the skin and gut mucosal microbiomes. The fish were exposed to the antibiotic in the water co...

Lindgren multiple-funnel traps, baited with (-)-cc-pinene and (k)-pityol, captured significant numbers of the weevils, Pissodes afjnis Randall and P. fascia&s LeConte, in a coastal stand of Douglas-fir and western white pine.

Predation is heterogeneously distributed across space and time, and is presumed to represent a major source of evolutionary diversification. In fishes, fast-starts--sudden, high-energy swimming bursts--are often important in avoiding capture during a predator strike. Thus, in the presence of predators, we might expect evolution of morphological features that facilitate increased fast-start spee...

The family sparidae is represented in Pakistan by 14 species belonging to eight genera: the genus Acanthopagrus with four species, A. berda, A. arabicus, A. sheim, and A. catenula; Rhabdosargus, Sparidentex and Diplodus are each represented by two species, R. sarba and R. haffara, Sparidentex hasta and S. jamalensis, and Diplodus capensis and D. omanensis, and the remaining four genera are repr...

Cladocera of Alona affinis group from North America preserved in the collection of Professor D. G. Frey were investigated. A new subspecies of Alona ossiani Sinev, 1998 is described. Alona ossiani herricki ssp. nov. differs from the nominative subspecies in presence of 2-3 marginal denticles on postanal angle of male postabdomen, no differences between subspecies were revealed in the female mor...

Genetic elements that cheat Mendelian segregation by biasing transmission in their favor gain a significant fitness benefit. Several examples of sex-ratio meiotic drive, where one sex chromosome biases its own transmission at the cost of the opposite sex chromosome, exist in animals and plants. While the distorting sex chromosome gains a significant advantage by biasing sex ratio, the autosomes...

We examined the associations between intestinal helminth infracommunity structure and infection parameters and the age, size, and year and region of collection of 130 female lesser scaup (Aythya affinis) during their 2014-2015 spring migrations through the upper Midwest, USA. We identified a total of 647,174 individual helminths from 40 taxa, including 20 trematodes, 14 cestodes, 4 nematodes an...

Phenotypic plasticity describes the phenotypic adjustment of the same genotype to different environmental conditions and is best described by a reaction norm. We focus on the effect of ocean acidification on inter- and intraspecific reaction norms of three globally important phytoplankton species (Emiliania huxleyi, Gephyrocapsa oceanica and Chaetoceros affinis). Despite significant differences...