Migratory birds are known to use the Earth’s magnetic field as an orientation cue on their 13 tremendous journeys between their breeding and overwintering grounds. The magnetic 14 compass of migratory birds relies on the magnetic field’s inclination, i.e. the angle between 15 the magnetic field lines and the Earth’s surface. As a consequence, vertical or horizontal field 16 lines corresponding ...

1 Grain amaranth is a pseudo-cereal and an ancient crop of Central and South America. Of the 2 three species of grain amaranth, Amaranthus caudatus is mainly grown in the Andean region. 3 Several models of domestication were proposed including a domestication from the wild rela4 tives A. hybridus or A. quitensis. To investigate the domestication history of A. caudatus and 5 its relationship to ...

The vibrant colours of many plants are due to secondary metabolites, such as nitrogen-containing compounds, where betacyanins included. These compounds can be found in Amaranthus caudatus L. that, their high nutritional benefits, have been overproduced, which leads the accumulation large amounts bio-residues. Among these bio-residues, flowers a very intense pink colour and present no economic v...

Reflexivity lies at the heart of this thesis: I seek to understand to have knowledge of a particular way of knowing. There are echoes of this reflexivity in my literature review of embodied cognition, where I discussed attempts to think about how we think. This reflexive circle need not be 'vicious', in the sense of tying me into a knot of self-reference, if I apply the tools of phenomenology a...

A major challenge in ecotoxicology lies in generating data under experimental conditions that are relevant to understanding contaminant effects in nature. Biodynamic modeling combines species-specific physiological traits to make predictions of metal bioaccumulation that fare well when tested in the field. We generated biodynamic models for seven predatory stonefly (Plecoptera) species represen...

Choline monooxygenase (CMO) catalyzes the committing step in the synthesis of glycine betaine, an osmoprotectant accumulated by many plants in response to salinity and drought. To investigate how these stresses affect CMO expression, a spinach (Spinacia oleracea L., Chenopodiaceae) probe was used to isolate CMO cDNAs from sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L., Chenopodiaceae), a salt- and drought-tolera...