BACKGROUND Chrysomelid beetles associated with willow (Salix spp.) were surveyed at 41 sites across Europe, from Greece (lat. 38.8 °N) to arctic Norway (lat. 69.7 °N). NEW INFORMATION In all, 34 willow-associated chrysomelid species were encountered, of which eight were very abundant. The abundant species were: Crepidodera aurata Marsham, 1802 at 27 sites, Phratora vitellinae (Linnaeus, 1758)...

As the amount of stored data increases, data localization techniques become no longer sufficient in P2P systems. A practical approach is to rely on compact database summaries rather than raw database records, whose access is costly in large P2P systems. In this chapter, we describe a solution for managing linguistic data summaries in advanced P2P applications which are dealing with semantically...

We synthesize data on all known extant and fossil Coleoptera family-group names for the first time. A catalogue of 4887 family-group names (124 fossil, 4763 extant) based on 4707 distinct genera in Coleoptera is given. A total of 4492 names are available, 183 of which are permanently invalid because they are based on a preoccupied or a suppressed type genus. Names are listed in a classification...

BACKGROUND Insects evolved ingenious adaptations to use extraordinary food sources. Particularly, the diet of herbivores enriched with noxious plant secondary metabolites requires detoxification mechanisms. Sequestration, which involves the uptake, transfer, and concentration of occasionally modified phytochemicals into specialized tissues or hemolymph, is one of the most successful detoxificat...

Allele frequency variation at the phosphoglucose isomerase (PGI) locus in Californian populations of the beetle Chrysomela aeneicollis suggests that PGI may be undergoing natural selection. We quantified (i) apparent Michaelis-Menten constant (K(m)) of fructose 6-phosphate at different temperatures and (ii) thermal stability for three common PGI genotypes (1-1, 1-4, and 4-4). We also measured a...

Rapid changes in climate may impose strong selective pressures on organisms. Evolutionary responses to climate change have been observed in natural populations, yet no example has been documented for a metabolic enzyme locus. Furthermore, few studies have linked physiological responses to stress with allozyme genotypic variation. We quantified changes in allele frequency between 1988 and 1996 a...

We documented an indirect interaction between beavers (Castor canadensis) and leaf beetles (Chrysomela confluens), mediated by changing plant chemistry of their cottonwood hosts (Populus fremontii 3 P. angustifolia). Resprout growth arising from the stumps and roots of beaver-cut trees contained twice the level of defensive chemicals as normal juvenile growth. However, rather than being repelle...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Selective feeding by herbivores, especially at the seedling or juvenile phase, has the potential to change plant traits and ultimately the susceptibility of surviving plants to other enemies. Moreover, since hybridization is important to speciation and can lead to introgression of traits between plant species, differential feeding (herbivore-induced mortality) can influence ...