A study of dung beetles rolling dung balls to safety reveals unexpected facets of the beetle's acquisition and use of celestial information for keeping to a straight path.

During last two decades studies on endozoochorous seed dispersal indicated that a large numbers of plant seeds are potentially dispersed and suceefully germinated via animal dung. However, very little is known about the relative importance of endozoochory in germination success of plant species in semi-steppe rangelands. In this paper we examined dung germinating seed content, seed deposition p...

The control of ruminant gastrointestinal nematodes and ectoparasites, one of the major production health problems, are heavily reliant on the systematic and sometimes abusive use of anthelmintic drugs. Endectocides are the most frequently used drugs, having high potency against arthropods and nematodes. Their dung pat residues enhance the risk of adverse effects on non-target invertebrates and ...

Use of vermiwash extracted from vermicomposts of different combination of animal agro and kitchen wastes, is one of the effective liquid biofertilizer for growth and productivity of crops. The present study assesses that it has caused significant effect on the growth and productivity of paddy (Oryza sativa), maize (Zea mays) and millet (Penisetum typhoides) crops. The 10mg/m2 of vermiwash buffa...

Aging of bovine dung for 3-5 years under refrigeration resulted in smaller sizes of horn fly, Haematobia irritans (L.), pupae. Growth of horn fly larvae in mixtures of aged and fresh dung resulted in production of larvae and pupae stunted in proportion to the relative amount of aged dung. Reduction of size of pupae produced in aged dung was because of nutrient limitation, which was partially re...

Agricultural waste cow dung was used as feedstock for the production of a high value-added chemical levulinic acid (LA) in dilute acid aqueous solutions. A high LA yield of 338.9 g/kg was obtained from the pretreated cow dung, which was much higher than that obtained from the crude cow dung (135 g/kg), mainly attributed to the breakage of the lignin fraction in the lignocellulose structure of t...

Despite the increasing rate of systematic research on scarabaeine dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), their fossil record has remained largely unrevised. In this paper, we review all 33 named scarabaeine fossils and describe two new species from Dominican amber (Canthochilum alleni sp.n., Canthochilum philipsivieorum sp.n.). We provide a catalogue of all fossil Scarabaeinae a...

Field investigations are important tools for confirmation of the effectiveness of the organic manures on crop yield. As different N sources, this work presents a comparative study of the effects of urea, cow dung and poultry manure on plant height, stem length and diameter, leaf length, breadth and number accompanied with the fresh weight of plant, stem, leaf coupling stem leaf ratio and gross ...

Reversing anthropogenic impacts on habitat structure is frequently successful through restoration, but the mechanisms linking habitat change, community reassembly and recovery of ecosystem functioning remain unknown. We test for the influence of edge effects and matrix habitat restoration on the reassembly of dung beetle communities and consequent recovery of dung removal rates across tropical ...

Hippos transfer massive quantities of trophic resources from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems through defecation. The ramifications of the latter for the functioning of benthic ecosystems are unknown, but are dependent ultimately on rates of utilisation relative to inputs. Low input and high utilisation can strengthen bottom-up pathways and enhance consumer biomass and abundance. However, if i...