Coffee agroecosystems have recently undergone a dramatic intensification in Colombia, a megadiverse country, especially in terms of the nature of shade cover. We tested for changes in the composition, ecological associations, and diversity of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) along a gradient of intensification of coffee production in the Colombian Andes. We surveyed 16 farms in two regions, class...

Egg hatching of the maple aphid, Periphyllus californiensis Shinji, was observed on saplings of Acer amoenum Carriere in two microhabitats, i.e., the understory of a maple stand (a shaded site) and an open area in a nursery (a sunny site), over a 2-year period. Buds of A. amoenum opened earlier at the shaded site than at the sunny site and eggs of P. californiensis also hatched a little earlier...

In the Central Red Sea, healthy coral reefs meet intense coastal development, but data on the effects of related stressors for reef functioning are lacking. This in situ study therefore investigated the independent and combined effects of simulated overfishing through predator/grazer exclusion and simulated eutrophication through fertilizer addition on settlement of reef associated invertebrate...

We examined stress responses and survival in developmental stages of the invasive solitary bee Megachile apicalis Spinola during two nesting seasons in the Central Valley of California to consider whether abiotic stress tolerance of its offspring contributes to this species' successful colonization of the western United States. In 2001 and 2003, artificial nesting cavities were affixed to verti...

A thorough examination has been performed of the thermally induced stresses on a window in an enclosure-fire environment. Analytical and numerical methods establish the importance of bridling stress (due to axial elongation) and flexing stress (due to normal deformation). Most previous studies omitted the consideration of flexing stresses. Maximum stresses, being the sum of bridling and flexing...

Monitoring the components of crop canopies with remote sensing can help us understand the within-canopy variation in spectral properties and resolve the sources of uncertainties in the spectroscopic estimation of crop foliar chemistry. To date, the spectral properties of leaves and panicles in crop canopies and the shadow effects on their spectral variation remain poorly understood due to the i...

Growth at elevated CO2 often decreases photosynthetic capacity (acclimation) and leaf N concentrations. Lower-shaded canopy leaves may undergo both CO2 and shade acclimation. The relationship of acclimatory responses of flag and lower-shaded canopy leaves of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) to the N content, and possible factors affecting N gain and distribution within the plant were investigated i...

Previous research has shown a visual asymmetry in shaded stimuli where the perceived contrast depended on the polarity of their dark and light areas (Chacón, 2004). In particular, circles filled out with a top-dark luminance ramp were perceived with higher contrast than top-light ones although both types of stimuli had the same physical contrast. Here, using shaded stimuli, we conducted four ex...

The Brazilian "campo rupestre" vegetation shows high light heterogeneity, characteristic which is often disregarded in ecophysiological studies due the difficult of obtaining accurate measurements in a complex environment. The aim of the present study it was to describe how much heterogeneous is the light distribution in this environment, as well as tried to define classes in relation to the ph...

The greedy strategy of geographical routing may cause the local minimum problem when there is a hole in the routing area. It depends on other strategies such as perimeter routing to find a detour path, which can be long and result in inefficiency of the routing protocol. In this paper, we propose a new approach called Intermediate Target based Geographic Routing (ITGR) to solve the long detour ...