Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Use of climatic data to assess the effect of insect harassment on the autumn weight of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) calves

Considerable behavioural evidence supports harassment by insects as the most important causal link between warm summer temperatures and low body condition of reindeer Rangifer tarandus, and that insect activity is influenced by weather condition. However, much less is known about the effect of insect harassment on individual performance, measured as reduced weight gain during summer, and the related consequences on both the reindeer pastoral economy and reindeer as a biological resource. Using climatic data, this paper develops a simple index for the analysis of insect harassment that takes into consideration weather variables known to significantly affect insect activity and/or the level of insect harassment. The insect harassment index, which is based on mid-day ambient temperature ≥13 °C, wind speed <6 m/s and cloud cover <40%, is further used to test the hypothesis that insect harassment has a negative effect on reindeer performance during summer in three Norwegian populations. Results show that harassment by insects negatively affects the autumn weight of reindeer calves, most probably through reduced grazing time and increased energy expenditure, but also indirectly by negatively influencing milk production of the dam. Moreover, female calves were more vulnerable to insect harassment than males. Insect harassment may have consequences on future reproductive performance, calving time, calf birth weight and hence neonatal mortality, and thus affect reindeer productivity. The presented index is easy to estimate and may be used to quantify and compare harassment levels on various reindeer summer grazing areas for management purposes. Our results also suggest that the expected temperature increase in the course of global warming may increase the insect-related stress on reindeer.
Allelopathic Potential of the Dominant Vegetation of Western Washington

Forty plant species common in western Washington were investigated for the presence of allelopathic chemicals capable of influencing the distribution of subordinate species. Under laboratory conditions most species contained inhibitory volatile compounds and many contained effective water—soluble compounds. The results of up to 13 bioassays per species were compared with descriptions of the distribution of subordinate species under natural conditions. In several cases, notably Acer circinatum, Arbutus menziesii, and Rhododendron albiflorum, high inhibition values in laboratory experiments were associated with distinct changes in ground—cover composition beneath the canopy of these species. The ratio between inhibition values produced by volatile and water—soluble inhibitors was higher in species from arid regions than in those from humid regions. This finding supports Muller and Whittaker's hypothesis that allelopathic compounds are primarily waste products.
FX Volatility Impact on Indian Stock Market: An Empirical Investigation

Examining the interrelationship between currency market volatility and stock market volatility will create abundant trading opportunities to the investors irrespective of whether the return of one market is moving up or down. This research work intended to examine how the exchange rate volatility between Indian rupee and foreign currencies, such as US dollar, euro, Japanese yen and British pound, can influence the return and volatility of the Indian stock market. The research data extensively cover daily price observations of foreign currencies as well as Nifty index for 1500 days. The generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) is used for modelling foreign exchange (FX) rates volatility and its impact across Indian stock market. The mean equation of the model confirms that any appreciation in Indian rupee will lead to channelization of more funds towards stock market. Further, it is validated that the volatility shocks between the stock market and currency market are quite persistent. Besides the model also points that the volatility attributes are very strong between US dollar and Nifty. The Granger causality test wrap up with a finding that the volatility shocks of British pound have a causal relation with Nifty return. The result of this study will help the domestic as well as foreign investors in favour of portfolio diversification decisions. The study also spots that the policymakers can indirectly intervene into stock market through monitory policy measures.
Chrysomyinae (Diptera: Calliphoridae) is monophyletic: a molecular systematic analysis

The subfamily Chrysomyinae includes blowflies of considerable ecological and applied importance. Previous extensive morphological investigations have affirmed chrysomyine monophyly, but did not support the monophyly of traditional chrysomyine tribes. Conversely, molecular systematic analyses suggested a para‐ or polyphyletic Chrysomyinae. Conflicting hypotheses have been proposed about the tribe‐level classification, and about the relationships of the obligate bird parasites Protocalliphora Hough and Trypocalliphora Peus. To understand chrysomyine evolution better, we reconstructed phylogenies of the Chrysomyinae based on 2285 bp of combined data from mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase c subunit 1 (COI) and nuclear carbamoylphosphate synthetase (CPS) genes. Maximum parsimony (MP), maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian analysis (BA) strongly supported the monophyly of Chrysomyinae and the paraphyly of the tribe Chrysomyini. BA and ML yielded a monophyletic tribe Phormiini, but this was unresolved by MP. A sister‐group relationship between Trypocalliphora and Protocalliphora indicates that obligate bird parasitism evolved once within the Calliphoridae. For the first time all Neotropical genera (Cochliomyia Townsend, Compsomyiops Townsend, Paralucilia Brauer and Bergenstamm, Hemilucilia Brauer and Chloroprocta Wulp) were found to comprise a single lineage, and Chrysomya Robineau‐Desvoidy, traditionally a member of Chrysomyini, was found to be closer to the Phormiini. Similarly, Hemilucilia + Chloroprocta was a monophyletic group. Every genus for which we examined more than one species was monophyletic.
Genealogical Identities

Ideas of belonging, cultural identity, and social relations based on ancestral connection, blood, and primordial kinship, have a contradictory presence in cultural theory and public culture. The search for alternatives to fixed, essentialist, and exclusive ways of imagining culture and belonging has been central to recent cultural theory and cultural geography. This has involved much attention to cultural routes, mobility, and hybridity and a critique of cultural roots, fixity, and purity in response to increasing transnational flows, the experience of displaced people, racism, and ethnic fundamentalism. Yet discourses of indigeneity and new migration patterns, as well as cultural globalisation more widely, have also prompted the growth in genealogy amongst ‘settler’ groups in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States who search for European, and often specifically Irish, roots. In this paper I explore the relationships between ideas of nation, ancestry, and diaspora. I focus on what happens when questions of nationality, ethnicity, and identity meet in the practice of ancestral research in Ireland, and begin to track the spatially differentiated cultural politics of genealogy. As the language of genealogy travels with Irish roots tourists and through electronic networks, the implications of genealogical practices and identifications can mutate so that what may be a politically regressive turn to ethnic purity and racial discourse in one context can, in another, productively unsettle older exclusive versions of belonging. For both individual and collective identities, genealogical projects can have unsettling results.
Observations of Paramecium Occupying Arboreal Standing Water in Costa Rica

Some observations on the natural history of the Paramecium—Heliconia system are presented. The pattern of distribution in the wet season seams to be either a random colonization or a colonizing bias toward younger bracts, but ultimately the mosquito larvae in the older bract build up, resulting in the death of the local Paramecium population. The dry season pattern appears to be different at least in that there are very few mosquito larvae. The observation of Maguire and Belk (1967) that Paramecium do get to bromeliads was repeated. Experiments were performed demonstrating that if Paramecium do get to bromeliads, the biological interactions between the Paramecium and the regular microfauna of the bromeliad are such that the Paramecium are driven to extinction. See full-text article at JSTOR
Population structure and reproductive biology of Uca rapax (Decapoda: Ocypodidae) in a tropical coastal lagoon, southeast Brazil

A population of the fiddler crab Uca rapax (Smith, 1870) found in Itaipu Lagoon, southeast Brazil, was sampled monthly from July 2006 to June 2007 in order to study population and reproductive features. The sex ratio of the population was statistically different from the expected (1:1) in almost every month, with a predominance of males. The reproductive cycle and the recruitment of juveniles were continuous, with two peaks. The fecundity ranged from 1.110 to 13.189 eggs (4.984 ± 2.493.8), not differing statistically among seasons. In contrast, the relative fecundity (F') and the reproductive intensity index (RII) were highest in the summer. Female size at the onset of sexual maturity was estimated as 6.1 mm and egg diameter ranged from 0.20 to 0.28 mm. The anthropogenic impact on the environment of Itaipu Lagoon probably had adverse effects on the local U. rapax population, as inferred by its low fecundity rates, early maturation age and biased sex ratio.
Throughfall and stemflow on silverleaf ironbark (Eucalyptus melanophloia) trees

The redistribution of rainfall on silverleaf ironbark (Eucalyptus melanophloia) trees in a semiarid environment at Narayen Research Station has been studied using detailed measurements on four trees. Interception accounts for about 11% of the annual rainfall with only 0.6% as stem flow; canopy storage capacity is estimated to be 2 mm and an estimate of the rain required to initiate stem flow is 7 mm. With the exception of nitrogen, the amounts of major elements returned to the soil surface beneath the tree canopy via through fall and stem flow is of the same order as that added by litter fall.
CYTOKININS AND APICAL DOMINANCE IN SOLANUM ANDIGENA: LATERAL SHOOT GROWTH AND ENDOGENOUS CYTOKININ LEVELS IN THE ABSENCE OF ROOTS*

SUMMARY Outgrowth of lateral buds following decapitation of the main apex occurs in shoots of Solanum andigena which have been without roots for periods of up to 30 days prior to decapitation. Axillary shoots of one-node potato cuttings have been found, similarly, to be capable of growth in the absence of roots. The cytokinin content of de-rooted shoots has been measured using both the soybean and tobacco callus assays and was found to be maintained after at least 40 days of growth without roots. The results indicate that shoots may be capable of synthesizing cytokinin in the absence of roots. The implications for the involvement of cytokinins in apical dominance are discussed.
Nectar Inhabiting Yeasts in Virginian Populations of Silene latifolia (Caryophyllaceae) and Coflowering Species

Abstract Nectar inhabiting yeasts are commonly found in many plant species. Even though these microorganisms are abundant, much is still unknown about the communities of these microorganisms within and among plant species as well as the diversity of these microorganisms within and among seasons. This study examines the presence and diversity of these microorganisms in the dioecious plant species Silene latifolia as well as coflowering plants in Virginia, U.S. The majority of previous research on nectarivorous yeasts has been on hermaphroditic plant species. This is one of the few studies examining a dioecious plant species. Yeast species were isolated from the floral nectar of S. latifolia and associated plant species in 1999–2001, morphotyped into 37 morphospecies, and identified into 26 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) by sequencing the D1/D2 domain of the large subunit nrDNA. Yeast species from ascomycetes and basidiomycetes were isolated from nectar, including nectar associated ascomycetous Metschnikowia species and the basidiomycetous anther smut Microbotryum violaceum; however, ascomycetes dominated the samples. Metschnikowia species only accounted for 21% of the yeast isolates, a much lower percentage than in other studies. There was evidence of both host specificity and widespread dispersal of yeast species with Microbotryum violaceum found in nectar from both healthy and consistently diseased plant populations, indicating long distance dispersal of this fungus. There were no consistent differences among the sexes of S. latifolia, but male floral nectar appeared to have a higher diversity and species richness in some years. There was some indication of seasonality of yeast abundance in nectar as well as differences among years, potentially due to drought conditions. These results support the current body of evidence by researchers that, although not diverse in terms of the number of different yeast species found in nectar, yeasts are abundant in the nectar of plants.
Modelling growth of five different colour types of mink

The objective of this study was to estimate and compare the growth curve parameters for live weight of standard black, brown, mahogany, Hedlund white and sapphire minks. The data were collected from five colour types in the period from seven days to 24 weeks of age. Three hundred mink (about 60 of each colour types) were used. Six different non-linear models, namely Logistic, Gompertz, Brody, Richards, Bridges, and Janoschek were used to define the growth curves of the mink. Models were compared using coefficients of determination (R 2 values), the Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) and the Bayesian information criterion (BIC). The R 2 were high for all models, ranging from 0.923 to 0.985 for different breeds of mink. Comparing the models by AIC, BIC values and the residuals showed the following results. Three of the models fitted the growth curves very well. Colour type differences were observed in the growth parameters of mink. The brown, mahogany and sapphire was observed to be late maturing and lighter at maturity, while the standard black and Hedlund white had a higher growth rate, reached maturity earlier and attained a heavier mature weight. Keywords: Body weight, growth curve, logistic, Gompertz, Brody, Richards, Bridges, Janoschek
Constructing a virtual forest: Using hierarchical nearest neighbor imputation to generate simulated tree lists

A nearest neighbors method for generating simulated tree lists has been developed. The method employs an implicit two-scale hierarchy to incorporate information from a coarse scale representing the distribution of stand attributes across a region and a fine scale representing the distribution of tree attributes within a stand. The tree list generation method was implemented and tested using data from untreated, naturally regenerated and planted forests in western Oregon, western Washington, and southern British Columbia west of the Cascade Mountains. Simulated tree lists were generated from stand scale attributes for each of the actual tree lists in the data. Distributions of stand scale and tree scale attributes were estimated and used to compare the simulated and actual tree lists. At the stand scale distributions of quadratic mean diameter and average height for the simulated and actual stands were in very good agreement, having approximately 98% of their probability mass in common for each attribute. At the tree scale, comparisons of the distributions of diameter at breast height, height, and species composition between the simulated and actual stands were more variable, with approximately 84% of the simulated stands identified as statistically similar to their respective actual stands.
Influence of conditioning temperature on the postpellet recovery and efficacy of 2 microbial phytases for broiler chicks

SUMMARY The effect of conditioning temperature on phytase efficacy for growth performance and bone mineralization was evaluated using 432 male Ross broilers. Birds were fed a wheat-soy-based diet that was formulated to be adequate in all nutrients with the exception of available P. Diets were conditioned at 75, 80, 85, or 90°C and fed with (1,000 phytase units/kg) or without 1 of 2 microbial phytases in a 3 × 4 factorial design. Phytase A was found to have greater thermostability than phytase B (78.3 vs. 57.5%) as an average across all conditioning temperatures. Phytase increased (P < 0.05) BW gain from d 0 to 21 and birds fed diets containing phytase A were significantly heavier than birds offered diets with phytase B. Increasing conditioning temperature decreased (P < 0.01) BW gain. Supplementing diets with phytase improved (P < 0.05) FE and birds fed diets containing phytase A were more efficient (P < 0.05) than broilers fed diets containing phytase B. Tibia ash concentrations were improved (P < 0.05) by approximately 10% with phytase A and B compared with birds fed diets without phytase. Birds fed phytase A diets had higher (P < 0.05) bone ash concentrations than birds that received the diet containing phytase B. In conclusion, the inclusion of an intrinsically thermostable exogenous phytase before pelleting would be of benefit to bird performance and bone mineralization in broilers.
Endothelial expression of the α6β4 integrin is negatively regulated during angiogenesis

Development and homeostasis of the vascular system requires integrin-facilitated cellular adhesion, migration, proliferation and survival. A specific role for the α6β4 integrin in the vasculature, however, has not been identified. Using immunohistochemistry, we observed α6β4 expression on the dermal microvasculature of human foreskin. Analysis of individual cells isolated from trypsin-disrupted foreskin tissue indicated that α6β4 was expressed by a subset of epithelial and endothelial cells, and not by smooth muscle cells. Expression of α6β4 was also analyzed during new vessel growth using explants of human saphenous vein cultured in fibrinogen gels. The results indicate that α6β4 is not expressed by outgrowing endothelial cells, and is downregulated by the original α6β4-positive endothelial cells of the explant. To determine whether α6β4 is expressed during angiogenesis in vivo, the expression of the β4 subunit was analyzed during the development of the mouse mystacial (whisker) pad. Immunohistochemical staining of the whisker pad indicates that β4 is expressed by the adult vasculature. To identify when and where β4 is turned on in the vasculature, we examined the whisker pads from the developing embryo (E19.5 pc), and from postnatal days zero (P0), three (P3) and seven (P7) pups. The expression of α6β4 was found to be turned on spatially and temporally from caudal to rostral regions and from the deep to superficial vasculature, correlating with the maturation of the whisker pad and its corresponding vasculature. Together, these findings suggest a potential role for α6β4 as a negative component of the angiogenic switch, whereas expression of α6β4 on the adult vasculature may indicate regions requiring additional adhesive mechanisms.
Regeneration and growth of white spruce and alpine fir in the interior of British Columbia

Survival and height growth of planted white spruce, Piceaglauca (Moench) Voss, and alpine fir, Abieslasiocarpa (Hook.) Nutt. , seedlings, the growth of competing shrubs, and height, diameter, and volume growth of spruce and fir up to about 130 years of age were studied on Alluvial and Aralia sites in the central interior of British Columbia to assess the suitability of alpine fir for restocking the sites where shrub competition causes heavy seedling mortality of spruce. Alpine fir regenerated successfully under heavy shrub competition where spruce generally failed, and its growth up to almost 100 years was better than that of spruce. Spruce maintained its growth longer. Spruce should be favored where its regeneration can be assured. Where shrubs prevent regeneration of spruce, however, alpine fir may provide a viable and even economically justifiable alternative.
Facteurs géographiques et sociaux de la diversité des ignames cultivées au Nord Bénin

This study aimed at contributing to the sustainable management of yam (Dioscorea sp.) diversity. It was carried out in northern Benin on 220 farms and in 8 villages. The main hypothesis considers that varietal diversity is influenced by ethnic diversity and the market. Results show that diversity remains high with 182 landraces observed in the fields. The study underlines the major role of cultivation practices and of socio-cultural determinants that depend on the history of each ethnic group. In relationship to this point, the Bariba, the Nago and the Gando, who have cultivated yams since remotest times, still remain the best social vectors of diversity. Characteristics of villages, such as links with the geographic and social levels, act on the level of diversity. The reduction of diversity brought about by market development is not confirmed. Facing the complexity of diversity determinant factors, the study concludes that the success of an in situ conservation policy will depend on the difficult choice of the area where it is carried out.
Timing and duration of constant light affects rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) growth during autumn–spring grow-out in freshwater

Photoperiod enhancement of growth is becoming an area of increasing interest as a means of enhancing rainbow trout production efficiency in commercial practice. This paper examines the possible implications of shortening periods of constant light (LL) exposure on rainbow trout growth during autumn–spring grow-out under ambient water temperatures in freshwater to portion size. Triplicate groups of juvenile all-female rainbow trout were permanently exposed to LL in October, November, December or January. Growth was monitored and compared with those maintained under a simulated natural photoperiod (SNP) until the following May. Permanent exposure to LL (all treatments) resulted in significantly greater weight gain of rainbow trout than those under SNP. Furthermore, greatest growth was achieved when fish were left permanently exposed to LL from October. These findings suggest there may be implications for fish farmers if the period of photoperiod exposure is reduced, or timing of application is not considered with regards to ambient water temperatures.