Showing papers in "Basic and Applied Ecology in 2001"

TL;DR: Impact of natural enemies on the population development on the bird cherry-oat aphid on conventional and organic farms was measured by pairing farms with similar landscape features but different farming systems, and impact was greater in landscapes where arable land was contiguous.

TL;DR: This measure for the functional composition of invertebrate communities provides a first unified European baseline for future stream and river management: it was stable in the most natural but otherwise very different running water types across Europe, it safely indicated human impact, and it could potentially discriminate specific types of human disturbances.

TL;DR: It is stressed that in the plant pathway microbi-detritivores in soil like earthworms, collembolans and protozoans might be considerably more important than root herbivores which directly affect plant growth.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors compared the species richness and abundance of pollinator (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) communities in two seasons (September 1998 and April 1999) among four types of urban land use in the Phoenix, Arizona, USA, metropolitan area.

TL;DR: Sunlight adapted pioneer trees and shade-tolerant beeches were exposed to different light conditions throughout an annual cycle to assess re-fixation of carbon dioxide in the environmentally controlled leafless states of deciduous trees.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors use graphical models and terminology to clarify the responses of terrestrial herbivores to top-down and bottom-up forces and suggest that similar approaches should be used at the community and ecosystem levels.

TL;DR: The results tend to suggest that most plants have sufficient plasticity in root system development to track the scale of soil nutrient heterogeneity and thus show similar performance regardless of the degree of nutrient patchiness, and the benefits of root plasticity may be more critical for subdominant species as a general adaptation to compete for soil nutrients in mixed plant communities regardless ofThe extent of soil nutrients heterogeneity.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors report on changes in soil respiration under Free-Air CO 2 Enrichment (FACE) where spring wheat was grown in an open field at two CO 2 concentrations (ambient and ambient+200 μmol mol −1 ), under natural meteorological conditions.

TL;DR: A comparison with a phylogeny of Longitarsus based on mtDNA sequences shows that sequestration of pyrrolizidine alkaloids as well as of iridoid glycosides has been adopted multiple times independently, contradicting the hypothesis of a single colonization of plants with either class of deterrent compounds followed by radiation across plant families to chemically similar plants.

TL;DR: The controversial relationship between productivity and species richness in vegetation is re-examined here in the context of several other important habitat attributes using a simple conceptual model developed based on established principles of ecology, evolution and agriculture.

TL;DR: Paired-choice assays in a tritrophic system have been carried out to study the influence of trans- genic Bacillus thuringiensis var.

TL;DR: It is argued that there are advantages in using a patch dynamics approach when describing the feeding and oviposition behaviour of adult predators, which leads to predictions that in arthropod predator-prey systems, predator reproduction should be correlated with the age of a prey patch rather than the number of prey present, and top-down regulation does not occur.

TL;DR: In this article, the chemistry of rainfall and its redistribution were studied during the periods July 1997-December 1998 in a Nothofagus pumilio (summer green) forest and in April 1999-March 2000 in an evergreen forest in two experimental microcatchments.

TL;DR: The results from this study highlight the need for legal restrictions on the chemical and physical properties of wood ash recycled within forest systems, in order to avoid a negative impact on ground flora.

TL;DR: In this article, a mathematical formulation representing the mid-term variations in stomatal sensitivity to leaf-to-air vapour pressure deficit (VPD) was incorporated into an ecosystem flux model describing the carbon and water exchange between forests and the atmosphere.

TL;DR: The analysis of the urban system revealed that the protected areas within the city limits of Hamburg are perceived by birds as islands in an urban matrix, and the vulnerability of any given bird species to fragmentation of woodland habitat within thecity depends on its ability to use the urban matrix between theprotected areas and seems to be related to the investments in egg-shell material.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors studied the nutrient pools in the above-ground phytomass, the organic layers on the forest floor, and the mineral soil in three 20-yr-old coppice woods on acid soils that were composed by 9 woody species and dominated by Betula pendula, Quercus petraea and Corylus avellana.

TL;DR: In this article, simultaneous measurements of gas exchange and stomatal aperture were performed on Sambucus nigra leaves before and after treatment with sub-micrometer NaNO 3 aerosol.

TL;DR: It is strongly recommend to use interval counts rather than survival times in the analysis of complex survival data, as it indicated that leaf mortality risk increased monotonically with leaf age.

TL;DR: The importance of soil characteristics in determining the periodic dominance and scarcity of legumes in fynbos environments in South Africa is evaluated and patterns of nodulation appeared to be species specific rather than environmentally controlled.

TL;DR: The properties of a simple host-parasitoid model that includes host density dependence and a host refuge from parasitism, and a parasitoid functional response that includes aggregated attack and the possibility for egg and host limitation are examined.

TL;DR: Results indicate that L. distinguendus females innately react to volatile cues from different hosts and host plants, and is discussed with respect to current hypotheses on the use of chemical cues by generalist parasitoids.

TL;DR: In this paper, a methodology for determining the structure of the functional web from a series of observations on the densities of constituent populations made over time a multi-species time series is proposed.

TL;DR: It is suggested moorland could be managed for golden plover broods by managing stocking densities to create patchworks of grass and heather and a heterogeneous mature heather sward and by blocking drainage ditches to create areas of soft rush.

TL;DR: A highly flexible CAM expression was observed in the drought deciduous Ceraria fruticulosa (non-succulent stem showing no CAM) in response to changes in water availability and the ecological significance of both metabolic adaptation and leaf-deciduousness was discussed.

TL;DR: It is concluded that, despite the presence of viable seeds in polluted soil, revegetation from seed banks is not successful without soil mitigation to immobilise heavy metals.

TL;DR: A comparison of two plant-herbivore-parasitoid systems shows that similar patchy distributions of the host plant can promote contrasting dynamics of the herbivore, depending on plant type, habitat preferences and the patch dynamics ofthe plant.

TL;DR: An analysis of regenerating branches of the Indo-Pacific coral Stylophora pistillata reveals that the architectural complexity of isolated branches may have a significant impact on the initiation of the regeneration process towards the typical structure and complexity of an intact colony.

TL;DR: These comparative data are relevant to the ‘invertebrate food supply hypothesis’ relating to the cause(s) of the marked declines in the abundance of farmland bird species that have been observed over the last few decades.

TL;DR: In this paper, the competitive ability of three montane indigenous New Zealand plant species (Achaena buchananii, Festuca novae-zelandiae, and Raoulia australis ) when growing with the locally invasive, introduced Hieracium pilosella were compared in an outdoor pot experiment.