Behavioural and physiological adaptations to low-temperature environments in the common frog, Rana temporaria

<b>Background</b><p></p> Extreme environments can impose strong ecological and evolutionary pressures at a local level. Ectotherms are particularly sensitive to low-temperature environments, which can result in a reduced activity period, slowed physiological processes and increased exposure to sub-zero temperatures. The aim of this study was to assess the behavioural and physiological responses that facilitate survival in low-temperature environments. In particular, we asked: 1) do high-altitude common frog (Rana temporaria) adults extend the time available for larval growth by breeding at lower temperatures than low-altitude individuals?; and 2) do tadpoles sampled from high-altitude sites differ physiologically from those from low-altitude sites, in terms of routine metabolic rate (RMR) and freeze tolerance? Breeding date was assessed as the first day of spawn observation and local temperature recorded for five, paired high- and low-altitude R. temporaria breeding sites in Scotland. Spawn was collected and tadpoles raised in a common laboratory environment, where RMR was measured as oxygen consumed using a closed respiratory tube system. Freeze tolerance was measured as survival following slow cooling to the point when all container water had frozen.<p></p> <b>Results</b><p></p> We found that breeding did not occur below 5°C at any site and there was no significant relationship between breeding temperature and altitude, leading to a delay in spawning of five days for every 100 m increase in altitude. The relationship between altitude and RMR varied by mountain but was lower for individuals sampled from high- than low-altitude sites within the three mountains with the highest high-altitude sites (≥900 m). In contrast, individuals sampled from low-altitudes survived freezing significantly better than those from high-altitudes, across all mountains.<p></p> <b>Conclusions</b><p></p> Our results suggest that adults at high-altitude do not show behavioural adaptations in terms of breeding at lower temperatures. However, tadpoles appear to have the potential to adapt physiologically to surviving at high-altitude via reduced RMR but without an increase in freeze tolerance. Therefore, survival at high-altitude may be facilitated by physiological mechanisms that permit faster growth rates, allowing completion of larval development within a shorter time period, alleviating the need for adaptations that extend the time available for larval growth

GRES-IT Workshop Proceedings

Series: Working Papers on Information Systems, Information Business and Operation

INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT – FIRST RESULTS FROM CONTENT ANALYSIS

True and long-lasting stakeholder relationships have been identified as precondition for long-term success of companies. Thus, companies put a lot of effort into communication with stakeholders and stakeholder engagement. Consequently, the possibilities to communicate with stakeholders to involve them in environmental, social and economic projects of companies has been widely discussed. However, the various stakeholders (internal and external, primary and secondary) influence companies in different ways. Information systems support the stakeholder engagement and allow specific communication in accordance with various stakeholders needs’, but to date a clear picture on their application is missing. Our work investigates this gap and serves as a starting point for better understanding on how information systems support stakeholder engagement. We select CSR reports from a reporting database and analyse them in terms of information systems involved in the stakeholder engagement process. Based on this we will develop a “landscape” of information systems support for stakeholder engagement. First results presented in this work-in-progress paper are based on a limited number of reports suggest that information systems mainly support communication with external stakeholders, whereas direct face-to-face communication predominates internal stakeholder engagement. Overall, information technology (such as the Internet) prevails compared to application of specific information systems

APHIDS UNDER STRESS. SPECIES GROUPS AND ECOLOGICAL FUNCTIONAL GROUPS OF APHIDS DEFINE HEAVY METAL GRASSLANDS OF CENTRAL EUROPE

Interest in trace metals and the environmental effects of their deposition significantly increased recently. Ecological communities formed on soils with a high concentration of heavy metals are characterised by a particular composition of plants and invertebrates in response to unfavourable physical and chemical conditions and under a strong selective pressure. Calaminarian grasslands as well as other dry grasslands are fragile habitats, very rare in Central Europe; such areas are often protected within nature reserves. This paper is the first comprehensive study of aphids (Insecta: Hemiptera: Aphidomorpha) of the metalliferous areas in Central Europe. It helped to describe the species diversity of aphid communities related to the plants of heavy metal grasslands, define the level of relationships between aphids and plants of heavy metal habitats and determine diagnostic aphid species for assemblages forming in such post-industrial landscapes. On the basis of ecological groups determined for aphids, also the number and percent of the species which form them and their ratios structure aphid communities and their condition was defined. An elevated heavy metal content in the soil does not limit the species richness of such an aphid community in comparison with those of other dry grasslands. However, these aphid communities possess specific features resulting from the mixture of species arriving from dry calcareous and sandy grasslands. The concept of ecological functional groups for analysis of aphid communities is introduced. Such an approach is useful for describing aphid communities in time and the directions of their changes, thus helping to monitor successive changes and the habitat stat

First records of gall-inducing aphid Pemphigus populi (Hemiptera: Aphidoidea, Eriosomatidae) in Poland with gall-based key to Central and North European species of the genus

The paper presents first records of Pemphigus populi Courchet, 1879 (Hemiptera, Aphidoidea, Eriosomatidae) from Poland with a short description of the morphological characteristics of its fundatrix and fundatrigenia. Special attention is paid to the characteristics which distinguish this species from other Polish as well as the Central and North European representatives of this genus on poplars (Populus spp.). Information on the biology and distribution of P. populi in the world are given. A key to Central and North European species of Pemphigus , based on their galls formed on the primary host plants is also provided

Are Customer Service Offerings Influencing E-Loyalty? A Graphical Chain Model Approach in the Austrian Mobile Phone Service Provider Industry

Customer loyalty is seen as one of the key factors of a company’s success. According to current research results, a necessary premise among others to gain customer loyalty is how the customers perceive the customer service. In the field of B2C e-commerce online customer support areas are used to fulfill parts of this support duty. It is an open question how big the impact of the online customer support on the customer loyalty is. The goal of this paper is to determine, which factors are influencing e-loyalty significantly. Two factors are used to measure loyalty: positive word-of-mouth and switching probability. In the first part a brief overview of the actual scientific work and recent research results are given. After this, the methods and data acquiring steps are described. The results of the so gained data are presented and interpreted. Based on these results, the conclusion and further research recommendations complete this work

Challenges of Global Trade and the Transfer to e-Enabled Business Models in the Swiss Socks Market

Recent research has acknowledged the need to shift from the traditional one to one e-enabled business model to a many-to-many one. With the introduction of the Internet in the 1990’s companies such as Blacksocks SA and Jacob Rohner AG suddenly found a mean and the environment to think about e-enabling their business models or even start a company purely based on that existence. Building on a wide range of analysis of the terms business models and e-business models, e-business models to our understanding depict a company’s capability to apply, use or even exist throughout the presence of an e-enabled environment. The internet itself is being seen as a family of tools, methodologies and concepts to represent the e-enabled environment. Currie and others are drawing the attention to value creation from e-business models and Joyce and Winch discuss the evolvement of a business model to become e-enabled (Currie, 2004). In contrast to their key findings, the EU research project ITAIDE and the underlying business cases in this paper go beyond. The argumentation and the conclusion we will infer in the paper show that e-enabled business models are much more than applying tools, methodologies through the simple existence of the Internet. Further than the reach of companies, collaborative and decent research environments such as ITAIDE allow companies and ecosystems to adopt from the research findings and transfer those into applicable and scalable e-business models

Stability of the Pexider functional equation

A stability result for the Pexider equation will be derived from a stability theorem published in [9] for the Cauchy functional equation. Then we discuss the quality of some constants occuring in this context; as a model case we consider functions defined on the multiplicative semigroup {1, 0}

The Impact Of Virtual Communities On E-loyalty. A Conceptual Framework

Regarding the success of virtual communities, several factors and prerequisites are essential. At the same time, companies are looking for factors influencing e-loyalty. In this paper a framework (VC2E-Loy) is presented, which compares the attitudes arising in virtual communities with prerequisites of e-loyalty. First, the fundamentals of both - e-loyalty and virtual communities - are discussed. Then, attitudes and factors derived from literature are presented. The framework is created based on the factors extracted from literature. Finally, the framework is described and information on validation, open questions and further research is given