Sampling Technique for Larvae of the Alfalfa Snout Beetle, \u3ci\u3eOtiorhynchus Ligustici\u3c/i\u3e (Coleoptera: Curculionidae)

This paper presents a sampling procedure for estimating larval populations of the alfalfa snout beetle, Otiorhynchus ligustici. The method is based on counts of the larvae taken in 16 x 16 cm quadrats of soil during early fall when the grubs are in their final two instars and feeding just below the crowns of the plant. Analysis of sampling variability showed that 200 quadrats per field are necessary to obtain adequate precision for intensive population studies but that 50 quadrats are sufficient for survey work. The pattern of counts was overdispersed but conformed to the negative binomial distribution

The right-to-manage default rule

We critically examine the right-to-manage as a legal default rule. We then assess the merits of alternative process and content defaults, as well as non-waivable terms and conditions. Finally, we suggest how various options might be combined in different circumstances

The role of unions in addressing behavioural market failures

The traditional view of economists is that unions cause market failures, thereby reducing economic efficiency. Freeman and Medoff challenged this overly negative view, suggesting unions address market failures associated with the ‘public goods’ aspects of terms and conditions in the workplace for members and non-members alike. This paper builds upon their work by arguing workers’ collective voice via unions can also be used to address particular behavioural market failures associated with common defects in individual cognition. Specifically, this paper suggests how unions through membership, expert and organisational learning effects can help address four common behavioural market failures or cognitive mistakes, namely, short-termism, inattention to important but hidden attributes, unrealistic optimism, and poor probability estimation. In order to explore how the three effects help mitigate the four failures, the paper draws upon insights from behavioural economics. Finally, the paper discusses the factors which influence the extent of the application of the three effects

A union default: a policy to raise union membership, promote the freedom to associate, protect the freedom not to associate and progress union representation

Workers are defaulted to being non-union in employment relationships across the world. A non-union default likely has substantial negative effects, consistent with the empirical literature reviewed, on union membership levels, because of switching costs, inertia, social norms, and loss aversion. A union default would likely have positive effects on union membership, and has the additional virtues of partially internalising the public goods externalities of unions, improving the freedom to associate (the right to join a union), and preserving the freedom not to associate (the right not to join a union). A union default would also strengthen the extent and effectiveness of union representation

Video playback demonstrates episodic personality in the gloomy octopus

Coleoid cephalopods, including octopuses, cuttlefish and squid, rely mainly on visual signals when interacting with conspecifics, predators and prey. Presenting visual stimuli, such as models, photographs, mirrors and live conspecifics, can thus provide insight into cephalopod behaviour. These methods, however, have limitations – mirrors and live animals lack experimental control, whereas models and photographs sacrifice motion-based information. Video playback addresses these issues by presenting controlled, moving and realistic stimuli but, to date, video playback has not been used successfully with any cephalopod. Here, we developed a video playback technique for the gloomy octopus (Octopus tetricus) that incorporated recent advances in video technology. We then used this technique to test for personality, which we defined as behavioural differences between individuals that are consistent over time and across ecologically important contexts. We captured wild octopuses and tested them on 3 separate days over a 10 day period. On each test day, subjects were presented with videos of a food item, a novel object and a conspecific. These represented a foraging, novel and threatening context, respectively. A fourth video without a moving stimulus controlled for the playback monitor itself and potential artifacts associated with video playback. Experimental stimuli evoked unambiguous and biologically appropriate responses from the subjects. Furthermore, individuals' responses to the three experimental contexts were highly correlated within a given test day. However, within a given context, individuals behaved inconsistently across the 3 test days. The reordering of ranks suggests that rather than fulfilling the criteria for personality, gloomy octopus show temporal discontinuities, and hence display episodic personality

Mixing rates across the Gulf Stream, Part 1: On the formation of Eighteen Degree Water

Microstructure profiles taken in February 2007 across the Gulf Stream (GS) measured the temporal and spatial variability of the intense mixing that forms Eighteen Degree Water (EDW). Strong winds, gusting to 30 m s–1, and heat fluxes up to 1000 W m–2 produced moderate-to-strong mixing in the surface mixed layer and the entrainment zone, as well as in the thermocline. In the limit of a vertically balanced heat budget, EDW formation is driven primarily by surface heat loss to the atmosphere across a region extending O(100) km south from the GS core, where entrainment heat fluxes based on dissipation rates were relatively low, O(10) to O(100) W m–2. Near the GS core, much larger entrainment fluxes, O(100) to O(1000) W m–2, contribute significantly to cooling the mixed layer, but less so to overall EDW formation due to its smaller volume. Relationships between observed dissipation rates and the atmospheric and local shear forcing scales are examined for this limited data set and compared with empirical scalings both within the mixed layer and in the entrainment zone. Below the mixed layer near the GS, diapycnal diffusivities in the thermocline averaged about O(10–4) m2 s–1, and are approximately 10 times levels previously observed in the GS during other seasons. Horizontally coherent shear structures, with shoaling phase and clockwise rotation, indicate that downward-propagating near-inertial waves are responsible for much of this enhanced subsurface mixing

Mixing rates across the Gulf Stream, Part 2: Implications for nonlocal parameterization of vertical fluxes in the surface boundary layers

The turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) budget of the surface mixed layer is evaluated at wintertime stations occupied in the vicinity of the strong Gulf Stream (GS) jet. The nonlocal K-profile parameterization (KPP) of vertical fluxes is combined with observed hydrography and meteorology to diagnose TKE production. This KPP-based production is averaged over the surface mixed layer and compared with corresponding averages of observed TKE dissipation rate from microstructure measurements, under assumptions of a homogeneous steady-state balance for the layer-averaged TKE budget. The KPP-based TKE production estimates exceed the mean observed boundary layer dissipation rates at occupied stations by up to an order of magnitude. In cases with strong upper ocean shear, the boundary layer depths predicted by the bulk Richardson number criteria of KPP tend to be deeper than indicated by observed dissipation rates, and thereby including strong entrainment zone shear contributes excessively to the KPP-based diagnosis of TKE production. However, even after correcting this diagnosis of mixed layer depth, the layer-averaged production still exceeds observed dissipation rates. These results have several possible implications, including: (1) KPP tends to overestimate vertical momentum flux in cases with strong shear due to geostrophically balanced thermal wind, unbalanced submesoscale dynamics, or entrainment driven by mixed layer inertial oscillations; (2) a mean local TKE balance does not hold in baroclinic mixed layers due to radiation of inertial waves, divergence in horizontal TKE flux or an inverse cascade to larger scales; and (3) both the boundary layer depth and the remaining TKE budget discrepancies indicate the limited validity of mixed layer models in the simulation of submesoscale ocean phenomena

Teach Our Baby That I\u27m Dead

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/6356/thumbnail.jp

Foraging ecology of a generalist predator the female New Zealand fur seal

Copyright © 2002 Inter-Research.Abstract: This study examined how diet, foraging location and diving behaviour of female New Zealand fur seals Arctocephalus forsteri at Otago Peninsula, New Zealand (45°52¹S, 170°44¹E), varied in relation to prey abundance among seasons in 1994 and 1995. Time-depth recorders measured the diving behaviour of 24 lactating female fur seals, during summer, autumn or winter of 1994 and summer and autumn of 1995. Foraging locations were obtained by deploying satellite transmitters in summer, autumn and winter of 1994 only. Estimated biomass of prey items was determined from 690 scats and 166 regurgitates collected over summer, autumn and winter of both years, and compared with abundance data from research trawls in the same area. Foraging trip duration increased during the cooler seasons. Female fur seals showed a clear bout structure in dive behaviour, with the relative proportion of 3 main bout types (Long, Shallow, Deep) varying with season. Time between bouts (IBI) and bout duration varied with season, suggesting that prey distribution and prey encounter rate also varied. Linear discriminant analysis of the dive and foraging trip characteristics of individual females demonstrated clear seasonal differences. Females foraged on or near the continental slope in summer and farther offshore in autumn. Satellite telemetry locations and diet suggest principally inshore foraging during winter. Fur seals ate predominantly arrow squid Nototodarus sloanii during summer and autumn of both years, although fish, particularly myctophids, were persistent in the diet. Arrow squid were less common in winter when diet was more varied, and an inshore, benthic fish, ahuru Auchenoceros punctatus was dominant. There was no relationship between the annual changes in abundance of major prey species as measured by research trawls and their occurrence in seal diet. Overall, changes in dive behaviour may reflect changes in prey selection as prey abundance and availability change among seasons.Robert G. Harcourt, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Kate Dickson, Lloyd S. Davi