A simulation model for the functional response of Orius sauteri on eggplant leaves with Thrips palmi: Implications for biological control.

The predation capability of the anthocorid predatory bug Orius sauteri (Poppius) determines its effectiveness for suppressing Thrips palmi Karny on greenhouse eggplants. For quantifying the daily impact of one predator on its prey, we use its patch leaving behaviour on eggplant leaves with different prey numbers and scale up to the larger spatiotemporal scale of the greenhouse and one foraging day, using literature data on the distribution of T. palmi over eggplant leaves. The simulation result is a type-II functional response of O. sauteri as function of average T. palmi density: around the economic injury level of T. palmi, i.e., 0.55 individuals per leaf, O. sauteri can find and eat approximately 10 prey per day. The sensitivity analysis showed that the baseline leaving tendency, the presence of and the encounter rate with prey have a relatively large effect on the daily mean number of prey eaten per O. sauteri predator, i.e., its predation capability

Stochastic dynamic simulation of fruit abortion: a case study of sweet pepper

Abortion of reproductive organs diminishes yields in many crops. In indeterminate greenhouse crops, alternating periods of fruit abortion and fruit set exist, resulting in fluctuations in fruit yield. Factors affecting the level of abortion are e.g., the supply and demand for assimilates (source and sink strength, respectively), temperature and cultivar. However, simulation of fruit abortion is still a weak part of crop simulation models. Variation in fruit abortion exists between plants, which results in differences in the timing and the number of set fruits. Therefore, simulating fruit abortion with variation could give more realistic simulation results. The probability of a fruit to abort should be related to factors like source strength and sink strength. The more favourable the circumstances are for fruit abortion, e.g., low source strength or high sink strength, the more likely it is that the fruit aborts. Survival analysis estimates parameters quantifying the influence of explanatory variables on the abortion rate. Time-varying explanatory variables can be used in the analysis. In a case study, we used survival analysis to analyse a data set with observations on flowering, fruit abortion and fruit harvest for sweet pepper. Source and sink strength were used as explanatory variables. The resulting equation determining the probability of abortion per day was implemented in a simple simulation model to simulate fruit set. The model output, as an average of 100 plants, showed similar timing in the fluctuations in fruit set as the observations, although the amplitude of the fluctuations was in some cases underestimated. The percentage fruit set was simulated correctl

On the risk of extinction of a wild plant species through spillover of a biological control agent: analysis of an ecosystem compartment model

Invasive plant species can be controlled by introducing one or more of their natural enemies (herbivores) from their native range; however such introduction entails the risk that the introduced natural enemy will attack indigenous plant species in the area of introduction. The effect of spillover of a natural enemy from a managed ecosystem compartment (agriculture) in the area of introduction to a natural compartment (non-managed) in which an indigenous plant species is attacked by the introduced natural enemy, whereas another indigenous plant species, which competes with the first, is not attacked, has been studied. The combination of competition and herbivory may result in extinction of the attacked wild plant species. Using a modelling approach, the authors have determined model parameters that characterize the risk of extinction. The findings point to the importance of spillover and the relative attack rates (specificity) of introduced natural enemies with respect to target and non-target plant specie

Robust testing in generalized linear models by sign flipping score contributions

Generalized linear models are often misspecified because of overdispersion, heteroscedasticity and ignored nuisance variables. Existing quasi-likelihood methods for testing in misspecified models often do not provide satisfactory type I error rate control. We provide a novel semiparametric test, based on sign flipping individual score contributions. The parameter tested is allowed to be multi-dimensional and even high dimensional. Our test is often robust against the mentioned forms of misspecification and provides better type I error control than its competitors. When nuisance parameters are estimated, our basic test becomes conservative. We show how to take nuisance estimation into account to obtain an asymptotically exact test. Our proposed test is asymptotically equivalent to its parametric counterpart

Food web stability and weighted connectance:the complexity-stability debate revisited

How the complexity of food webs relates to stability has been a subject of many studies. Often, unweighted connectance is used to express complexity. Unweighted connectance is measured as the proportion of realized links in the network. Weighted connectance, on the other hand, takes link weights (fluxes or feeding rates) into account and captures the shape of the flux distribution. Here, we used weighted connectance to revisit the relation between complexity and stability. We used 15 real soil food webs and determined the feeding rates and the interaction strength matrices. We calculated both versions of connectance, and related these structural properties to food web stability. We also determined the skewness of both flux and interaction strength distributions with the Gini coefficient. We found no relation between unweighted connectance and food web stability, but weighted connectance was positively correlated with stability. This finding challenges the notion that complexity may constrain stability, and supports the ‘complexity begets stability’ notion. The positive correlation between weighted connectance and stability implies that the more evenly flux rates were distributed over links, the more stable the webs were. This was confirmed by the Gini coefficients of both fluxes and interaction strengths. However, the most even distributions of this dataset still were strongly skewed towards small fluxes or weak interaction strengths. Thus, incorporating these distribution with many weak links via weighted instead of unweighted food web measures can shed new light on classical theories