Evolutionary Entropy: A Predictor of Body Size, Metabolic Rate and Maximal Life Span

Body size of organisms spans 24 orders of magnitude, and metabolic rate and life span present comparable differences across species. This article shows that this variation can be explained in terms of evolutionary entropy, a statistical parameter which characterizes the robustness of a population, and describes the uncertainty in the age of the mother of a randomly chosen newborn. We show that entropy also has a macroscopic description: It is linearly related to the logarithm of the variables body size, metabolic rate, and life span. Furthermore, entropy characterizes Darwinian fitness, the efficiency with which a population acquires and converts resources into viable offspring. Accordingly, entropy predicts the outcome of natural selection in populations subject to different classes of ecological constraints. This predictive property, when integrated with the macroscopic representation of entropy, is the basis for enormous differences in morphometric and life-history parameters across species

Importance of ticks and their chemical and immunological control in livestock

The medical and economic importance of ticks has long been recognized due to their ability to transmit diseases to humans and animals. Ticks cause great economic losses to livestock, and adversely affect livestock hosts in several ways. Loss of blood is a direct effect of ticks acting as potential vector for haemo-protozoa and helminth parasites. Blood sucking by large numbers of ticks causes reduction in live weight and anemia among domestic animals, while their bites also reduce the quality of hides. However, major losses caused by ticks are due to their ability to transmit protozoan, rickettsial and viral diseases of livestock, which are of great economic importance world-wide. There are quite a few methods for controlling ticks, but every method has certain shortcomings. The present review is focused on ticks importance and their control