Presence of the “Threatened” \u3ci\u3eTrimerotropis Huroniana\u3c/i\u3e (Orthoptera: Acrididae) in Relation to the Occurrence of Native Dune Plant Species and the Exotic \u3ci\u3eCentaurea Biebersteinii\u3c/i\u3e

Trimerotropis huroniana Wlk. is a “Threatened” species in Michigan and Wisconsin with a distribution limited to open dune systems in the northern Great Lakes region of North America. Pitfall traps were utilized in the Grand Sable Dunes of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI, along with an herbaceous plant survey, to identify the relationship of T. huroniana with native dune plant species, Ammophila breviligulata Fern. (American beachgrass, Poaceae), Artemisia campestris L. (field sagewort, Asteraceae), and the exotic invasive plant Centaurea biebersteinii DC. [=Centaurea maculosa, spotted knapweed, Lamarck] (Asteraceae). The absence of C. biebersteinii resulted in an increased likelihood of capturing T. huroniana. This was most likely due to the increased likelihood of encountering A. campestris in areas without C. biebersteinii. The occurrence of A. breviligulata was independent of C. biebersteinii presence. A significant positive linear relationship occurred between the percent cover of A. campestris and the traps that captured T. huroniana. There was no significant relationship between A. breviligulata percent cover and the traps that captured T. huroniana. The occurrence and distribution of T. huroniana is closely related to the presence and abundance of A. campestris. Habitat conservation and improvement for T. huroniana should include increases in A. campestris populations through the removal of C. biebersteinii

Predicting Emerald Ash Borer, \u3ci\u3eAgrilus Planipennis\u3c/i\u3e (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), Landing Behavior on Unwounded Ash

Detection of emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), an invasive forest pest, is difficult in low density populations war- ranting continual development of various trapping techniques and protocols. Understanding and predicting landing behavior of A. planipennis may assist in the further development of trapping techniques and improvement of trapping protocols for widespread survey programs in North America. Three multiple regression models were developed using ash tree vigor and crown light exposure to predict the landing behavior of A. planipennis. These models were then used to predict the landing density of A. planipennis at separate sites and in separate years. Successful prediction of A. planipennis capture density at the test sites was limited. Even though the multiple regression models were not effective at predicting landing behavior of A. planipennis, tree characteristics were used to predict the likelihood of A. planipennis landing. Trees predicted as having high likelihood of landing had 3.5 times as many A. planipennis adults/m2 on stem traps than trees predicted as having low likelihood of landing. While the landing density of A. planipennis may not be efficiently predicted, the utility of these predictions may be in the form of identifying trees with a high likelihood of A. planipennis landing. Those high likelihood trees may assist in improving existing detection programs and techniques in North American forests

Presence of the “Threatened” \u3ci\u3eTrimerotropis Huroniana\u3c/i\u3e (Orthoptera: Acrididae) in Relation to the Occurrence of Native Dune Plant Species and the Exotic \u3ci\u3eCentaurea Biebersteinii\u3c/i\u3e

Trimerotropis huroniana Wlk. is a “Threatened” species in Michigan and Wisconsin with a distribution limited to open dune systems in the northern Great Lakes region of North America. Pitfall traps were utilized in the Grand Sable Dunes of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI, along with an herbaceous plant survey, to identify the relationship of T. huroniana with native dune plant species, Ammophila breviligulata Fern. (American beachgrass, Poaceae), Artemisia campestris L. (field sagewort, Asteraceae), and the exotic invasive plant Centaurea biebersteinii DC. [=Centaurea maculosa, spotted knapweed, Lamarck] (Asteraceae). The absence of C. biebersteinii resulted in an increased likelihood of capturing T. huroniana. This was most likely due to the increased likelihood of encountering A. campestris in areas without C. biebersteinii. The occurrence of A. breviligulata was independent of C. biebersteinii presence. A significant positive linear relationship occurred between the percent cover of A. campestris and the traps that captured T. huroniana. There was no significant relationship between A. breviligulata percent cover and the traps that captured T. huroniana. The occurrence and distribution of T. huroniana is closely related to the presence and abundance of A. campestris. Habitat conservation and improvement for T. huroniana should include increases in A. campestris populations through the removal of C. biebersteinii

A comparison of incompressible limits for resistive plasmas

The constraint of incompressibility is often used to simplify the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) description of linearized plasma dynamics because it does not affect the ideal MHD marginal stability point. In this paper two methods for introducing incompressibility are compared in a cylindrical plasma model: In the first method, the limit $\gamma \to \infty$ is taken, where $\gamma$ is the ratio of specific heats; in the second, an anisotropic mass tensor $\mathbf{\rho}$ is used, with the component parallel to the magnetic field taken to vanish, $\rho_{\parallel} \to 0$. Use of resistive MHD reveals the nature of these two limits because the Alfv\'en and slow magnetosonic continua of ideal MHD are converted to point spectra and moved into the complex plane. Both limits profoundly change the slow-magnetosonic spectrum, but only the second limit faithfully reproduces the resistive Alfv\'en spectrum and its wavemodes. In ideal MHD, the slow magnetosonic continuum degenerates to the Alfv\'en continuum in the first method, while it is moved to infinity by the second. The degeneracy in the first is broken by finite resistivity. For numerical and semi-analytical study of these models, we choose plasma equilibria which cast light on puzzling aspects of results found in earlier literature.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure

Efficacy of treatments against garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) and effects on forest understory plant diversity

Garlic mustard, an invasive exotic biennial herb, has been identified in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but is not yet widely distributed. We tested the effectiveness and impact of management tools for garlic mustard in northern hardwood forests. Six treatment types (no treatment control, hand-pull, herbicide, hand-pull/herbicide, scorch, and hand-pull/scorch) were applied within a northern hardwood forest invaded by garlic mustard. We sampled understory vegetation within plots to compare garlic mustard abundance (distinguishing first and second year plants) and native plant diversity before and after treatment. Results immediately following treatment indicated that garlic mustard seedling abundance was significantly reduced by herbicide, hand-pull/herbicide, scorch, and hand-pull/scorch treatments, and that adult abundance was reduced by all treatments. However, sampling of treatment sites one year later showed an increase in seedling abundance in herbicide and hand-pull/herbicide plots. Adult garlic mustard abundance after one year was lower than the control with the exception of the hand-pull plots where adult abundance did not differ. After one year, understory species richness and Shannon’s Diversity were lower in the herbicide and pull/herbicide treatments. Based on these results, we conclude that single-year treatment of garlic mustard with hand-pulling, herbicide, and/or scorching is ineffective in reducing garlic mustard abundance and may inadvertently increase the success of garlic mustard, while negatively impacting native understory species

Recently Integrated Alu Elements In Capuchin Monkeys: A Resource For Cebus/Sapajus Genomics

Capuchins are platyrrhines (monkeys found in the Americas) within the Cebidae family. For most of their taxonomic history, the two main morphological types of capuchins, gracile (untufted) and robust (tufted), were assigned to a single genus, Cebus. Further, all tufted capuchins were assigned to a single species, Cebus apella, despite broad geographic ranges spanning Central and northern South America. In 2012, tufted capuchins were assigned to their genus, Sapajus, with eight currently recognized species and five Cebus species, although these numbers are still under debate. Alu retrotransposons are a class of mobile element insertion (MEI) widely used to study primate phylogenetics. However, Alu elements have rarely been used to study capuchins. Recent genome-level assemblies for capuchins (Cebus imitator; [Cebus_imitator_1.0] and Sapajus apella [GSC_monkey_1.0]) facilitated large scale ascertainment of young lineage-specific Alu insertions. Reported here are 1607 capuchin specific and 678 Sapajus specific Alu insertions along with candidate oligonucleotides for locus-specific PCR assays for many elements. PCR analyses identified 104 genus level and 51 species level Alu insertion polymorphisms. The Alu datasets reported in this study provide a valuable resource that will assist in the classification of archival samples lacking phenotypic data and for the study of capuchin phylogenetic relationships

Searching of gapped repeats and subrepetitions in a word

A gapped repeat is a factor of the form $uvu$ where $u$ and $v$ are nonempty words. The period of the gapped repeat is defined as $|u|+|v|$. The gapped repeat is maximal if it cannot be extended to the left or to the right by at least one letter with preserving its period. The gapped repeat is called $\alpha$-gapped if its period is not greater than $\alpha |v|$. A $\delta$-subrepetition is a factor which exponent is less than 2 but is not less than $1+\delta$ (the exponent of the factor is the quotient of the length and the minimal period of the factor). The $\delta$-subrepetition is maximal if it cannot be extended to the left or to the right by at least one letter with preserving its minimal period. We reveal a close relation between maximal gapped repeats and maximal subrepetitions. Moreover, we show that in a word of length $n$ the number of maximal $\alpha$-gapped repeats is bounded by $O(\alpha^2n)$ and the number of maximal $\delta$-subrepetitions is bounded by $O(n/\delta^2)$. Using the obtained upper bounds, we propose algorithms for finding all maximal $\alpha$-gapped repeats and all maximal $\delta$-subrepetitions in a word of length $n$. The algorithm for finding all maximal $\alpha$-gapped repeats has $O(\alpha^2n)$ time complexity for the case of constant alphabet size and $O(n\log n + \alpha^2n)$ time complexity for the general case. For finding all maximal $\delta$-subrepetitions we propose two algorithms. The first algorithm has $O(\frac{n\log\log n}{\delta^2})$ time complexity for the case of constant alphabet size and $O(n\log n +\frac{n\log\log n}{\delta^2})$ time complexity for the general case. The second algorithm has $O(n\log n+\frac{n}{\delta^2}\log \frac{1}{\delta})$ expected time complexity

Construct, Merge, Solve and Adapt: Application to the repetition-free longest common subsequence problem

In this paper we present the application of a recently proposed, general, algorithm for combinatorial optimization to the repetition-free longest common subsequence problem. The applied algorithm, which is labelled Construct, Merge, Solve & Adapt, generates sub-instances based on merging the solution components found in randomly constructed solutions. These sub-instances are subsequently solved by means of an exact solver. Moreover, the considered sub-instances are dynamically changing due to adding new solution components at each iteration, and removing existing solution components on the basis of indicators about their usefulness. The results of applying this algorithm to the repetition-free longest common subsequence problem show that the algorithm generally outperforms competing approaches from the literature. Moreover, they show that the algorithm is competitive with CPLEX for small and medium size problem instances, whereas it outperforms CPLEX for larger problem instances.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Estimativa do nível crítico de cobre para a soja, em solos do cerrado brasileiro.

A prática da monocultura de soja no Brasil, com o passar do tempo, pode diminuir o teor de matéria orgânica dos solos, sendo esse problema mais sério em solos arenosos. Isso tem aumentado a deficiência de certos micronutrientes, em especial o cobre (Cu). Além disso, a aplicação de adubos, muitas vezes em demasia e sem critério técnico, pode provocar problemas nutricionais de toxicidade ou deficiência desse micronutriente. Com a expansão da soja nas regiões de solos de Cerrado, passou-se para o cultivo em solos de textura média a arenosa, com teores de argila inferiores a 200 g.kg-1, CTC baixa e, originalmente, com baixo teor de Cu. Foram instalados experimentos, com a cultura da soja, em três solos do Cerrado: Latossolo Vermelho Amarelo (LVA) com 260 g.kg-1 de argila, no município de Tasso Fragoso, Latossolo Vermelho (LV) com 450 g.kg-1 de argila, no município de São Raimundo das Mangabeiras, ambos no sul do Estado do Maranhão e em Latossolo Vermelho (LV) com 550 g.kg-1 de argila, no município de Pedra Preta, sudeste do Estado do Mato Grosso, com seis doses de Cu (0; 1,25; 2,5; 5,0; 10 e 20 kg/ha), da fonte sulfato de cobre (30% de Cu) e seis níveis de saturação de bases (V%=30, 40, 50, 60, 70 e 80), com quatro repetições. Os valores estimados, acima dos quais não é esperada resposta à aplicação de cobre, são de 0,74 mg.dm-3 e 0,34 mg.dm-3 de Cu2+, pelos métodos Mehlich e DTPA, respectivamente. Portanto, as faixas de Cu no solo em mg.dm-3, para interpretação dos níveis do nutriente no solo são: para o Método Mehlich-1; Baixo 0,74. Para o Método DTPA; Baixo 0,34

Bostonia. Volume 15

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs