Atmospheres and Winds of PN Central Stars

The progress over the last years in modelling the atmospheres and winds of PN central stars is reviewed. We discuss the effect of the inclusion of the blanketing by millions of metal lines in NLTE on the diagnostics of photospheric and stellar wind lines, which can be used to determine stellar parameters such as effective temperature, gravity, radius, mass loss rate and distance. We also refer to recent work on the winds of massive O-type stars, which indicates that their winds are possibly inhomogeneous and clumped. We investigate implications from this work on the spectral diagnostics of PN central stars and introduce a method to determine wind clumping factors from the relative strengths of Halpha and HeII 4686. Based on new results we discuss the wind properties of CSPN.Comment: 8 pages, 12 figures; Proceedings, IAU Symposium No. 234, 2006, "Planetary Nebulae in our Galaxy and Beyond", M.J. Barlow and R.H. Mendez, ed

Defensive plats responses induced by Nesidiocoris tenuis (Hemiptera:Miridae) on tomato plants

In the last decade, biological control programs for greenhouse tomatoes and other crops have been successfully implemented using zoophytophagous plant bugs (Miridae), which can feed on both plant tissues and insect prey. It is well known that plants respond to herbivore attacks by releasing volatile compounds through diverse pathways triggered by phytohormones. These herbivore-induced plant volatiles can alert neighboring plants, repel or attract herbivores, and attract natural enemies of these herbivores. Nevertheless, the possible benefits of induced plant responses by zoophytophagous predators that could add to their usefulness as biocontrol agents have not been studied until now. Here we show that the zoophytophagous predator Nesidiocoris tenuis activated abscisic acid and jasmonic acid (JA) signaling pathways in tomato plants, which made them less attractive to the whitefly Bemisia tabaci, a major tomato pest worldwide, and more attractive to the whitefly parasitoid, Encarsia formosa. We also found that intact tomato plants exposed to volatiles from N. tenuis-punctured plants activated the JA pathway, and as a consequence, E. formosa was also attracted to these intact plants with activated defense systems. Thus, our results demonstrate that N. tenuis not only benefits tomato plants directly by entomophagy but also indirectly by phytophagy, which induces a physiological response in the tomato plant.The research leading to these results was funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement no. 265865, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (AGL2011-30538-C03) and the Conselleria d’Agricultura, Pesca i Alimentació de la Generalitat Valenciana. The authors thank Virginia Pedroche (IVIA) and Blas Agut (UJI) for their technical assistance, Javier Calvo (KOPPERT BS) for the supply of insects, Universitat Jaume I-SCIC for technical support and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on a previous version of this manuscript

Can pollen provision mitigate competition interactions between three phytoseiid predators of Tetranychus urticae under future climate change conditions?

Biological control can be severely disrupted by hot and dry environmental conditions associated with climate change. These conditions may alter the food web configuration of arthropod communities through their effects on species interactions. They could disrupt the competition between the phytoseiid predators Euseius stipulatus, Neoseiulus californicus, and Phytoseiulus persimilis, which are the key natural enemies of Tetranychus urticae in citrus in Spain. Because the provision of alternative food could compensate for such a situation, we studied in laboratory conditions whether pollen supply could modify competition among these predatory species under different climatic conditions. Our results show that access to high-quality pollen may enhance the performance of E. stipulatus and N. californicus. However, when the phytoseiids considered in our study were forced to compete, pollen provision had contrasting effects depending on the competing pair. Overall, climate change did not affect predation when pollen was available. Predation, though, was lower than expected except when the competing pair was P. persimilis and E. stipulatus. Therefore, pollen provision can partially mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on some of the biological parameters of the three main predators of T. urticae when competing in the system. This has important implications for the future success of biological pest control.Funding for open access charge: CRUE-Universitat Jaume IThe authors thank M. Piquer (UJI) and Arcadi Sanz (UJI) for technical assistance, J. Calvo (KOPPERT BS, Spain) for supplying N. californicus, M.V Ibáñez-Gual (UJI) for statistical advice, and C. Rodriguez-Saona for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. PUB received a predoctoral grant from MCINN (EEBB-I-14-08555)