A comparative study on the functional response of Wolbachia-infected and uninfected forms of the parasitoid wasp Trichogramma brassicae

Trichogramma species (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) are haplo-diploid egg parasitoids that are frequently used as biological control agents against lepidopteran pests. These wasps display two reproductive modes, including arrhenotoky (bisexuality) and thelytoky (unisexuality). Thelytokous forms are often associated with the presence of endosymbiotic Wolbachia bacteria. The use of thelytokous wasps has long been considered as a way to enhance the efficacy of biological control. The present study investigates the potential of a thelytokous Wolbachiainfected and an arrhenotokous uninfected Trichogramma brassicae Bezdenko strain as inundative biocontrol agents by evaluating their functional response towards different egg densities of the factitious host, the Angoumois grain moth, Sitotroga cerealella (Olivier) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae). The results revealed a type II functional response for both strains in which parasitism efficiency decreases with host egg density because of an increasing host handling time. A model with an indicator variable was used to compare the parameters of Holling’s disc equation in different data sets. It was demonstrated that the two strains did not differ in host attack rate. However, the Wolbachia-infected strain did have an increased host handling time when compared to the bisexual strain. Some applied aspects of the findings are discusse

The efficient bond among mobile commerce, CRM and E-loyalty to maximise the productivity of companies

Mobile commerce, has become a significant topic in IS research community and it is a key concept for many businesses, However, it has not fulfilled the expectations. This paper tackles the issue of mobile commerce in three different ways. First, it emphasizes the relative importance of customer relationship management and its relationship with mobile commerce. Second, it illustrates the ways to enhance E-loyalty of the clients within small and medium enterprises. Ultimately, the positive relationship among these, three concepts will be clarified. M-Commerce constitutes an important future market worldwide.This paper argues that businesses should strengthen and enhance loyalty as well as e-loyalty and M-Commerce activities, in order to better acquire the customers toward wireless marketing and customer relationship channels. Moreover to get the most euphoria businesses must create value for consumers in a way that is different from what they get used to prior to the latest version of services from the businesses. This paper, introduces a new area of doing business with the assistance of CRM and some evaluators to grasp loyalty under the context of mobile commerce. In addition, businesses should consider consumer's willingness to use successful features of M-Commerce. While performing the project, we expect to achieve productivity and reputation to the organization

Fasciculate kleopatrinid corals from the Bashkirian (Late Carboniferous) of Sardar Formation (Ozbak-Kuh mountains, East-central Iran)

In the East-Central Iran, the Sardar Formation (upper Visean–Moscovian) consists of shallow-water limestone with intercalations of shale containing rugose corals, tabulate corals and brachiopods. Ten sections were sampled in the Ozbak-kuh Mountains, from north to south. Among the rugose corals, an assemblage of fasciculate Kleopatrinidae has been collected. The latter contains the species: Paraheritschioides antoni antoni, P. antoni minor, P. gracilis and two new species for the genera Fomichevella and Heintzella. Heintzella is described from Iran for the first time. However, its age, as determined by conodonts and foraminifers, is early to middle Bashkirian (early late Carboniferous). The most similar, time-equivalent faunal associations are that of the Ellesmere Island, Sverdrup Basin in Arctic Canada, Alexander terrane and Brooks Range in southeastern Alaska and eastern Klamath terrane in northern California, where similar tropical warm water conditions have been identified during the Bashkirian in the northern hemisphere. During these times central Iran block and Northern provinces, characterized by a dominant carbonate facies and more diversified colonial coral faunas

Data-driven short-term load forecasting for heating and cooling demand in office buildings

Short-term forecasts of energy demand in buildings serve as key information for various operational schemes such as predictive control and demand response programs. Despite this, developing forecast models for heating and cooling loads has received little attention in the literature compared to models for electricity load. In this paper, we present data-driven approaches to forecast hourly heating and cooling energy use in office buildings based on temporal, autoregressive, and exogenous variables. The proposed models calculate hourly loads for a horizon between one hour and 12 hours ahead. Individual models based on artificial neural networks (ANN) and change-point models (CPM) as well as a hybrid of the two methods are developed. A case study is conducted based on hourly thermal load data collected from several office buildings located on the same campus in Ottawa, Canada. The models are trained with more than two years of hourly energy-use data and tested on a separate part of the dataset to enable unbiased validation. The results show that the ANN model can achieve higher forecasting accuracy for the longest forecast horizon and outperforms the results obtained by a Naïve approach and the CPM. However, the performance of the hybrid CPM-ANN method is superior compared to individual models for all studied buildings

First report of Quaternary mammals from the Qalehjough area, Lut Desert, Eastern Iran

Taxonomic study of Quaternary mammal remains from the Qalehjough fossil site, eastern Iran, has resulted in the identification of two mammal orders, Artiodactyla and Perissodactyla, with four families and six taxa. Of particular note was the recovery of Stephanorhinus and a caballoid horse. These remains have provided the first opportunity to examine Late Quaternary faunal assemblages in the northern parts of the Lut Desert, eastern Iran. The Qalehjough faunal assemblage documents some zoogeographic characteristics of the eastern Iranian Plateau, and suggests that palaeoenvironments in this part of Iran during the Pleistocene were more humid and wooded than today. The disappearance of rhinoceroses and caballoid horses from this region is most likely a result of climate change and concomitant habitat loss

Photoperiod Effect on Fecundity, Longevity and Sex ratio of Trichogramma brassicae (Hym: Trichogrammatidae)

The effect of photoperiod on parasitization of the eggs of Ephestia kuehniella Zeller (Lep: Pyralidae) by Trichogramma brassicae Bezdenko (Hym: Trichogrammatidae) was investigated under several photoperiodic regimes of L: D = 0: 24, 3: 21, 6: 18, 9: 15, 12: 12, 15: 9, 18: 6, 21: 3 and absolute light on. Fecundity of T. brassicae females (the number of parasitized E. kuehniella eggs) was independent of photoperiod in the whole life time of females. However, photoperiod had a significant influence on the longevity of T. brassicae females. The least fecundity and longevity was for those that developed and were kept under 18L: 6D and the highest fecundity and longevity was for those that developed and were kept under 21L: 3D and absolute darkness, respectively. On the other hand, the proportion of T. brassicae females was dependent of photoperiod and the highest proportion of females was observed under 18L: 6D. It seems that long term photoperiods may stimulate a particular gland to secret a special hormone which results in more longevity and female proportion of parasitoid. As a conclusion, long term photoperiods may improve efficiency of the parasitoid by increasing longevity and sex ratio

Effect of single and mixed diets on the fitness of omnivorous thrips, Thrips tabaci (Thys.: Thripidae)

Abstract Food choice in omnivorous animals is influenced by the balance of nutritional needs, food availability, and quality of a particular food items. Here, we study whether omnivorous onion thrips, Thrips tabaci Lindeman, feed on the eggs of its competitor Tetranychus urticae Koch (Acari: Tetranychidae) when an alternative supplemental source is, or is not, available. Thrips were either fed a cucumber leaf alone, or this diet was supplemented with pollen, mite eggs, or both. We demonstrated that the supplemental food sources improved several fitness-determining traits of thrips with pollen, being nutritionally superior to mite eggs. Pollen reduced the development time and increased the population growth of thrips compared to mite eggs. When both pollen and mite eggs were available, thrips fed on both; pollen to improve nutritional status and eggs to eliminate the opponent, despite the latter's consisting lower of nutritional benefit. In all, this study showed that omnivorous thrips benefit from a cucumber leaf diet that is supplemented with other food sources and that pollen and mite eggs increase several fitness traitsand positively affect the dynamics of future thrips generations

Effect of single and mixed diets on the fitness of omnivorous thrips, Thrips tabaci (Thys.: Thripidae)

Food choice in omnivorous animals is influenced by the balance of nutritional needs, food availability, and quality of a particular food items. Here, we study whether omnivorous onion thrips, Thrips tabaci Lindeman, feed on the eggs of its competitor Tetranychus urticae Koch (Acari: Tetranychidae) when an alternative supplemental source is, or is not, available. Thrips were either fed a cucumber leaf alone, or this diet was supplemented with pollen, mite eggs, or both. We demonstrated that the supplemental food sources improved several fitness-determining traits of thrips with pollen, being nutritionally superior to mite eggs. Pollen reduced the development time and increased the population growth of thrips compared to mite eggs. When both pollen and mite eggs were available, thrips fed on both; pollen to improve nutritional status and eggs to eliminate the opponent, despite the latterâs consisting lower of nutritional benefit. In all, this study showed that omnivorous thrips benefit from a cucumber leaf diet that is supplemented with other food sources and that pollen and mite eggs increase several fitness traits and positively affect the dynamics of future thrips generations

Towards an Achievable Performance for the Loop Nests

Numerous code optimization techniques, including loop nest optimizations, have been developed over the last four decades. Loop optimization techniques transform loop nests to improve the performance of the code on a target architecture, including exposing parallelism. Finding and evaluating an optimal, semantic-preserving sequence of transformations is a complex problem. The sequence is guided using heuristics and/or analytical models and there is no way of knowing how close it gets to optimal performance or if there is any headroom for improvement. This paper makes two contributions. First, it uses a comparative analysis of loop optimizations/transformations across multiple compilers to determine how much headroom may exist for each compiler. And second, it presents an approach to characterize the loop nests based on their hardware performance counter values and a Machine Learning approach that predicts which compiler will generate the fastest code for a loop nest. The prediction is made for both auto-vectorized, serial compilation and for auto-parallelization. The results show that the headroom for state-of-the-art compilers ranges from 1.10x to 1.42x for the serial code and from 1.30x to 1.71x for the auto-parallelized code. These results are based on the Machine Learning predictions.Comment: Accepted at the 31st International Workshop on Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing (LCPC 2018