Stephansenmcneill4397

Potter wasps (Vespidae Eumeninae) are known to exhibit not only sophisticated preying strategies but also a remarkable ability to manipulate clay during nest building. Due to a mixture of plasticity in building behavior and flexibility in substrate preferences during nest building, the group has been reported nesting in a variety of places, including decaying nests abandoned by termite species. Yet, evidence of wasps nesting inside senescent termite mounds is poorly reported, and to date, accounts confirming their presence inside active colonies of termites are absent. Here, we address a novel intriguing association between two species from the Brazilian Cerrado a previously unknown potter wasp (nest invader) and a termite species (nest builder). Besides scientifically describing Montezumia termitophila sp. nov. (Vespidae Eumeninae), named after its association with the termite Constrictotermes cyphergaster (Silvestri, 1901) (Termitidae Nasutitermitinae), we provide preliminary information about the new species' bionomics by including (a) a hypothetical life cycle based on the evidence we collected and (b) a footage showing the first interaction between a recently ecloded wasp and a group of termites. In doing so, we attempt to provoke relevant discussions in the field and, perhaps, motivate further studies with the group. Finally, we describe a solution to efficiently detect and sample termitophilous species from termite nests, an intrinsic yet challenging task of any studies dealing with such a cryptic biological system.Agricultural ecosystems are by their very nature novel and by definition the more general biodiversity associated with them must likewise constitute a novel community. Here, we examine the community of arboreally foraging ants in the coffee agroecosystem of Puerto Rico. We surveyed 20 coffee plants in 25 farms three times in a period of one year. We also conducted a more spatially explicit sampling in two of the farms and conducted a species interaction study between the two most abundant species, Wasmannia auropunctata and Solenopsis invicta, in the laboratory. We find that the majority of the most common species are well-known invasive ants and that there is a highly variable pattern of dominance that varies considerably over the main coffee producing region of Puerto Rico, suggesting an unusual modality of community structure. The distribution pattern of the two most common species, W. auropunctata and S. invicta, suggests strong competitive exclusion. However, they also have opposite relationships with the percent of shade cover, with W. auropunctata showing a positive relationship with shade, while S. APX-115 invicta has a negative relationship. The spatial distribution of these two dominant species in the two more intensively studied farms suggests that young colonies of S. invicta can displace W. auropunctata. Laboratory experiments confirm this. In addition to the elaboration of the nature and extent of this novel ant community, we speculate on the possibilities of its active inclusion as part of a biological control system dealing with several coffee pests, including one of the ants itself, W. auropunctata.Big, beautiful organisms are useful for biological education, increasing evolution literacy, and biodiversity conservation. But if educators gloss over the ubiquity of streamlined and miniaturized organisms, they unwittingly leave students and the public vulnerable to the idea that the primary evolutionary plot of every metazoan lineage is "progressive" and "favors" complexity. We show that simple, small, and intriguingly repulsive invertebrate animals provide a counterpoint to misconceptions about evolution. Our examples can be immediately deployed in biology courses and outreach. This context emphasizes that chordates are not the pinnacle of evolution. Rather, in the evolution of animals, miniaturization, trait loss, and lack of perfection are at least as frequent as their opposites. Teaching about invertebrate animals in a "tree thinking" context uproots evolution misconceptions (for students and the public alike), provides a mental scaffold for understanding all animals, and helps to cultivate future ambassadors and experts on these little-known, weird, and fascinating taxa.Many studies have been done on the relationship between variation in morphology, dispersal ability and degree of dormancy of heterocarpic species with dimorphic diaspores. However, there are far fewer such studies on species that produce trimorphic diaspores. Our aim was to compare dormancy and germination of achenes from peripheral, intermediate and central positions in the capitulum of the diaspore-trimorphic cold desert annual Asteraceae species Heteracia szovitsii, an important component of plant communities in the cold deserts of NW China. Dormancy breaking/germination responses of the three achene morphs and of seeds isolated from the pericarp were tested in the laboratory using standard procedures, and seedling emergence phenology of the achene morphs was monitored under natural cold desert temperature conditions in an experimental garden with and without supplemental watering. Depth of dormancy of the three achene morphs was peripheral > intermediate > central. Seedlings from the three morphs emerged in spring and in autumn. Cumulative seedling emergence percentage from achenes during 47 months of burial was central > intermediate > peripheral. Central achene morphs emerged over a period of ~12 months after sowing, while intermediate and peripheral achene morphs did so for ~40 and 47 months, respectively. Thus, H. szovitsii exhibits a temporal dispersal strategy. No viable central or intermediate achene morphs were present after 16 and 40 months, respectively, but ~60 % of the non-emerged peripheral achenes morphs were viable after 47 months. Based on our results on diaspore dormancy and those of a previous study of diaspore spatial dispersal of H. szovitsii, we conclude that this species has a high-intermediate-low risk diaspore dispersal/dormancy strategy that likely increases the chances for population persistence over time and space.