Life Sciences Commons^™

Impact Of Weed Management Practices On Grapevine Growth, Yield Components, Plant And Arthropod Abundance, And Carabid Seed Predation In Paso Robles Vineyard, Paolo Sanguankeo

Master's Theses

In the Central Coast of California, USA, wine grape growers are making efforts to identify weed control practices that promote biodiversity in their vineyards while maintaining yields. A field study was conducted in Paso Robles, CA in 2006 and 2007 evaluating the effect on Zinfandel grape-vine growth and production, groundcover plant, and ground dwelling arthropod communities of five weed control practices: 1) flumioxazin, 2) simazine, 3) cultivation, 4) cover crop, and 5) untreated control.

The herbicide treatments had the lowest weed biomass followed by the cultivation, being approximately 10 and 2 times lower than the weed biomass of either the …

Beetle Species Diversity In The Lesser Antilles Islands: How Many Species Are Really There?, Stewart B. Peck

Insecta Mundi

Recent extensive and intensive field work by the team of M. A. Ivie on the Lesser Antillean island of Montserrat suggests that a mean of 827 beetle species may be expected on that island. This datum makes possible the generation of hypotheses of the probable beetle species diversity on other islands of the Lesser Antilles as a function of the areas of the islands. Figures are given for the presently known, estimated total, and estimated number of unknown species for each principal island. This predicts that many hundreds (if not thousands) of beetle species remain to be discovered. This is …

Species Richness And Host Associations Of Lepidoptera-Attacking Tachinidae In The Northeast Ecuadorian Andes, John O. Stireman Iii, Harold F. Greeney, Lee A. Dyer

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Most of the unknown biological diversity of macro-organisms remaining to be discovered and described lies in the tropical regions of the world and consists primarily of insects. Those insects with parasitoid lifestyles constitute a significant portion of insect diversity, yet parasitoids are among the most poorly known of major insect guilds in the humid tropics. Here we describe and analyze the richness of one diverse taxon of parasitoids, flies in the family Tachinidae, reared from Lepidoptera as part of a biological survey of Lepidoptera and their parasitoids in one mid-elevation (2000 m) area in the northeast Ecuadorian Andes. One hundred …