Over 90% of forestry work is carried out today by contractors, therefore clear agreements between the client and the contractor it is of utmost importance. Contract Packages for work within the forest sector (APSE) is a collection contract templates that the industry jointly developed for this purpose. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how forest contractors do to keep themselves updated of the current laws and government regulations, which channels are available to accomplish this and what possible obstacles may occur. 20 interviews were conducted with contractors engaged in logging. The results show, among other things, the availability of and which channels most contractors use out of which aggravating circumstances exist and how strong they are perceived and what is expected of the client in this regard.

Intracellular symbioses between bacteria and insects are numerous, and alter the ecology and evolution of host and symbiont alike. Long-term persistence results from either exploitation (e.g., reproductive manipulations) or mutually beneficial interactions (e.g., nutritional mutualisms). The endosymbiont Hamiltonella defensa, while not essential for growth or survival of healthy aphids, protects aphids from attack by parasitoid wasps. In this thesis, I have used a variety of sequenced-based techniques to illuminate the population and genome dynamics of H. defensa and to disentangle how these factors contribute to its ability to persist and protect its hosts.I characterized the phylogenetic relationships among H. defensa strains from aphids and a whitefly using a multilocus approach. Most loci evolve in a clonal manner, and one cluster of strains may have given rise to an obligate symbiosis. Some H. defensa strains were infected with the bacteriophage APSE, which encodes putative eukaryotic specific toxins and has been suggested to be involved in protecting aphids. I sequenced the toxin locus and the flanking regions from the APSE strains and found that although the phage genome backbone was highly conserved, strains contained non-orthologous toxin-cassettes. Sequenced cassettes contained one of three putative toxin families: Shiga toxin, cytolethal distending toxin, and YD-repeat toxins. A correlation was noted that of several genetically identical H. defensa strains, the one without phage APSE encoding the YD-repeat toxin failed to protect its aphid host. This APSE strain carrying the YD-repeat toxin has since been demonstrated to be essential for protection in several related H. defensastrains.To examine additional bacterial encoded loci that might facilitate the persistence in and protection of aphids by H. defensa, I sequenced the genome of one strain and obtained partial genomes of two additional strains. These genomes exhibit a streamlined metabolism, but are littered with mobile DNA and putative virulence factors. Horizontal gene transfer, recombination and rearrangements are common, and phage and plasmids have played an important role in resorting genes. Thus, although H. defensa benefits its host, its facultative lifestyle has resulted in a pattern of genome evolution associated with reproductive parasites rather than long-term mutualists.

The gammaproteobacterium Arsenophonus nasoniae infects Nasonia vitripennis (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae), a parasitic wasp that attacks filth flies. This bacterium kills virtually all male offspring of infected females. Female wasps transmit A. nasoniae both vertically (from mother to offspring) and horizontally (to unrelated Nasonia developing in the same fly). This latter mode may enable the bacterium to colonize novel species and spread throughout a filth fly-parasitoid guild. This spread may be important for maintenance of the bacterium. The ecology of novel hosts may be significantly impacted by infection. The actual and potential host range of A. nasoniae was assessed. I used Arsenophonus-specific primers to screen a large sample of filth flies and their parasitoids. The bacterium infects a wide range of wasp species in the environment. The potential host range was determined by inoculating three wasp and one fly species with an isolate of A. nasoniae from Lethbridge, AB. The bacterium successfully infected all insects and was transmitted by two wasp species. It reduced host longevity, but did not kill males, in Trichomalopsis sarcophagae. It also caused pupal mortality in Musca domestica.