Defoliating insect systems, defined for the purposes of this thesis as being composed of insects which defoliate forest trees and the species with which they interact, such as their host trees and their natural enemy complexes, exhibit a wide variety of population behaviors. Similarly, a number of theories and models have been proposed to explain these behaviors. These theories emphasize the importance of different ecological processes, often concentrate on the defoliator and overlook the importance of other components. Also, much of the current understanding of the dynamics of these systems has come from forest pest research and management programs, tailored towards specific pest problems and often very short term in nature. This thesis develops and begins to test a general approach for the local dynamics of defoliating insect systems. This framework outlines the system components that are necessary to predict the behavior of defoliating insect systems. It includes ways in which the equilibrium structure of defoliating insect systems, defined as the number of equilibria for each system component, the population levels at which the equilibria occur, and the processes creating the equilibria, might be found. The framework also includes methods of inducing the qualitative behavior of these sys- terns, defined as the periodicity of defoliator outbreaks, the length of outbreaks, and the dynamics of other important system components between, during, and in the decline of defoliator outbreaks. The study begins with a detailed literature review of historical theories of defoliating insect system behavior and of the documented behavior patterns of these systems. Major classes of behavior are identified, as well as the various ecological processes which have been invoked to explain these behaviors. An analysis and documentation of the equilibrium structure and behavior of three defoliating defoliating insect systems, the eastern blackheaded budworm, the eastern spruce budworm, and the jack pine sawfly, are then used to develop general rules about how equilibrium structure and behavior can be explained. This analysis, coupled with the literature review, is used to develop the framework. The framework is then tested against historical defoliator population data and general syntheses of defoliating insect system research to assess its utility and predictability. The major results of the thesis are as follows. First, it appears that the structure and behavior of a defoliating insect system can be explained with five dynamic variables: the abundances of the defoliator; the foliage; the forest; the parasitoid; and the disease; and the effects of weather acting on the defoliator. Second, there appear to be 4 classes of defoliating insect system behavior. Third, the behavior that a defoliating insect system will exhibit seems to be determined by the magnitude of weather effects on defoliator survival and recruitment, the parasitoid numerical response to changing defoliator densities, the disease numerical response to changing defoliator densities, and the vulnerability of the forest to defoliation. Fourth, there seem to be four equilibrium structures the defoliator can exhibit, and one each for the parasitoid, the foliage, the forest, and the disease. Finally, the framework suggests that defoliating insect system structure and behavior can be induced with a particular, well-defined set of information. The framework is successful when applied to particular defoliating insect systems for explaining their behavior, but less successful in explaining defoliator equilibrium structure for other systems. Opportunities for more thorough testing of the framework exist if the particular types of data outlined above are gathered for defoliating insect systems. This lack of data for testing the framework make it currently difficult to clearly define those systems in which the framework is useful and those systems in which it is not. Experiments to test the framework are described and suggestions for future types of applied research on defoliating insect systems are presented. / Science, Faculty of / Zoology, Department of / Graduate

The probing behavior and feeding activity of green peach aphid, Myzus persicae Sulzer, on Bacillus thuringiensis ssp. tenebrionis- transgenic potatoes, insecticide treated potatoes, and host plants with different preference were electronically monitored. I found that first, transgenic potatoes had no effect on green peach aphid probing suggesting that transmission of green peach aphid-borne viruses would not be affected. Second, the probing behavior of green peach aphid was not modified by the insecticides, aldicarb, Admire, and Di-syston. However, the postfeeding behavior of aphids was different over time and with insecticides, which might have an influence on virus transmission in the field. Third, the probing behavior of green peach aphid on host plants with different preference varied. Aphids probed more when they moved from a higher-preference host plant (radish) to a lower preference host plant (potato). In addition, the settling rate was low when aphids were moved from higher to lower preference host plants. This difference might affect virus transmission in the field. Vector efficiency, relationship of virus transmission between vector and host plants, and vector control strategies are discussed. In addition, the probing behavior of two mosquito species, Aedes aegypti and Anopheles stephensi, on mice was recorded electronically to examine waveform patterns and to quantify sporozoite output. My studies indicated that sporozoite output of malaria-infected mosquitoes was not detected by using the electronic monitoring system. The relationship between waveform patterns and penetration activities of mosquitoes needs clarification before further studies can be conducted. / Graduation date: 1994

Ants are fascinating creatures - not so much because they are intelligent on their own, but because as a group they display compelling emergent behaviour (the extent to which one observes features in a swarm which cannot be traced back to the actions of swarm members). What does each swarm member do which allows deliberate engineering of emergent behaviour? We investigate the development of a language for programming swarms of ant agents towards desired emergent behaviour. Five aspects of stigmergic (pheromone sensitive computational devices in which a non-symbolic form of communication that is indirectly mediated via the environment arises) and message passing ant agents (computational devices which rely on implicit communication spaces in which direction vectors are shared one-on-one) are studied. First, we investigate the primitive behaviours which characterize ant agents' discrete actions at individual levels. Ten such primitive behaviours are identified as candidate building blocks of the ant agent language sought. We then study mechanisms in which primitive behaviours are put together into XSets (collection of primitive behaviours, parameter values, and meta information which spells out how and when primitive behaviours are used). Various permutations of XSets are possible which define the search space for best performer XSets for particular tasks. Genetic programming principles are proposed as a search strategy for best performer XSets that would allow particular emergent behaviour to occur. XSets in the search space are evolved over various genetic generations and tested for abilities to allow path finding (as proof of concept). XSets are ranked according to the indices of merit (fitness measures which indicate how well XSets allow particular emergent behaviour to occur) they achieve. Best performer XSets for the path finding task are identifed and reported. We validate the results yield when best performer XSets are used with regard to normality, correlation, similarities in variation, and similarities between mean performances over time. Commonly, the simulation results yield pass most statistical tests. The last aspect we study is the application of best performer XSets to different problem tasks. Five experiments are administered in this regard. The first experiment assesses XSets' abilities to allow multiple targets location (ant agents' abilities to locate continuous regions of targets), and found out that best performer XSets are problem independent. However both categories of XSets are sensitive to changes in agent density. We test the influences of individual primitive behaviours and the effects of the sequences of primitive behaviours to the indices of merit of XSets and found out that most primitive behaviours are indispensable, especially when specific sequences are prescribed. The effects of pheromone dissipation to the indices of merit of stigmergic XSets are also scrutinized. Precisely, dissipation is not causal. Rather, it enhances convergence. Overall, this work successfully identify the discrete primitive behaviours of stigmergic and message passing ant-like devices. It successfully put these primitive behaviours together into XSets which characterize a language for programming ant-like devices towards desired emergent behaviour. This XSets approach is a new ant language representation with which a wider domain of emergent tasks can be resolved.

Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The development of immature insects is commonly employed in forensic investigations to estimate time of death, or postmortem interval (PMI), of a corpse on which they are feeding. The bulk of this thesis focuses on factors influencing the accuracy of developmental data, and exploring how and why developmental data differ between studies involving the same species, and between different species. Because carrion feeding insects are ectotherms, temperature may be expected to significantly influence their behaviour, development and distribution, and the remainder of the thesis therefore focuses on the thermal biology and geographical distribution of seven forensically important blowflies. The species include Chrysomya albiceps, C. putoria, C. chloropyga, C. megacephala, C. marginalis, C. inclinata and Calliphora croceipalpis. A robust experimental design for estimating developmental models is outlined and tested. It is recommended that forensic entomologists should involve at least six constant temperatures, starting at about 7°C above the relevant developmental zero (D0) and going to about 10°C above the upper critical temperature, and a temporal sampling interval with a relative precision of about 10%. Using this design, focused experiments consistently provided the most reliable developmental data, while data pooled from different studies yielded inconsistent results. Similarly, developmental data from closely related species differed significantly, and surprisingly so did developmental data from different populations of the same species. Possible explanations for the latter lay in the different methods of data collection but only temporal sampling resolution had a direct influence on the accuracy of developmental data. Consequently, disparities in such data were primarily ascribed to genetic differences and phenotypic plasticity. Comparisons between numerous thermal thresholds of larvae, pupae and adults support this conclusion and suggest a phylogenetic component to the thermal biology of blowflies. Further comparisons were made between these temperature thresholds and the distributions of blowfly species present on two rhinoceros carcasses. These comparisons suggest that blowfly larvae with high upper lethal temperature thresholds dominate in interspecific competition in favorable thermal environments by raising maggot mass temperature above the thresholds of other carrion-feeding blowflies, through maggot-generated heat. Bioclimatic modeling using maximum entropy analysis provided a successful means of predicting whether a species is likely to occur in an area, and whether it would therefore be expected in a local carcass community. It also showed that temperature was less important than moisture in shaping the geographical distribution of African carrion blowflies. Based on these results, several recommendations are made for the practice of forensic entomology.

Configurations of Life historicizes four distinct clusters of biological research in colonial and early post-colonial India: the Zoological Survey of India, the so called ‘wolf-children’ natural experiment by anthropologists, the program in plant physiology and insect behavior at the Bose Institute, and the interdisciplinary group led by JBS Haldane at the Indian Statistical Institute. Each of these clusters, the dissertation shows, was invested in characterizing their sciences as specifically Indian in character: in the case of the “wolf-children,” by seizing on a supposedly endemic Indian social and natural phenomenon, and in the others, by claiming an allegedly Indian epistemological stance. Each, the dissertation argues, sought authority by claiming to provide heterodox and distinctly Indian solutions to the most fundamental question of biological science – what is life? – though they differed wildly on what ‘life,’ or ‘Indian,’ or indeed, ‘science’ itself meant. While the extant historiography has often read the effusion of similar claims to ‘Indianness’ in modern knowledge systems around the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a discursive byproduct of nationalism, this dissertation shows that the pursuit of an ‘Indian’ biology cut across racial, national and ideological lines among scientists working in British and early independent India. Instead, by tracking the complex relations between the institutional politics, material culture, and theoretical concerns across these clusters, the dissertation charts out the proselytization, practice and eventual demise of four very distinct understandings of an Indian science of life, based on ecological fieldwork, so-called natural experiments, laboratory instrumentation, and a holistic synthesis between population genetics, statistics and history, respectively. The question of the meaning of life, the dissertation shows, was mostly a rhetorical device invoked to underline the theoretical and methodological ambitions of these sciences, while enabling their individual conceptualizations of the relations between environments and organisms, between heredity and habitat, or between human and animal, to be read as the configurations of life itself. These attempts to create new, distinctly Indian knowledge systems and practices existed side by side and were informed with the larger popular and political project claiming ancient scientific glory on behalf of India, but their aspirations and methods cannot be historically conflated.

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Ce travail porte sur la dispersion des graines par les fourmis et se divise en deux parties :l’une expérimentale (Chapitres 1, 2 & 3) et l’autre synthétique (Chapitres 4 & 5). L’approche expérimentale a consisté en une exploration en conditions de laboratoire des comportements des fourmis à deux étapes du processus de myrmécochorie: à la source de graines et dans le nid. Des graines des plantes myrmécochores Viola odorata et Chelidonium majus ont été présentées aux fourmis Lasius niger et Myrmica rubra. Chaque étape de la séquence myrmécochorique a généré une variabilité des comportements propre à chacun des quatre couples fourmis-graines. <p>L’élaiosome n’attire pas les fourmis à distance. Les fourmis suivent toujours la même séquence de comportements :antennation, manipulation et prise des graines. Le nombre d’antennations et de manipulations avant la prise de graines peut être considéré comme un indicateur de l’« hésitation » des fourmis à prendre les graines. L’espèce à tendance carnivore Myrmica rubra a été plus rapide et efficace dans la prise de graines que l’espèce éleveuse de pucerons Lasius niger. Parallèlement, les fourmis ont moins antenné, moins manipulé et plus pris de graines de Chelidonium majus, ce qui montre un intérêt particulier pour cette espèce. Un jour après l’expérience, toutes les graines des deux espèces se trouvaient dans les déchets à l’extérieur du nid, avec au moins la moitié des élaiosomes consommés (Chapitre 1).<p>Lors du passage des graines à l’intérieur du nid, les fourmis Myrmica rubra ont également montré une capacité à traiter les graines rapidement, en montrant une dynamique d’arrachage de l’élaiosome et de rejet des graines hors du nid plus rapide. Le taux d’arrachage de l’élaiosome a été influencé par l’espèce de graine, plus important pour les graines de Chelidonium majus. Nous avons montré qu’une proportion variable de graines rapportées au nid (moins de la moitié) étaient déposées directement au contact des larves, les autres étant traitées ailleurs par les ouvrières ou laissées temporairement à l’abandon dans le nid. Par ailleurs, les dynamiques de rejet des items hors du nid ont curieusement été peu influencées par l’espèce de graine. Pour une graine, le fait de ne plus avoir d’élaiosome diminue le nombre moyen d’ouvrières qui la contacte simultanément. Parallèlement, même si la réponse n’est pas de type « tout ou rien », l’absence d’élaiosome accroit aussi la probabilité qu’une graine a d’être rejetée. (Chapitre 2).<p>Nous avons isolé expérimentalement le paramètre de dessiccation des graines afin mesurer son influence sur le taux de prises. La dessiccation progressive des graines réduit les taux de prises par les fourmis Myrmica rubra. La réhydratation des mêmes graines leur permet de retrouver une attractivité et donc une valeur fonctionnelle prolongée. Les graines de Viola odorata perdent presque toute attractivité après 4 jours de dessiccation et leur réhydratation ne rétabli que faiblement leur attractivité. A l’inverse, les graines de Chelidonium majus gardent un tiers de leur attractivité après un mois de dessiccation et leur réhydratation restaure presque entièrement leur attractivité (Chapitre 3).<p>La synthèse bibliographique a permis de dresser un aperçu des principales caractéristiques des fourmis dispersatrices de graines myrmécochores. Certains traits « généralistes » rendent les rencontres entre fourmis et graines très probables :leur ubiquité et diversité taxonomique, leur régime alimentaire omnivore, et leur fourragement « diffus » et opportuniste. Les fourmis possèdent des traits qui les rendent uniques par rapport aux autres insectes :le fourragement au sol, la capacité à transporter de la nourriture, ainsi que la nidification. Certains traits des fourmis ont une influence considérable sur la dispersion des graines :leur taille, les préférences de régime alimentaire, la phénologie, la capacité d’apprentissage et la fréquence de déménagement des nids. Nous développons également l’hypothèse que la rapidité et l’efficacité du traitement des graines par les fourmis seraient une conséquence d’un comportement hygiénique des fourmis à tendance carnivore, habituées à gérer des proies périssables (Chapitre 4).<p>Nous avons dressé pour la première fois une liste des espèces de plantes myrmécochores et potentiellement myrmécochores des régions d’Europe tempérée (260 spp.). Nous montrons que ces dernières sont majoritairement herbacées, et ont tendance à fleurir plus précocement que les autres espèces. La proportion de graines myrmécochores comprises entre 1 et 3 mm et entre 0,6 et 10 mg est plus importante que dans le reste de la flore (Chapitre 5).<p>/<p>This study concerns seed dispersal by ants and is divided in two parts: one experimental (chapters 1, 2 & 3), and one synthetic (chapters 4 & 5). <p>Experimental work consisted in a series of laboratory experiments, in which ant behaviour was studied at two stages of the dispersal process: at the seed source and inside the nest. Seeds of the myrmecochorous plants Viola odorata and Chelidonium majus were presented to two ant species: Lasius niger and Myrmica rubra. Each stage of the myrmecochory sequence generated a variability of behaviours for each of the four ant-seed pairs.<p>The elaiosomedo not attract seed at a distance. Ants followed always the same behavioural sequence: antennations, manipulations, and removal. The number of antennations and manipulations before removal can be considered as a measure of ants’ “hesitation” to remove seeds. The carnivorous species Myrmica rubra was faster and more efficient at taking seeds than the aphid-tending Lasius niger. At the same time, ants antennated and manipulated less Chelidonium majus seeds, which shows a particular interest for this seed species. One day after the experiment, all seeds of both species were located outside the nest in the refuse piles. At least half of their elaiosomes had been consumed (chapter 1). <p>Inside the nest, Myrmica rubra also showed a great ability to treat seeds quickly, i.e. quicker dynamics of elaiosome removal and seed rejection outside the nest. Elaiosome removal rates were influenced by seed species (higher for Chelidonium majus). We showed that a variable proportion of seeds (less than half) was directly deposited in contact with larvae. The rest of the seeds were handled elsewhere by workers, or left temporarily unattended in the nest. Dynamics of seed rejection outside the nest were curiously little influenced by the seed species. For a seed, to loose the elaiosome decreased the number of workers manipulating it. At the same time, even if the rejection response is not automatic, the absence of elaiosome increases the probability for a seed to be rejected (Chapter 2).<p>We isolated the desiccation parameter in order to measure its influence on seed removal rates. Progressive seed desiccation reduced Myrmica rubra removal rates. Rehydration of the same seeds restored their attractiveness, thereby prolonging their functional life. Viola odorata seeds lost almost all their attractiveness after 4 days of desiccation, and rehydration only restored a reduced part of their attractiveness. On the contrary, Chelidonium majus seeds kept one third of their attractiveness after one month of desiccation, and recovered almost all their attractiveness after rehydration (Chapter 3). <p>The bibliographic review allowed us to compile an outline of the main features of seed-disperser ants. Some generalist features highly increase the probability that ants encounter seeds: their ubiquity and taxonomic diversity, omnivorous diet and their opportunistic “diffuse” foraging. Among insects, ants have unique traits that make them broad dispsersers: ground foraging, the ability to transport items, and nesting behaviour. Some other traits have a great influence on the seed dispersal system: the ant body size, their diet preferences, the phenology of the colony, the learning, and the frequence of nest relocation. We also develop the hypothesis according to which, handling efficiency of ants is a byproduct of hygienic behaviour of carnivorous oriented species, since they are used to manage perishable preys (Chapter 4). <p>We compiled the first list of myrmecochorous and potentially myrmecochorous plants species of European temperate regions (260 spp.). We show that these plants are mainly herbaceous. They also tend to flower earlier than the whole flora. The proportions of myrmecochorous seeds having a size range between 1 and 3 mm, and a weight range between 0.6 and 10 mg are higher than in the rest of the flora (Chapter 5). <p><p> / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished