Exploring the effects of habitat management on grassland biodiversity: A case study from northern Serbia.

Grasslands represent a biodiversity hotspot in the European agricultural landscape, their restoration is necessary and offers a great opportunity to mitigate or halt harmful processes. These measures require a comprehensive knowledge of historical landscape changes, but also adequate management strategies. The required data was gathered from the sand grasslands of northern Serbia, as this habitat is of high conservation priority.

Revealing the Wonder of Natural Photonics by Nonlinear Optics.

Nano-optics explores linear and nonlinear phenomena at the nanoscale to advance fundamental knowledge about materials and their interaction with light in the classical and quantum domains in order to develop new photonics-based technologies. In this perspective article, we review recent progress regarding the application of nonlinear optical methods to reveal the links between photonic structures and functions of natural photonic geometries. Furthermore, nonlinear optics offers a way to unveil and exploit the complexity of the natural world for developing new materials and technologies for the generation, detection, manipulation, and storage of light at the nanoscale, as well as sensing, metrology, and communication.

Uncovering Hidden Dynamics of Natural Photonic Structures Using Holographic Imaging.

In this method, the potential of optics and holography to uncover hidden details of a natural system's dynamical response at the nanoscale is exploited. In the first part, the optical and holographic studies of natural photonic structures are presented as well as conditions for the appearance of the photophoretic effect, namely, the displacement or deformation of a nanostructure due to a light-induced thermal gradient, at the nanoscale. This effect is revealed by real-time digital holographic interferometry monitoring the deformation of scales covering the wings of insects induced by temperature.

Chemical Diversity of Volatile Compounds of Mints from Southern Part of Pannonian Plain and Balkan Peninsula - New Data.

Mints are the most popular economic and traditional herbs. The aim of this article was chemical characterization of volatile compounds from wild populations of Mentha aquatica, M. arvensis, M.

Soliton formation by decelerating interacting Airy beams.

We demonstrate a new type of soliton formation arising from the interaction of multiple two-dimensional Airy beams in a nonlinear medium. While in linear regime, interference effects of two or four spatially displaced Airy beams lead to accelerated intensity structures that can be used for optical induction of novel light guiding refractive index structures, the nonlinear cross-interaction between the Airy beams decelerates their bending and enables the formation of straight propagating solitary states. Our experimental results represent an intriguing combination of two fundamental effects, accelerated optical beams and nonlinearity, together enable novel mechanisms of soliton formation that will find applications in all-optical light localization and switching architectures.

High angular and spectral selectivity of purple emperor (Lepidoptera: Apatura iris and A. ilia) butterfly wings.

The iridescent features of the butterfly species Apatura iris (Linnaeus, 1758) and A. ilia (Denis & Schiffermüller, 1775) were studied. We recognized the structural color of scales only on the dorsal side of both the fore and hind wings of males of both of the aforementioned butterfly species.