Reproductive Biology and Rearing Improvements of , Potential Biocontrol Agent of the Argentine Cactus Moth, .

The cactus moth, (Berg) (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) is native to South America and has been used as a biocontrol agent of (Cactaceae) in Australia and South Africa. Its invasion in North America has raised concerns for the native in the USA and Mexico. We investigated the reproductive biology and rearing procedures of a host-specific potential biocontrol agent, Martínez and Berta (Hymenoptera: Braconidae).

Lethal effect of on : A potential biocontrol agent for inundative releases.

(Berg) (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae), the cactus moth, is native to South America with a widespread distribution in Argentina. The larvae consume the interior of spp. (Cactaceae) plants.

Best practices, errors, and perspectives of half a century of plant translocation in Italy.

Conservation translocations are becoming common conservation practice, so there is an increasing need to understand the drivers of plant translocation performance through reviews of cases at global and regional levels. The establishment of the Italian Database of Plant Translocation (IDPlanT) provides the opportunity to review the techniques used in 186 plant translocation cases performed in the last 50 years in the heart of the Mediterranean Biodiversity Hotspot. We described techniques and information available in IDPlanT and used these data to identify drivers of translocation outcomes.

Tackling local ecological homogeneity: Finding intraspecific trait variability in local populations of Mediterranean plants.

Local homogeneity, in ecology, is the often undisclosed assumption that variability within populations is negligible or mostly distributed evenly. In large areas, this can lead to the aggregation of different populations without regard for their unique needs and characteristics, such as drought sensitivity and functional trait distributions. Here, we discuss whether this assumption can be justified, and we hypothesize that discerning the source of variation between plasticity and adaptation could be a feasible approach to formulate an informed decision.

Phenotypic dissimilarity index: Correcting for intra- and interindividual variability when quantifying phenotypic variation.

In trait-based ecology, phenotypic variation (PVar) is often quantified with measures expressing average differences between populations standardized in the range 0-1. However, these measures disregard the within-population trait variability. In addition, some of them cannot be partitioned between populations.