Patterns of host use by brood parasitic Maculinea butterflies across Europe.

The range of hosts exploited by a parasite is determined by several factors, including host availability, infectivity and exploitability. Each of these can be the target of natural selection on both host and parasite, which will determine the local outcome of interactions, and potentially lead to coevolution. However, geographical variation in host use and specificity has rarely been investigated.

PESI - a taxonomic backbone for Europe.

Background: Reliable taxonomy underpins communication in all of biology, not least nature conservation and sustainable use of ecosystem resources. The flexibility of taxonomic interpretations, however, presents a serious challenge for end-users of taxonomic concepts. Users need standardised and continuously harmonised taxonomic reference systems, as well as high-quality and complete taxonomic data sets, but these are generally lacking for non-specialists.

Restricted within-habitat movement and time-constrained egg laying of female Maculinea rebeli butterflies.

The movement of butterflies within habitat patches is usually assumed to be random, although few studies have shown this unambiguously. In the case of the highly specialized genus Maculinea, two contradictory hypotheses exist to explain the movement and distribution of imagos within patches: (1) due to the high spatial variance of survival rates among caterpillars, the "risk-spreading" hypothesis predicts that females will tend to make linear flight paths in order to maximize their net displacement and scatter the eggs as widely as possible; and (2) recent mark-release-recapture (MRR) data suggest that within-habitat displacement of some Maculinea species is constrained and that adults may establish home ranges. We tested both hypothesis by analysing the movement pattern of individuals.

Allozyme variation in Parnassius mnemosyne (L.) (Lepidoptera) populations in North-East Hungary: variation within a subspecies group.

Allozyme polymorphism was studied in 11 Parnassius mnemosyne (Linnaeus, 1758) populations in North-East Hungary. Significant departures from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium were observed in several cases due to heterozygote deficiency. Genetic variability did not display geographical pattern; the level of genetic differentiation was similar between adjacent populations and between populations originating from different geographical regions.