Attracting mutualists and antagonists: plant trait variation explains the distribution of specialist floral herbivores and pollinators on crops and wild gourds.

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Premise Of The Study: Floral traits play important roles in pollinator attraction and defense against floral herbivory. However, plants may experience trade-offs between conspicuousness to pollinators and herbivore attraction. Comparative studies provide an excellent framework to examine the role of multiple traits shaping mutualist and antagonist interactions.

Linking agricultural practices, mycorrhizal fungi, and traits mediating plant-insect interactions.

Agricultural management has profound effects on soil communities. Activities such as fertilizer inputs can modify the composition of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) communities, which form important symbioses with the roots of most crop plants. Intensive conventional agricultural management may select for less mutualistic AMF with reduced benefits to host plants compared to organic management, but these differences are poorly understood.

Context-dependency of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on plant-insect interactions in an agroecosystem.

Plants interact with a variety of other community members that have the potential to indirectly influence each other through a shared host plant. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are generally considered plant mutualists because of their generally positive effects on plant nutrient status and growth. AMF may also have important indirect effects on plants by altering interactions with other community members.

Herbivory reduces plant interactions with above- and belowground antagonists and mutualists.

Herbivores affect plants through direct effects, such as tissue damage, and through indirect effects that alter species interactions. Interactions may be positive or negative, so indirect effects have the potential to enhance or lessen the net impacts of herbivores. Despite the ubiquity of these interactions, the indirect pathways are considerably less understood than the direct effects of herbivores, and multiple indirect pathways are rarely studied simultaneously.

Buttercup squash provides a marketable alternative to blue hubbard as a trap crop for control of striped cucumber beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae).

Winter squash is a vital agricultural commodity worldwide. In the Northeastern United States, the primary insect pest is the striped cucumber beetle, Acalymma vittatum F. Using a Blue Hubbard squash (Cucurbita maxima Duchesne) perimeter trap crop system can reduce insecticide use by >90% in butternut squash (C.

Validation of a Commercial System for Remote Estimation of Wetness Duration.

To assess the accuracy of remote, real-time mathematical simulations of wetness duration and air temperature, hourly measurements of wetness duration and air temperature at 18 sites in the United States and Canada from May to September 1995 were compared with simulations for these sites provided by SkyBit, Inc. SkyBit simulations of mean, maximum, and minimum daily air temperatures varied from on-site measurements by less than 0.7°C but underestimated the duration of wet periods by an average of 3.