Kiilerich Pennington (faucetmoon2)

d soil microorganisms are also important factors that influence soil respiration in response to litter inputs, with soil microorganisms being more important than labile C availability.Model organisms such as Drosophila melanogaster have been key tools for advancing our fundamental and applied knowledge in biological and biomedical sciences. However, model organisms have become intertwined with the idea of controlled and stable laboratory environments, and their natural history has been overlooked.In holometabolous insects, lack of natural history information on larval ecology has precluded major advances in the field of developmental ecology, especially in terms of manipulations of population density early in life (i.e., larval density). This is because of relativistic and to some extent, arbitrary methodologies employed to manipulate larval densities in laboratory studies. As a result, these methodologies render comparisons between species impossible, precluding our understanding of macroevolutionary responses to population densities during development that can be derived from comparative studies.We recently proposed a new conceptual framework to address this issue, and here, we provide the first natural history investigation of Drosophila melanogaster larval density under such framework. First, we characterized the distribution of larval densities in a wild population of D. melanogaster using rotting apples as breeding substrate in a suburban area in Sweden.Next, we compiled the commonly used methodologies for manipulating larval densities in laboratory studies from the literature and found that the majority of laboratory studies identified did not manipulate larval densities below or above the densities observed in nature, suggesting that we have yet to study true life history and physiological responses to low and high population densities during D. melanogaster development.This is, to our knowledge, the first direct natural history account of larval density in nature for this model organism. Our study paves the way for a more integrated view of organismal biology which re-incorporates natural history of model organisms into hypothesis-driven research in developmental ecology.Herbivorous insects such as butterflies and moths are essential to natural and agricultural systems due to pollination and pest outbreaks. However, our knowledge of butterflies' and moths' nutrition is fragmented and limited to few common, charismatic, or problematic species.This gap precludes our complete understanding of herbivorous insects' natural history, physiological and behavioral adaptations that drive how species interact with their environment, the consequences of habitat fragmentation and climate change to invertebrate biodiversity, and pest outbreak dynamics.Here, we first report a population of the Buff-tip moth Phalera bucephala (Lepidoptera Notodontidae) feeding on a previously unknown family of host plants, the mountain currant Ribes alpinum (Saxifragales Grossulariaceae). GLPG3970 purchase This is the first report of a Notodontid moth feeding on Grossulariaceae hosts.Using no-choice and choice assays, we showed that P. bucephala has strong foraging preferences for a previously unknown hosts, the R. alpinum but also, although to a smaller extent, R. uva-crispa compared with a previously known host (the Norway maple Acer sp.).These findings demonstrate that P. bucephala feed on-and show strong preference for Grossulariaceae host plants, indicating flexible physiological mechanisms to accommodate hosts plants from various families. This makes this species a potential model organism to study the behavioral and physiological mechanisms underpinning insect-plant interactions and diet breadth evolution.We discuss the broad ecological implications of these observations to the biology of the species, the potential negative effects of interspecific competition with endemic specialist moths, and highlight questions for future research.Apose