תוצאות חיפוש: מאמר

Brood size has important implications for the fitness of both parents and offspring. In polyembryonic parasitoid wasps, each egg develops into many genetically identical embryos through clonal division inside the host. Thus, offspring may have the potential to affect brood size by adjusting the degree of embryonic division. We investigated the effect of relatedness between competing clones on brood size in the polyembryonic wasp Copidosoma koehleri.

In this screening study they investigated topsoils of sites in West Bank and Israel which have been subjected to a significant OMW disposal for several years.

The purpose of this study is to obtain a better understanding of groundwater contamination processes in an arid environment  due to cultivation.

Land sharing strategies in agricultural landscapes need to allow for organisms to move between natural areas and different crops within an agro-ecological landscape in order to reduce extinction probability and the negative effects of small isolated populations. In this study, it was tested whether legume or wheat fields differed in their effects on reptiles’ movement patterns.

Habitat loss reduces species diversity, but the effect of habitat fragmentation on number of species is less clear because fragmentation generally accompanies loss of habitat. They compared four methods that aim to decouple the effects of fragmentation from the effects of habitat loss.

There is compelling evidence that more diverse ecosystems deliver greater benefits to people, and these ecosystem services have become a key argument for biodiversity conservation. However, it is unclear how much biodiversity is needed to deliver ecosystem services in a cost-effective way. Here they show that, while the contribution of wild bees to crop production is significant, service delivery is restricted to a limited subset of all known bee species. 

We studied the diet of 20 Barn Owl (Tyto alba) pairs breeding in three habitats (alfalfa fields, date plantations, and villages) in the same agricultural region in the Jordan Valley, Israel.

Insect pollination is essential for almond production, and most growers rely exclusively on honeybees for pollination. However, the number of honeybee hives has declined drastically over the last few decades and their efficiency in pollinating almond might be limited. Wild bee communities inhabiting the habitats surrounding almond orchards may provide significant pollination services to almond, but this has yet to be studied.