Approaches to biological control problems

There has recently been some discussion as to the most effective methods of carrying out biological control investigations — the need for detailed ecological investigations, life-table studies, population studies, etc. This paper presents conclusions in this regard based on over 30 years experience in this field in many parts of the world. Often practical considerations make it impossible to carry out the long-term detailed ecological studies which would give a very valuable and scientifically interesting background to any biological control attempt before any introductions of beneficial species were made. Suggestions are made for the continuation of both short-and long-term procedures to be adopted in biological control work and examples cited of the value of both approaches.

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Résumé Quelques discussions ont eu lieu récemment concernant les méthodes les plus efficaces à appliquer dans les recherches sur la lutte biologique: nécessité d’investigations écologiques approfondies, études de tables de mortalité, études de populations, etc. Le présent article propose à ce sujet des conclusions fondées sur plus de 30 ans d’expérience dans de nombreuses parties du monde. Souvent, des considérations pratiques rendent impossibles les études écologiques à long terme, susceptibles d’apporter dans toute tentative d’application de lutte biologique, une connaissance de base scientifiquement très intéressante et très utile, préalablement à l’introduction d’organismes utiles. L’auteur suggère l’adoption simultanée, dans les travaux de lutte biologique, à la fois de la méthode à court terme et de la méthode à long terme; il cite des exemples de la valeur de ces deux stratégies.

     

Implementing false discovery rate control: increasing your power

Popular procedures to control the chance of making type I errors when multiple statistical tests are performed come at a high cost: a reduction in power. As the number of tests increases, power for an individual test may become unacceptably low. This is a consequence of minimizing the chance of making even a single type I error, which is the aim of, for instance, the Bonferroni and sequential Bonferroni procedures. An alternative approach, control of the false discovery rate (FDR), has recently been advocated for ecological studies. This approach aims at controlling the proportion of significant results that are in fact type I errors. Keeping the proportion of type I errors low among all significant results is a sensible, powerful, and easy-to-interpret way of addressing the multiple testing issue. To encourage practical use of the approach, in this note we illustrate how the proposed procedure works, we compare it to more traditional methods that control the familywise error rate, and we discuss some recent useful developments in FDR control.     

Replacing animal experiments: choices, chances and challenges

Replacing animal procedures with methods such as cells and tissues in vitro, volunteer studies, physicochemical techniques and computer modelling, is driven by legislative, scientific and moral imperatives. Non-animal approaches are now considered as advanced methods that can overcome many of the limitations of animal experiments. In testing medicines and chemicals, in vitro assays have spared hundreds of thousands of animals. In contrast, academic animal use continues to rise and the concept of replacement seems less well accepted in university research. Even so, some animal procedures have been replaced in neurological, reproductive and dentistry research and progress is being made in fields such as respiratory illnesses, pain and sepsis. Systematic reviews of the transferability of animal data to the clinical setting may encourage a fresh look for novel non-animal methods and, as mainstream funding becomes available, more advances in replacement are expected.     

Successful Application of Evolutionary Algorithms in Engineering Design

Evolutionary or bionic strategies have proven to be powerful tools in many optimisation studies. Starting with some parent generations, producing sets of children, selecting the best children to be new parents yields impressive improvements of the objective when used with some experience and sufficient equipment. During some years of research the parameters of evolutionary optimisation have been investigated. Many successful applications showed where and how to use it. Especially in the case of objective functions with some or many local maxima, evolutionary approaches may propose solutions which gradient based optimisation would hardly find.When used with a large number of optimisation parameters, evolutionary methods seem to be superior to other strategies, as the chances to find good proposals within an acceptable number of trials and within affordable time are much higher.Nevertheless, evolutionary approaches like all optimisation methods require large numbers of studies of individual solutions. The computer power necessary to apply these strategies should not be underestimated. Even with today low cost and high availability of computers, the time to solve problems may be surprisingly long. So all ways of parallel processing, using single computers with many processors or clusters of many computers may speed up the time to do the optimisation.The basic terms of the method are outlined, some problems discussed, some examples given and some proposals made, how to use evolutionary methods in engineering optimisation. Finally some warnings are given trying to prevent potential users from non-realistic expectations. Optimisation is a difficult and consuming process. This holds for evolutionary optimisation as well.     

To some reasonable test procedures in multiple contingency tables to investigate certain epidemiological or medicin-sociological relationships

One of the most important tasks of the application of mathematical-statistical methods consists in giving help in the search for possible relationships, and connected with this, the specification of new hypotheses. The progress of both the special diciplines of sciences and mathematical statistics itself leads to the application of more and more complex, that means multivariate, methods. In medical fields, especially in epidemiological and medicin-sociological studies, this fact means the necessity of analysing multidimensional contingency tables. The above formulated problem is equivalent to the problem of fitting an appropriate mathematical model (for contingency tables is this a log-linear model) to the data in a way which makes the structural relationships clear to us. In this paper it is shown that one is able to get to well-interpretable models of independence with relatively simple means. Two stepwise test procedures are described yielding essentially the same results: a so called reduction procedure which is particularly profitable in sparsely occupied tables and a procedure which uses a combination of hypotheses of conditional pairwise independence.     

Monitoring clinical trials with multiple arms

In order to benefit from the substantial overhead expenses of a large group sequential clinical trial, the simultaneous investigation of several competing treatments becomes more popular. If at some interim analysis any treatment arm reveals itself to be inferior to any other treatment under investigation, this inferior arm may be or may even need to be dropped for ethical and/or economic reasons. Recently proposed methods for monitoring and analysis of group sequential clinical trials with multiple treatment arms are compared and discussed. The main focus of the article is on the application and extension of (adaptive) closed testing procedures in the group sequential setting that strongly control the familywise error rate. A numerical example is given for illustration.     

IMPROVED TECHNIQUES FOR THE PREPARATION OF ULTRATHIN FROZEN SECTIONS

Ultrathin frozen sections of biological tissues for electron microscopy provide certain advantages in cytochemical studies in which the penetration of cells by large molecules is necessary and in morphological studies of cellular constituents which are dissolved by the reagents employed in routine plastic embedding. The recent introduction of several types of commercially available cryo-ultramicrotomes makes it possible for many laboratories to employ this valuable tool. This paper summarizes recent improvements in the methods developed in this laboratory for preparing ultrathin frozen sections and reviews some of the inherent problems involved in their use. These procedures may serve as a baseline for other investigators who can then modify or adapt them for their specific purposes.     

我国害鼠不育控制研究进展

害鼠给人类带来巨大的经济损失,导致严重的生态问题。人们采用各种方法防治鼠害,其中不育控制是一种新的方法。不育控制即通过某种手段使雄性或和雌性绝育,或阻碍胚胎着床,甚至阻断幼体生长,以降低生育率。不育控制的概念最早在20世纪60年代提出,近年来,我国在利用不育技术控制害鼠方面做了大量研究,总结了国内该领域研究的部分结果。在实验室测试了多种不育剂。被测试的不育剂对相应的鼠类几乎都有不育作用;一些不育剂会影响鼠类的行为,这会减弱竞争性繁殖干扰的作用;一些不育剂在达到一定剂量后有致死作用,不育和灭杀的双重作用会产生更好的控制效果;还观察到不育个体的复孕现象,这会减弱控制效果;关于不育剂安全性的研究发现更昔洛韦和M001雄性不育灭鼠剂对家鸽没有任何毒性作用。大量野外实验证实不育剂对害鼠大都有较好的控制效果,实际控制中,控制面积不宜太小。利用数学模型所作的理论分析表明不育控制有不比灭杀控制差的效果;在决定种群是否灭绝上,不育率、灭杀率、选择性收获率等的作用是相同的。根据研究的实际情况,本文提出了一些今后研究中应注意的问题。无论在实验室还是野外,除了种群动态外,还要记录更详细的数据,以期对不育控制有更详细的了解。要加大不育剂对非靶向动物和环境影响的研究。在不育控制这种干扰下,害鼠种群的变化必然导致与其相关的种群也作出相应的变化,这一方面的研究需要进行。每种控制方式都有自己的特点,多种控制方法联合使用会达到更理想的效果。竞争性繁殖干扰现象是存在的,它使种群规模更小,在数学模型中,应体现出这一因素。     

地下水生态系统健康评价指标体系的构建

地下水生态系统是重要的生态系统类型,由于地下水资源不合理的开发利用和污染物排放强度的增大、并长期积累,已导致许多地方产生生态环境劣变,甚至酿成难以弥补的严重后果,地下水生态系统健康问题已经成为许多国家和地区重点关注的环境问题之一.在科学把握地下水生态系统健康的概念和内涵的基础上,从系统结构特征、生态功能、资源功能、系统保护以及社会环境等5个方面选取了29个典型指标构建了地下水生态系统健康指标体系,对关键评价指标的意义进行了具体分析.出于服务于地下水生态系统健康评价的目的,对重要指标的评价标准进行了划分,并探讨了地下水生态系统健康评价的主要方法及发展方向,研究成果在一定程度上可以丰富生态系统健康评价研究理论与方法体系.     

Entomological biometeorology

Summary I would appear to have given a rather pessimistic picture of the problems in entomological biometeorology as a result of emphasizing the areas of research that are most vitally concerned with a full understanding of the insect's relation to its environment. An important part of continuing scientific study is capacity to define problems for future investigation from past experience. In spite of the fact that many research results in border fields between meteorology and biology have accumulated without any serious organization toward unifying concepts, it is encouraging that we have achieved enough insight to define some of the basic problems. Future research is in a position in many ways to contribute to the organized approach that is required to make biometeorology a science.It should also be observed that the major limiting problem of handling large volumes of data in complicated ecological studies has been solved in principle to a large extent by the digital and the analogue electronic computers. Digital computer programming has already been incorporated in some population studies for insects. Eventual extension of analogue computer methods to behaviour problems may well facilitate an understanding of more complicated systems,especially those basic to the dispersal and migration of insects.     

JUICE,software for vegetation classification

Abstract. The program JUICE was designed as a Microsoft® WINDOWS® application for editing, classification and analysis of large phytosociological tables and databases. This software, with a current maximum capacity of 30 000 relevés in one table, includes many functions for easy manipulation of table and header data. Various options include classification using COCKTAIL and TWINSPAN methods, calculation of interspecific associations, fidelity measures, average Ellenberg indicator values, preparation of synoptic tables, automatic sorting of relevé tables, and export of table data into other applications (word processors, spreadsheet programs or mapping packages). JUICE is optimized for use in association with TURBOVEG which is the most widespread database program for storing phytosociological data in Europe.     

The application of demographic models to anthropological data

There has recently been great interest in the demography of primitive human populations. This can often be dealt with successfully by the use of demographic theory and model life tables; however, small populations present problems not encountered in large national censuses. This paper discusses some of these problems and illustrates the determination of model life tables in anthropology with a particular population, the Yanomama Indians. The concern is for the methods to be used, and their applicability, and not with the specific population illustrating them. By applying theoretical models, one can derive information that is otherwise unavailable but is necessary in the important biomedical, social, and ecological understanding of primitive societies.     

水资源投入产出方法研究进展

从扩展建模技术、系数调整2条线索回顾国内外的水资源投入产出研究进展, 并讨论水资源的投入产出研究的不足和发展趋势。因为水资源投入产出表反映的是水资源与经济结构的关系,如果研究人员自己编制一张水资源投入产出表是不容易的事情。通常情况下都是以研究地域的投入产出表为基础,与其他模型相结合来研究水资源投入产出,但是水资源投入产出建模技术因为数据的限制而只能建立年度模型,具有很强的前提假定,使得投入产出建模技术缺乏灵活性,因而在运用中有对模型改进的必要。水资源投入产出扩展建模技术在这些方面就分别形成了与地区投入产出表结合的投入产出建模技术、与水资源供给相结合的投入产出扩展建模技术、与延长表结合的投入产出扩展建模技术。时效性缺乏一直就成为影响IO模型研究的最主要的瓶颈之一,为此,对各种用于建立新的 IO 表技术的研究一直受到普遍的重视。目前, IO 表系数调整方法已从消耗系数不变的系数调整方法、以RAS为代表的比例法, 发展到多种手段相结合的优化法。算法的改进和求解非线性规划问题的大量计算机软件的出现使得非线性优化模型得到了广泛的应用。     

Estimation and control of multiple testing error rates for microarray studies

The analysis of microarray data often involves performing a large number of statistical tests, usually at least one test per queried gene. Each test has a certain probability of reaching an incorrect inference; therefore, it is crucial to estimate or control error rates that measure the occurrence of erroneous conclusions in reporting and interpreting the results of a microarray study. In recent years, many innovative statistical methods have been developed to estimate or control various error rates for microarray studies. Researchers need guidance choosing the appropriate statistical methods for analysing these types of data sets. This review describes a family of methods that use a set of P-values to estimate or control the false discovery rate and similar error rates. Finally, these methods are classified in a manner that suggests the appropriate method for specific applications and diagnostic procedures that can identify problems in the analysis are described.     

生态用水及其核算方法

生态用水研究是近年来国内外关注的热点。在综合分析国内外生态用水研究进展情况的基础上,针对河流、植被、湿地以及城市4种生态用水类型,对其核算方法进行了分析,比较了不同方法的优缺点及适用范围。提出目前生态用水研究还存在如下问题：(1)生态用水核算中采用的不同方法都有其各自的局限性,但又都是针对具体的研究区域、特定的生态系统的较实用方法。因此在生态用水的核算方法上关键是方法的选择和结合具体案例对核算方法在深度、精度上的进一步探讨;(2)生态用水的机理研究不够深入。以往研究直接以植被生长用水量、鱼类等需保护动物用水量等作为替代生态用水量,难以反映生态系统需水的真实状况;(3)在研究尺度上往往都显得过于宽泛,对研究区域的基本情况、生态条件及水资源现状很难有详细明确的认识,因此数据的真实性及结果的可应用性也必然降低。文章最后认为,今后生态用水研究应点面结合,加强机理研究,增强研究结果的实践意义。     

Methods and method evaluation for mycotoxins

Mycotoxins are metabolites of molds frequently found on and in agricultural commodities, food and feeds. Owing to their demonstrated acute, sub-acute and, in some cases, chronic toxicity, an effort has been made, worldwide, to control human and animal exposure to these toxic chemicals. This effort depends upon the availability of validated analytical methods for their detection and quantitation. This paper outlines the methodology available, and the procedures used to validate, i.e. evaluate, these methods based on the use of interlaboratory collaborative studies and the application of the HORRAT.     

Towards an ecology of protective coloration

The strategies underlying different forms of protective coloration are well understood but little attention has been paid to the ecological, life-history and behavioural circumstances under which they evolve. While some comparative studies have investigated the ecological correlates of aposematism, and background matching, the latter particularly in mammals, few have examined the ecological correlates of other types of protective coloration. Here, we first outline which types of defensive coloration strategies may be exhibited by the same individual; concluding that many protective coloration mechanisms can be employed simultaneously, particularly in conjunction with background matching. Second, we review the ecological predictions that have been made for each sort of protective coloration mechanism before systematically surveying phylogenetically controlled comparative studies linking ecological and social variables to antipredator defences that involve coloration. We find that some a priori predictions based on small-scale empirical studies and logical arguments are indeed supported by comparative data, especially in relation to how illumination affects both background matching and self-shadow concealment through countershading; how body size is associated with countershading, motion dazzle, flash coloration and aposematism, although only in selected taxa; how immobility may promote background matching in ambush predators; and how mobility may facilitate motion dazzle. Examination of nearly 120 comparative tests reveals that many focus on ecological variables that have little to do with predictions derived from antipredator defence theory, and that broad-scale ecological studies of defence strategies that incorporate phylogenetics are still very much in their infancy. We close by making recommendations for future evolutionary ecological research.     

Bioinformatics tools in predictive ecology: applications to fisheries

There has been a huge effort in the advancement of analytical techniques for molecular biological data over the past decade. This has led to many novel algorithms that are specialized to deal with data associated with biological phenomena, such as gene expression and protein interactions. In contrast, ecological data analysis has remained focused to some degree on off-the-shelf statistical techniques though this is starting to change with the adoption of state-of-the-art methods, where few assumptions can be made about the data and a more explorative approach is required, for example, through the use of Bayesian networks. In this paper, some novel bioinformatics tools for microarray data are discussed along with their 'crossover potential' with an application to fisheries data. In particular, a focus is made on the development of models that identify functionally equivalent species in different fish communities with the aim of predicting functional collapse.