Association between haematozoan infections and reproduction in the Pied Flycatcher

1. Parasites may affect breeding success of their host since they compete for the same resources as their hosts. Reproduction may also increase the susceptibility of a host to parasite infections owing to lowered resistance to parasites during breeding.
2. We studied the association between breeding performance and haematozoan parasite infection in the Pied Flycatcher ( Ficedula hypoleuca ) by using both natural data on reproduction and data from clutch size manipulations.
3. The most frequent blood parasites of the Pied Flycatcher in central Finland were Haemoproteus pallidus , Haemoproteus balmorali and Trypanosoma avium complex.
4. We did not find evidence that these haematozoan parasites have any debilitating effects on either reproduction or survival. The variation in reproductive effort did not seem to influence susceptibility to new blood parasite infections.
5. The intensity of Haemoproteus balmorali tended to increase in infected males as the brood size was artificially enlarged. Also, in females intensity of H. pallidus infection tended to increase with the level of clutch size manipulation. Thus, increased reproductive effort seems to debilitate the ability of Pied Flycatcher to control chronic infections.
6. Individuals with enlarged clutches/broods increased their reproductive effort at the expense of defence towards parasites. The cost of current reproduction may then be at least partly mediated by haematozoan infections.     

Soil chemical properties,rather than landscape context,influence woodland fungal communities along an urban‐rural gradient

With the expansion of cities around the world there is a growing interest in the factors that influence biodiversity and ecosystem processes in urban areas. Fungi are exceptionally diverse and play key roles in ecosystem function, yet despite predictions of negative impacts due to urbanization, fungi have been generally overlooked in urban ecological studies. We surveyed fungi in 16 remnant river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis: Myrtaceae) woodlands along a gradient of 4–35 km from the city of Melbourne (south‐east Australia). Using both sporocarp surveys and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T‐RFLP; primer pair ITS1‐F‐ITS4), we examined relationships between fungal community composition, landscape context (i.e. urbanization) and soil physicochemical properties. Community compositions from sporocarp data were significantly correlated with those from T‐RFLP data, largely because of correlations with ectomycorrhizal sporocarps (Spearman rank correlation coefficients ρ 0.31–0.42) rather than saprotrophic fungi (ρ 0.18–0.21). Principal components analysis of soil properties and non‐metric multidimensional scaling ordinations of fungal community composition showed no clear separation of sites according to urbanization, and there were no significant correlations between fungal community composition and urbanization. However, fungal community composition was significantly correlated with soil chemical properties (ρ 0.41–0.55). These data suggest that site‐scale soil properties, and associated effects of past and current land management activities, were more important in determining fungal community composition than the landscape‐level influences of urbanization.     

A comparison of the floristics and leaf chemistry of the tree flora in two Malaysian rain forests and the influence of leaf chemistry on populations of colobine monkeys in the Old World

A comparative floristic survey of lowland tropical rain forest at Kuala Lompat, Krau Game Reserve, West Malaysia and at Sepilok Virgin Jungle Reserve, Sabah, East Malaysia, revealed significant differences in the composition of canopy species, notably in the relative paucity of Dipterocarpaceae and abundance of Leguminosae at Kuala Lompat. A further comparison with data from other sites in Malesia indicated that Kuala Lompat was rather atypical, representing an extreme example of the relatively legume rich and dipterocarp poor forests of West Malaysia. Conversely, the predominance of dipterocarps and lack of legumes at Sepilok was similar to other sites in Borneo. Young and mature leaves were collected from a representative sample of the canopy flora of the two study sites; the levels of nitrogen, fibre, total phenolics and condensed tannins, and degree of digestibility by cellulase and pepsin, were measured. Levels of fibre, nitrogen and phenolics differed significantly between the two floras; foliage from Kuala Lompat being, on the whole, richer in nitrogen but lower in phenolics and fibre. As a consequence of the lower levels of fibre, and less certainly of phenolics, the Kuala Lompat foliage was comparatively more digestible. Possible reasons for the differences in foliar biochemistry between the two sites are discussed. Differences in rainfall and in soil quality are regarded as potential evolutionary causes. A further comparison of the chemical profiles with data for other forests in India and Africa indicate that Sepilok is a site in which trees invest heavily in quantitative defences such as fibre and phenolics whereas trees at Kuala Lompat place a lower emphasis on the production of these. Finally, attention is drawn to the use of foliar chemical profiles in predicting the carrying capacity for colobine monkeys at each of the five Old World forests where data are available. It was found that the ratio of nitrogen to fibre correlated well with the biomass of colobines at the five sites.