The idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win–win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are...

Intraguild predation (IGP) is a common interaction between generalist predators when they competitively exploit similar resources and prey on each other. Theoretical models predict limitations for intraguild predator coexistence unless some mechanisms, such as utilization of alternative prey (i.e., trophic niche partitioning) and cannibalism, increase the relative intraspecific clustering and interspecific segregation. As hunting strategies determine trophic niches of predators and their own vulnerability to predation, the hunting strategies may also determine the relative importance...

Additional file 1. Online Survey (in English language).

Scientific Technical Report STR; 17/03

Communities are increasingly threatened by extreme weather events. The cumulative effects of such events are typically investigated by assessing community resilience, i.e., the extent to which affected communities can achieve pre-event states. However, a mechanistic understanding of the processes underlying resilience is frequently lacking and requires linking various measures of resilience to demographic responses within natural communities. Using 13 years of data from a shrub community that experienced a severe drought in 2005, we use...

Abstract Background Adherence to evidence-based practice (EBP) is considered a key competence to improve healthcare quality. In this study, we aimed to describe the EBP adherence of healthcare professionals working in Germany and to explore barriers and facilitators regarding the implementation of EBP in clinical practice. Methods A nationwide online survey was performed among healthcare professionals in Germany from January to April 2018 using the German version of the Evidence-based Practice Inventory (EBPI) questionnaire for...

The distinction between the constructive principles of combining and composing is discussed in terms of works of art, nature, and technology. How is the work that emerges from these different principles ultimately constituted and perceived as a definable entity and how is this important for the philosophy of technology? In contrast to composition, combining is presented as a strategy to give more importance to the processual, to the various spatial and temporal couplings and decoupling...

Ausgrabungen und Georadarmessungen in der Nekropole Tuna el-Gebel haben 2018 und 2019 neue Erkenntnisse über das Areal ergeben. Teilweise freigelegt wurden ein Steinbau (GB 73) und ein Gebäude aus ungebrannten Lehmziegeln (GB 72). Der Steinbau wurde in der Kaiserzeit als Grabbau genutzt, darüber hinaus verweist die Keramik auf eine Nachnutzung in der Spätantike. Die Anzahl und die Typen der Gefäße sprechen für die Ansiedlung einer größeren Gruppe von Menschen. GB 72 war zweistöckig und verfügte...

Ecological intensification may reduce environmental externalities of agriculture by harnessing biodiversity to benefit regulating ecosystem services. However, to propose management options for the production of such services, there is a need to understand the spatio-temporal dynamics of net effects between ecosystem services and disservices provided by wild organisms across taxonomic groups in relation to habitat and landscape management. We studied the contribution of predatory vertebrates and invertebrates (including both carnivores and seed herbivores) to regulating...

Additional file 2. Media used to inform the community of healthcare professionals in Germany about the online survey.

Additional file 2. Media used to inform the community of healthcare professionals in Germany about the online survey.

1. In agricultural landscapes, arthropods provide essential ecosystem services such as biological pest control and pollination. Intensified crop management practices and homogenization of landscapes have led to declines among such organisms. Semi-natural habitats, associated with high numbers of these organisms, are increasingly lost from agricultural landscapes but diversification by increasing crop diversity has been proposed as a way to reverse observed arthropod declines and thus restore ecosystem services. However, whether or not an increase in...

Many studies have quantified the functional variation of fine root traits to understand the overarching trade-off between maximizing resource acquisition or conservation (root economics spectrum -RES-). However, we know remarkably less on how plant strategies along the RES are actually constrained by the amount of photosynthates required to construct roots (i.e. construction costs, CC) or how belowground interactions with symbiotic organisms modify root trait patterns and their relationships with CC. Our main aim was to...

The Evrona Nature Reserve (southern Israel; 29°40′N, 35°00′E) was affected by two large oil spills in 1975 and 2014, respectively. Between Nov 2019 to Oct 2019, we recorded invertebrate and vertebrate predation rates using the artificial caterpillar method (Howe et al. 2009, Entomol Exp App) in oil-polluted and unpolluted Vachellia trees.

The plan of the Archaic city of Pompeii and the existence of a distinct walled Altstadt have been much debated in scholarship. The area of the Stabian Baths plays a key role in this debate. Based on a series of excavations in the palaestra of the baths, Heinrich Sulze (1940) and particularly Hans Eschebach (1970s) reconstructed a defensive wall and parallel ditch in this area. Eschebach also identified an Archaic street and city gate in...

Additional file 1. Online Survey (in English language).

The papers by Marco Tamborini „Philosophy of biorobotics: translating and composing biohybrid forms“ and Astrid Schwarz „Composing and combining: Opposing constructive principles?“ outline different positions on mimesis and composition as the fundamental human practices of homo faber. A critical commentary seeks to highlight their differences. Tamborini specifies homo faber as homo translator who moves between different media of presentation and expression. Reproduction in another medium entails a back and forth which defines the work of...

Abstract Background Adherence to evidence-based practice (EBP) is considered a key competence to improve healthcare quality. In this study, we aimed to describe the EBP adherence of healthcare professionals working in Germany and to explore barriers and facilitators regarding the implementation of EBP in clinical practice. Methods A nationwide online survey was performed among healthcare professionals in Germany from January to April 2018 using the German version of the Evidence-based Practice Inventory (EBPI) questionnaire for...

1. Along with the global decline of species richness goes a loss of ecological traits. Associated biotic homogenization of animal communities and narrowing of trait diversity threaten ecosystem functioning and human well-being. High management intensity is regarded as an important ecological filter, eliminating species that lack suitable adaptations. Belowground arthropods are assumed to be less sensitive to such effects than aboveground arthropods. 2. Here, we compared the impact of management intensity between (grassland vs. forest)...

1. The “habitat heterogeneity hypothesis” predicts positive effects of structural complexity on species coexistence. Increasing habitat heterogeneity can change the diversity (number of species, abundances) and the functional roles of communities. The latter, however, is not well understood as species and individuals may respond very differently and dynamically to a changing environment. 2. Here, we experimentally test how habitat heterogeneity affects generalist arthropod predators, including epigaeic spiders, carabid and staphylinid beetles, under natural conditions by...

The report contains the results of various research and excavation activities of the DAI Rome and its cooperation partners in Selinunt from the year 2019. The third and final campaign took place in the Agora, work continued on temples A and O, floor examinations were carried out in various houses on the Acropolis, a new DFG project was started in the east port, and in the Baglio Florio of the Parco Archeologico di Selinunte at...

Der Beitrag fasst die Ergebnisse eines von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) im Rahmen des SPP 1630 von 2012 bis 2018 geförderten Projekts zusammen. Während der Feldkampagnen wurden archäologische, baugeschichtliche, geoarchäologische und geophysikalische Untersuchungen durchgeführt. Der Fokus der Untersuchungen lag auf der topographischen und wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung von Ainos in der Antike, insbesondere in der römischen Kaiserzeit, sowie in der byzantinischen Epoche. Neue Erkenntnisse konnten hinsichtlich der Entwicklung der Stadt und der Lokalisierung von möglichen Hafenstandorten erzielt...

Spiders are dominant predators in terrestrial ecosystems and feed on prey from the herbivore and detritivore subsystem (dual subsystem omnivory) as well as on other predators (intraguild predation). Little is known about how global change potentially affects the importance of different prey groups in predator diets. In this meta-analysis we identify the impact of climatic conditions, land-use types and functional traits of spider species on the relative importance of Hemiptera, Araneae and Collembola prey in...