@article{RoemerAguilarMeyeretal.2022, author = {R{\"o}mer, Daniela and Aguilar, Gonzalo Pacheco and Meyer, Annika and Roces, Flavio}, title = {Symbiont demand guides resource supply: leaf-cutting ants preferentially deliver their harvested fragments to undernourished fungus gardens}, series = {The Science of Nature}, volume = {109}, journal = {The Science of Nature}, number = {3}, doi = {10.1007/s00114-022-01797-7}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-325080}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Leaf-cutting ants are highly successful herbivores in the Neotropics. They forage large amounts of fresh plant material to nourish a symbiotic fungus that sustains the colony. It is unknown how workers organize the intra-nest distribution of resources, and whether they respond to increasing demands in some fungus gardens by adjusting the amount of delivered resources accordingly. In laboratory experiments, we analyzed the spatial distribution of collected leaf fragments among nest chambers in Acromyrmex ambiguus leaf-cutting ants, and how it changed when one of the fungus gardens experienced undernourishment. Plant fragments were evenly distributed among nest chambers when the fungal symbiont was well nourished. That pattern changed when one of the fungus gardens was undernourished and had a higher leaf demand, resulting in more leaf discs delivered to the undernourished fungus garden over at least 2 days after deprivation. Some ants bypassed nourished gardens to directly deliver their resource to the chamber with higher nutritional demand. We hypothesize that cues arising from that chamber might be used for orientation and/or that informed individuals, presumably stemming from the undernourished chamber, may preferentially orient to them.}, language = {en} } @article{DhillonKuebertFlockDahmsetal.2023, author = {Dhillon, Maninder Singh and K{\"u}bert-Flock, Carina and Dahms, Thorsten and Rummler, Thomas and Arnault, Joel and Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf and Ullmann, Tobias}, title = {Evaluation of MODIS, Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 data for accurate crop yield predictions: a case study using STARFM NDVI in Bavaria, Germany}, series = {Remote Sensing}, volume = {15}, journal = {Remote Sensing}, number = {7}, issn = {2072-4292}, doi = {10.3390/rs15071830}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-311132}, year = {2023}, abstract = {The increasing availability and variety of global satellite products and the rapid development of new algorithms has provided great potential to generate a new level of data with different spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions. However, the ability of these synthetic spatiotemporal datasets to accurately map and monitor our planet on a field or regional scale remains underexplored. This study aimed to support future research efforts in estimating crop yields by identifying the optimal spatial (10 m, 30 m, or 250 m) and temporal (8 or 16 days) resolutions on a regional scale. The current study explored and discussed the suitability of four different synthetic (Landsat (L)-MOD13Q1 (30 m, 8 and 16 days) and Sentinel-2 (S)-MOD13Q1 (10 m, 8 and 16 days)) and two real (MOD13Q1 (250 m, 8 and 16 days)) NDVI products combined separately to two widely used crop growth models (CGMs) (World Food Studies (WOFOST), and the semi-empiric Light Use Efficiency approach (LUE)) for winter wheat (WW) and oil seed rape (OSR) yield forecasts in Bavaria (70,550 km\(^2\)) for the year 2019. For WW and OSR, the synthetic products' high spatial and temporal resolution resulted in higher yield accuracies using LUE and WOFOST. The observations of high temporal resolution (8-day) products of both S-MOD13Q1 and L-MOD13Q1 played a significant role in accurately measuring the yield of WW and OSR. For example, L- and S-MOD13Q1 resulted in an R\(^2\) = 0.82 and 0.85, RMSE = 5.46 and 5.01 dt/ha for WW, R\(^2\) = 0.89 and 0.82, and RMSE = 2.23 and 2.11 dt/ha for OSR using the LUE model, respectively. Similarly, for the 8- and 16-day products, the simple LUE model (R\(^2\) = 0.77 and relative RMSE (RRMSE) = 8.17\%) required fewer input parameters to simulate crop yield and was highly accurate, reliable, and more precise than the complex WOFOST model (R\(^2\) = 0.66 and RRMSE = 11.35\%) with higher input parameters. Conclusively, both S-MOD13Q1 and L-MOD13Q1, in combination with LUE, were more prominent for predicting crop yields on a regional scale than the 16-day products; however, L-MOD13Q1 was advantageous for generating and exploring the long-term yield time series due to the availability of Landsat data since 1982, with a maximum resolution of 30 m. In addition, this study recommended the further use of its findings for implementing and validating the long-term crop yield time series in different regions of the world.}, language = {en} } @article{ChenMishraGlaessetal.2017, author = {Chen, Yi-chun and Mishra, Dushyant and Gl{\"a}ß, Sebastian and Gerber, Bertram}, title = {Behavioral Evidence for Enhanced Processing of the Minor Component of Binary Odor Mixtures in Larval Drosophila}, series = {Frontiers in Psychology}, volume = {8}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, number = {1923}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01923}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-170011}, year = {2017}, abstract = {A fundamental problem in deciding between mutually exclusive options is that the decision needs to be categorical although the properties of the options often differ but in grade. We developed an experimental handle to study this aspect of behavior organization. Larval Drosophila were trained such that in one set of animals odor A was rewarded, but odor B was not (A+/B), whereas a second set of animals was trained reciprocally (A/B+). We then measured the preference of the larvae either for A, or for B, or for "morphed" mixtures of A and B, that is for mixtures differing in the ratio of the two components. As expected, the larvae showed higher preference when only the previously rewarded odor was presented than when only the previously unrewarded odor was presented. For mixtures of A and B that differed in the ratio of the two components, the major component dominated preference behavior—but it dominated less than expected from a linear relationship between mixture ratio and preference behavior. This suggests that a minor component can have an enhanced impact in a mixture, relative to such a linear expectation. The current paradigm may prove useful in understanding how nervous systems generate discrete outputs in the face of inputs that differ only gradually.}, language = {en} }