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Diaspis echinocacti (Bouché), a globally distributed cochineal scale insect, poses a significant threat to Opuntia spp. in Morocco and worldwide. This study explores the ecological dynamics of D. echinocacti across different Opuntia spp. varieties, employing antixenosis and antibiosis tests in a controlled greenhouse environment (25.3 ºC). In the antixenosis test, Opuntia spp. varieties displayed varying levels of resistance at 6–24 h post-infestation. Marjana and Belara exhibited early resistance with significantly lower numbers of insects (6 h: 4.4, 9.8; 12 h: 3.2, 5.1; 24 h: 2.3, 4.4), while Aakria, Ghalia, and Karama sustained higher susceptibility (6 h: 71.3, 82.1, 85.6; 12 h: 75.2, 89.6, 105.6; 24 h: 105.6, 110.3, 118.0). In the antibiosis test, the life cycle, behavior, and reproductive parameters of D. echinocacti were assessed. Marjana and Belara exhibited longer early nymphal stages compared to Aakria, Ghalia, and Karama. Longevity in both females and males was highest in Ghalia and Karama, while Marjana and Belara showed the shortest duration. Female life cycles ranged from 63.4 to 88.2 days, with Marjana and Belara having the shortest durations and Karama the longest. Fecundity was highest in Karama (152.80 eggs) and lowest in Marjana (12.60 eggs). Population growth parameters highlighted that Karama (r = 0.09, λ = 1.10, R0 = 61.73) and Ghalia (r = 0.09, λ = 1.09, R0 = 56.54) exhibited the highest intrinsic rate of increase, finite rate of increase, and total reproduction per generation. This study offers essential insights into D. echinocacti dynamics, informing pest management and advancing our understanding of ecological interactions in cactus ecosystems, particularly for breeding programs targeting Opuntia spp. resistance to scale insects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the dynamic relationship between sharksuckers and Atlantic Nurse sharks within a fish cleaning station in South Eleuthera, The Bahamas. Despite the prevalent symbiotic association between echeneid fishes and sharks, the specifics of their interactions, behavioral adaptations, and the influence of food availability remain understudied. The research employed a comprehensive observational approach, focusing on free-swimming and attached sharksucker' behaviors (Echeneis spp.) in the presence of Atlantic Nurse sharks. Through a month-long study, both qualitative and quantitative analyses of the behaviors were conducted. The results challenge the traditional perception of a purely mutualistic or parasitic relationship, suggesting a more complex dynamic between sharksuckers and sharks. Specifically, the study indicates an increase in boldness and competitive behaviors towards sharks in a controlled feeding setting, indicating that sharksuckers' behaviors and relationships with their hosts are constantly evolving and should not be treated as simply symbiotic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Match analysis has evolved exponentially over the past decades in team sports resulting in a significant number of published systematic reviews and meta-analyses. An umbrella review of the available literature is needed to provide an integrated overview of current knowledge and contribute to more robust theoretical explanations of team performance. Methods: The Web of Science (all databases), PubMed, Cochrane Library (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews), Scopus, and SPORTDiscus databases were searched for relevant publications prior to 19 February 2021. Appraisal of the methodological quality of included articles was undertaken using the tool for Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR-2). Twenty-four studies were reviewed that met the following criteria: (1) contained relevant data from match analyses in team ball sports; (2) were defined as systematic reviews or/and meta-analyses; and (3) were written in the English language. Results: The overall methodological quality of the 24 included reviews, obtained through the AMSTAR-2, revealed very low confidence ratings (Critically Low, n = 12) for the results of most systematic reviews of match analyses in team ball sports. Additionally, the results showed that research is focused mainly on four levels of analysis: (1) dyadic (microlevel); (2) individual (molecular level; predominant); (3) group (mesolevel), and (4) team dynamics (macrolevel). These levels of analysis included tactical, technical, physical, and psychosocial variables. Team performance was contextualized at two levels, with reference to: (1) match context (e.g. match status, match location, match period, quality of opposition) and (2) sociodemographic and environmental constraints (sex, age groups, competitive level, altitude, temperature, pitch surface). Conclusions: The evolution of methods for match analysis in team ball sports indicates that: (1) an individual-level performance analysis was predominant; (2) the focus on intermediate levels of analysis, observing performance in dyadic and group interactions, has received less attention from researchers; (3) neglected areas of research include psychosocial aspects of team sports and women's performance; and (4) analyses of match contexts need greater depth. Registration: The protocol was registered in the International Platform of Registered Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols with the number 202080067 and the DOI number https://doi.org/10.37766/inplasy2020.8.0067. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information technology has been integrated into most areas of sport, providing new insights, improving the efficiency of operational processes, and offering unique opportunities for exploration and inquiry. While acknowledging this positive impact, this paper explores whether sufficient consideration has been directed towards what technology risks detracting from the learning and developmental experiences of its users. Specifically, viewed through the philosophical lens of the device paradigm, and considering a more ecological account of technological implementation, we discuss how technology use in sport could subtly disengage educators and applied sports scientists from performance environments. Insights gleaned from such an ecological account of technology implementation could lead sports science and educational teams to ask and reflect on tough questions of current practice: i.e. has too much control been given to technological devices to 'solve' problems and communicate knowledge (about) in sport? Has technology improved the skills of players and performance staff? Or are performance staff at risk of becoming over-reliant on technology, and as a result, reducing the value of experiential knowledge (of) and intuition? Questions like these should be asked if technological devices, purported to support aspects of practice, are continually integrated into the sporting landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The act of deliberately removing a body part–called autotomy–is a behavior that has appeared frequently across the tree of life. Though there are many possible functions for this behavior, it is often thought of first as a mechanism to escape predation. In a predator–prey interaction, autotomy can therefore confer significant benefits to the prey–particularly, the benefit of not being eaten–but it may also incur significant costs, including the energy expenditure required to regrow the body part and any additional consequences of losing the body part in the first place. In addition, the presence of autotomy may affect how predators choose to approach prey. Here, we put these costs and benefits into a game theory framework and analyze the evolutionary, ecological, and eco-evolutionary dynamics of autotomy, considering both predator and prey strategies. We also apply our model to an empirical example using existing data from porcelain crabs. We find a wide range of effects of autotomy on the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of the predators and prey, including the possibility that the prey become locked into performing autotomy by the predators and the possibility that autotomy can rescue predator–prey coexistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designers of educational modules for conceptual learning often rely on procedural frameworks to chart out interaction mechanics through which users will develop target understandings. To date, however, there has been no systematic comparative evaluation of such frameworks in terms of their consequences for learning. This lack of empirical evaluation, we submit, is due to the intellectual challenge of pinning down in what fundamental sense these various frameworks differ and, therefore, along which parameters to conduct controlled comparative experimentation. Toward an empirical evaluation of educational-technology design frameworks, this conceptual paper considers the case of dynamic mathematics environments (DME), interactive modules for learning curricular content through manipulating virtual objects. We consider user activities in two paradigmatic DME genres that utilize similar HCI yet different mechanics. To compare these mechanics, we draw from complex dynamic systems theory a constraint-based model of embodied interaction. Task analyses suggest that whereas in one DME genre (GeoGebra) the interaction constraints are a priori inherent in the environment, in another DME genre (Mathematics Imagery Trainer) the constraints are ad hoc emergent in the task. We conjecture differential learning effects of these distinct constraint regimes, concluding that ad hoc emergent task constraints may better facilitate the naturalistic development of cognitive structures grounding targeted conceptual learning. We outline a future empirical research design to compare the pedagogical entailments of these two design frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore a different, more relational worldview of skill, learning and education in sport. To do this, we turn to the work of social anthropologist, Tim Ingold, leaning on the notion of enskilment, which proposes that learning is inseparable from doing and place. From this worldview, what is learned is not an established body of knowledge, transmitted into the mind of a passive recipient from an authorised being, but is a progressively deepening embodied-embedded attentiveness, where an individual learns to self-regulate by becoming more responsive to people and environmental features by 'looking, listening and feeling'. As we discuss, Ingold's perspectives on enskilment are rooted in the etymological connotations of education—ex-ducere, which roughly means 'to lead out'. In applying this notion to sport, we unpack three of its entangled components, taskscapes, guided attention, and wayfinding, detailing the implications of each for the growth of enskilled sports performers. To promote the translation of these ideas, in addition to encouraging their inquiry beyond the scope of what is discussed here, sporting examples are threaded throughout the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commonly classified as individual, task or environmental, constraints are boundaries which shape the emergence of functional movement solutions. In applied sport, an ongoing challenge is to improve the measurement, analysis and understanding of constraints to key stakeholders. Methodological considerations for furthering these pursuits should be centred around an interdisciplinary approach. This integration of methodology and knowledge from different disciplines also encourages the sharing of encompassing principles, concepts, methods and data to generate new solutions to existing problems. This narrative review discusses how a number of rapidly developing fields are positioned to help guide, support and progress an understanding of sport through constraints. It specifically focuses on examples from the fields of technology, analytics and perceptual science. It discusses how technology is generating large quantities of data which can improve our understanding of how constraints shape the movement solutions of performers in training and competition environments. Analytics can facilitate new insights from numerous and complex data through enhanced non-linear and multivariate analysis techniques. The role of the perceptual sciences is discussed with respect to generating outputs from analytics that are more interpretable for the end-user. Together, these three fields of technology, analytics and perceptual science may enable a more comprehensive understanding of constraints in sports performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the phenomenology emerging from a two-species dynamics under the scenario of a quasi-neutral competition within a metapopulation framework. We employ stochastic and deterministic approaches, namely spatially constrained individual-based Monte Carlo simulations and coupled mean-field ODEs. Our results show that the multifold interplay between competition, birth–death dynamics and spatial constraints induces a nonmonotonic relation between the ecological majority–minority switching and the diffusion between patches. This means that diffusion can set off birth–death ratios and enhance the preservation of a species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Firm Ecosystem Model is a dynamical model based on the empirical finding that firm characteristics, such as the tendency to innovate and competitive advantages, vary according to firm size. Firm dynamics leading to various population distributions are considered as a competition-colonization scenario in a spatially defined market, where firms of differing sizes are treated as separate species with different competition and colonization characteristics. Smaller firms, given adequate investment funds to innovate, are able to colonize available space more quickly than larger firms, and larger firms are assumed to have stronger competition characteristics and are able to outcompete smaller firms for occupied space. With startup and mortality parameters determined empirically, firm populations reach equilibria dependent on the values of the capital investment parameters. The model predictions provide a good qualitative fit to empirical data from the Business Dynamics Statistics database. Finally, we explore how alternative mortality or investment conditions affect the firm size distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embodiment perspectives from the cognitive sciences offer a rethinking of the role of sensorimotor activity in human learning, knowing, and reasoning. Educational researchers have been evaluating whether and how these perspectives might inform the theory and practice of STEM instruction. Some of these researchers have created technological systems, where students solve sensorimotor interaction problems as cognitive entry into curricular content. However, the field has yet to agree on a conceptually coherent and empirically validated design framework, inspired by embodiment perspectives, for developing these instructional resources. A stumbling block toward such consensus, we propose, is an implicit disagreement among educational researchers on the relation between physical movement and conceptual learning. This hypothesized disagreement could explain the contrasting choices we witness among current designs for learning with respect to instructional methodology for cultivating new physical actions - whereas some researchers use an approach of direct instruction, such as explicit teaching of gestures, others use an indirect approach, where students must discover effective movements to solve a task. Prior to comparing these approaches, it may help first to clarify key constructs. In this theoretical essay we draw on embodiment and systems literature as well as findings from our design research so as to offer the following taxonomy that may facilitate discourse about movement in STEM learning: (1) distal movement is the technologically extended effect of physical movement on the environment; (2) proximal movement is the physical movements themselves; and (3) sensorimotor schemes are the routinized patterns of cognitive activity that become enacted through proximal movement by orienting on so-called attentional anchors. Attentional anchors are goal-oriented phenomenological objects or enactive perceptions ('sensori-') that organize proximal movement to effect distal movement ('-motor'). All three facets of movement must be considered in analyzing embodied learning processes. We demonstrate that indirect movement instruction enables students to develop new sensorimotor schemes including attentional anchors as idiosyncratic solutions to physical interaction problems. These schemes are, by necessity, grounded in students' own agentive relation to the world while also grounding target content such as mathematical notions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents economically optimal management of uneven-aged mixed mountain forests that takes into account tree growth variability. We divided 9846 silver fir ( Abies alba), beech ( Fagus sylvatica), and spruce ( Picea abies) trees measured on 898 forest inventory plots in the Snežnik and Leskova dolina management units (4905 ha, Dinaric mountains, Slovenia) into three growth classes (slow-, medium-, and fast-growing trees) to simulate optimal forest management over a period of 100 years with respect to changing tree growth, stand density, diameter distribution, and tree species composition. We developed a density-dependent and stage and growth-structured matrix transition model which-simultaneous to the long-term stand dynamics projection-scheduled optimal harvesting to maximize the net present value using a nonlinear approach. The ecology of tree species was considered by using tree species-specific and stand-density and diameter-dependent logistic functions for ingrowth, transition, and mortality. The model projected a shift in tree species composition from fir-dominated to beech-dominated forests within 100 years. A change from harvesting slow- and fast-growing trees as if they all had medium growth to growth-sensitive harvesting increased the net revenue and maintained the uneven-aged stand structure. Optimal harvest diameters varied among growth classes, time periods, and tree species according to the economic maturity of individual trees and ranged from 12 (pre-commercial thinning) to 72 cm (target diameter). The simulation highlights the potential of improved bio-economic models for increasing yield from uneven-aged forests and scheduling optimal management regimes with multiple objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecological dynamic models of algal bloom in existence are of poor environmental adaptability and hard to reflect nonlinear dynamic change of algal bloom formation mechanism. To solve this problem, time variable is applied to mechanism-based model according to algal bloom nonlinear dynamic in this paper, and mechanism feature of algal bloom is represented by time function model and effecting function model. Data-driven modeling approaches including tabu search and genetic algorithm are also adopted to optimize structure and parameter for the time-varying nonlinear modeling to improve environmental adaptability and accuracy of the model. High-precision numerical solutions of the optimized time-varying nonlinear model is obtained by fourth-order Adams predictor-corrector method. This method finally realizes effective prediction of algal bloom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New and radically reformative thinking about the enactive and embodied basis of cognition holds out the promise of moving forward age-old debates about whether we learn and how we learn. The radical enactive, embodied view of cognition (REC) poses a direct, and unmitigated, challenge to the trademark assumptions of traditional cognitivist theories of mind-those that characterize cognition as always and everywhere grounded in the manipulation of contentful representations of some kind. REC has had some success in understanding how sports skills and expertise are acquired. But, REC approaches appear to encounter a natural obstacle when it comes to understanding skill acquisition in knowledge-rich, conceptually based domains like the hard sciences and mathematics. This paper offers a proof of concept that REC's reach can be usefully extended into the domain of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning, especially when it comes to understanding the deep roots of such learning. In making this case, this paper has five main parts. The section 'Ancient Intellectualism and the REC Challenge' briefly introduces REC and situates it with respect to rival views about the cognitive basis of learning. The 'Learning REConceived: from Sports to STEM?' section outlines the substantive contribution REC makes to understanding skill acquisition in the domain of sports and identifies reasons for doubting that it will be possible to apply the same approach to knowledge-rich STEM domains. The 'Mathematics as Embodied Practice' section gives the general layout for how to understand mathematics as an embodied practice. The section 'The Importance of Attentional Anchors' introduces the concept 'attentional anchor' and establishes why attentional anchors are important to educational design in STEM domains like mathematics. Finally, drawing on some exciting new empirical studies, the section 'Seeing Attentional Anchors' demonstrates how REC can contribute to understanding the roots of STEM learning and inform its learning design, focusing on the case of mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a spatial version of the neutral community model on a network of interconnected patches. The dynamical equations for the abundances and higher order moments of the abundances are established. Due to the neutrality assumption these equations are autonomous, enabling an exact analysis of spatio-temporal dynamics. We compute local (i.e., inside a patch) and global (i.e., between patches) diversities, and illustrate our results with two examples: (1) a non-spatial community, for which we recover previous results, and (2) a model with a finite number of patches which are all connected to each other with equal migration intensity. We discuss the relevance of this model for experiments in microbial ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystem services—the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems—are essential to human existence, but demands for services often surpass the capacity of ecosystems to provide them. Lack of ecological information often precludes informed decision making about ecosystem services. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) was conceived in part to provide the necessary ecological information to decision makers. To this end, the MA set out to address the stated needs and concerns of decision makers and examine the ecological dynamics and uncertainties underlying these concerns. To improve our understanding of their information needs and concerns, we interviewed 59 decision makers from five continents. The respondents indicated that although most people generally agree about the ideal state of the planet—free of poverty and extreme inequality, replete with cultural and biological diversity-they often disagree about the best way to achieve these goals. Further, although nonspecialists are generally concerned about the environment and may have a good understanding of some of issues, they often have a more limited grasp of the ecological dynamics that drive the issues of concern. We identify some of the principal uncertainties about ecosystem dynamics and feedbacks that underlie the concerns of decision makers. Each of the papers in this special feature addresses these ecological feedbacks from the perspective of a specific discipline, suggesting ways in which knowledge of ecological dynamics can be incorporated into the MA's assessment and scenario-building process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many representatives of freshwater zooplankton produce at some stage in their life cycle resting stages. A variable portion of the eggs of the previous growing period will hatch at the next occasion while the remaining ones are added to a persistent egg bank, where they can remain viable for decades or longer. The importance of the study of resting eggs and egg banks in general for such different disciplines as taxonomy, ecological biogeography, paleolimnology, nature conservation, evolutionary ecology and community and population ecology is generally appreciated. The major current and expected future developments in this rapidly expanding field of research are presented here. The structure and dynamics of the egg bank are determined by the life history characteristics of the species (or local population), the hatching phenology of their resting stages, and the characteristics of the habitat. The horizontal distribution of dormant stages is generally patchy, with a greater density in the deeper and/or windward parts of a pond or lake. In sediment cores, most viable (responsive) eggs occur in the upper centimeters, although vertical variation related to the history of fish predation or water quality occurs. The accumulation of resting stages of different species, generations and genotypes with variable regeneration niches results in a mixed egg bank with greater potential biodiversity than the active community sampled at any one moment. Through the benthic–pelagic coupling, this dormant reservoir may have considerable impact on the evolutionary potential of the organisms, the ecological dynamics of the community and the distribution of species. Egg banks can be considered the archive of the local habitat, since the pattern of changes in species assemblage and genotypes from the past up to the present reflect changes due to natural or anthropogenic impact that can be used to reconstruct evolutionary processes or even to restore the local habitat. Overlooking the egg bank as an important component of zooplankton communities may lead to erroneous interpretations in the analysis of community and population genetic structure. This review integrates technical and scientific information needed in the study of the structure and function of egg banks in zooplankton with special focus on the fascinating latest developments in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasing resources in sports organisations being allocated to the development and preparation of individual athletes and sub-groups with specialist performance roles, the work of coaches, specialist (role) coaches and support staff needs to be functionally and coherently integrated. This integration of sport science support and coaching can be administered by staff in a Department of Methodology (DoM). Particularly, in this paper, we propose how specialist coaching can be situated in a DoM, presenting a model advocating effective functioning in high-performance team sports organisations. Using principles of ecological dynamics, we provide a rationale for a functional methodology for the design of practice tasks in a DoM that views learners as wayfinders, self-regulating their way through competitive performance environments. This rationale for athlete self-regulation in practice could improve athlete performance by enhancing problem solving, engagement with constraints of learning designs and supporting better attunement to contextual information abundant in a competitive environment. Finally, by introducing this unified and multidisciplinary DoM, specialist coaches, team coaches and sport science support staff, within the organisational structure, can collaboratively debate and co-design individualised athlete training programmes to enrich skill adaptability and performance functionality. To underline these contentions, three high-performance sport case studies from Australian Football: goalkeeping in Association Football and Rugby League are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where do novel and innovative ideas in sport science come from? How do researchers and practitioners collectively explore the dynamic landscape of inquiry, problem, solution and application? How do they learn to skilfully navigate from current place and practice toward the next idea located beyond their current vantage point? These questions are not just of philosophical value but are important for understanding how to provide high-quality support for athletes and sport participants at all levels of expertise and performance. Grounded in concepts from social anthropology, and theoretically positioned within an ecological dynamics framework, this opinion piece introduces a hunter-gatherer model of human behaviour based on wayfinding, situating it as a conceptual guide for implementing innovations in sport science. Here, we contend that the embedded knowledge of a landscape that guides a successful hunting and gathering party is germane to the pragmatic abduction needed to promote innovation in sport performance, leading to the inquisition of new questions and ways of resolving performance-preparation challenges. More specifically, exemplified through its transdisciplinarity, we propose that to hunt 'new ideas' and gather translatable knowledge, sport science researchers and practitioners need to wayfind through uncharted regions located in new performance landscapes. It is through this process of navigation where individuals will deepen, enrich and grow current knowledge, 'taking home' new ideas as they find their way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wayfinding is the process of embarking upon a purposeful, intentional, and self-regulated journey that takes an individual from an intended region in one landscape to another. This process is facilitated through an individual's capacity to utilise temporally structured, functional actions embedded within a particular environmental niche. Thus, individuals learn of their performance landscapes by experiencing them through interactions, detecting and exploiting its many features to 'find their way'. In this opinion piece, we argue that these ecological and anthropological conceptualisations of human navigation can, metaphorically, deepen our understanding of the learner and the learning process in sport, viewed through the lens of ecological dynamics. Specifically, we consider sports practitioners as (learning) landscape designers, and learners as wayfinders; individuals who learn to skilfully self-regulate through uncharted fields (composed of emergent problems) within performance landscapes through a deeply embodied and embedded perception-action coupling. We contend that, through this re-configuration of the learner and the learning process in sport, practitioners may better enact learning designs that afford learners exploratory freedoms, learning to perceive and utilise available opportunities for action to skilfully navigate through emergent performance-related problems. We conclude the paper by offering two practical examples in which practitioners have designed practice landscapes that situate learners as wayfinders and the learning process in sport as wayfinding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]