The life cycle of the birthwort swallowtail butterfly, Atrophaneura alcinous depended on both climatic and biotic factors such as quality of food plant, temperature, photoperiod, starvation and crowding. Not only the induction of diapause, but also the period of diapause depended on photoperiods. The period of diapause depended on various other factors that affected diapause incidence, such as isolation, food quality, temperature and food deprivation. The variability was observed not only among populations but also among individuals within a population, causing the life cycle to split within the population. Three populations of A. alcinous from Kobe (Hyogo Prefecture, Japan) were characterized by the habitat, food plant, behavior, coloration, diapause response, growth rate, body size and temperature tolerance. i.e., woody species vs. weedy species, The data suggests that an open-land population has a simple life cycle, producing more annual generations, whereas a wood-land population is polymorphic, diapausing at different phases of its life cycle. The split life cycle was attributed to adaptation to avoid occasional exhaustion of food plants due to overcrowding caused by the escape from the predation by sequestered toxic substances derived from the host plant. Stable wood-land habitat may favor temporal escape strategy from population catastrophe by diapause, whereas unstable open-land habitat may favor migrant r-strategists to spatially escape such a catastrophe.

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This study aimed to establish a new nonlethal strategy to confirm the distribution range of Japanese water shrew. The survey was conducted in southern Nagano Prefecture during from September 2001 to November 2002 except for the December to March period. Distribution was judged by the feeding marks that remained in the containers in the survey period. Characteristics of feeding marks of water shrews are that the fish bait is halved without its backbone, or is pulled out of the container with visible feeding marks. The survey was affected by periods of interruption caused by rainfall, but was not affected by watercourse width. The survey period found to be sufficient to determine an absence of water shrew was 17 days.

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Butterfly assemblages were monitored by the transect count method at several residential suburb areas, river land and coppice environment near Osaka city and association of butterfly assemblage with environment was examined. Species observed in the all areas examined were Zizeeria maha, Pieris rapae, Papilio xuthus, Graphium sarpedon, Argyreus hyperbius, Eurema hecabe and Parnara guttata. Among these 7 species, Papilio xuthus, Graphium sarpedon and Argyreus hyperbius were thought to be species adapting urban environment specifically due to their higher distribution at urban area. Based on the distribution of these 3 species, a novel method was proposed for classifying urban and suburb environment. This method can give a detailed classification of rural to urban environment, and may be available for the assessment of urban environment.

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This paper reviews the literature on foraging populations, and control of subterranean termites with special reference to baiting. Studies on foraging populations of subterranean termites generally involved population characterization and estimation of foraging territories. Population characterization was normally conducted using mark-recapture techniques (single or triple) by trapping subterranean termites in underground monitoring stations, followed by marking the insects using histological dyes. Methods of studying foraging territories of subterranean termites involved the use of radio isotopes, direct excavation, histological dyes, flourescent paints and conducting agonistic behavioral experiments. Subterranean termite control strategies included chemical, biological and physical control methods. The soil treatment and baiting methods were common chemical methods, while the use of specific sand or granite particles, and stainless steel mesh are recent advances in physical exclusion method. Baiting is a relatively popular method which takes the advantage of social nature and foraging behaviour of subterranean termites where food sharing among the workers and nestmates through trophallaxis could enable the transfer of slow-acting toxicant to the whole colony. Many potential active ingredients as bait toxicants had been evaluated including metabolic inhibitors, fungi (bioagents) and insect growth regulators (IGRs), but only the latter has been shown to give more promising results and could effect colony elimination.

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