1. The aim of this study was to investigate if male-to-female aggression of common pheasants in the course of the breeding season was related to the concentration of plasma testosterone and/or other biochemical plasma indicators in male pheasants housed in breeding cages. The influence of season on the concentration of testosterone and biochemical indicators was also investigated.
2. Males were divided into non-aggressive and aggressive groups during the breeding season based on ethological evaluation. At the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the breeding season, a blood sample was taken from all males on the same day and the concentration of selected biochemical indicators and the total circulating testosterone in the plasma were determined.
3. Male-to-female aggression during the breeding season of pheasants was not influenced by the total plasma testosterone of males.
4. The concentration of total plasma testosterone in males decreased gradually during the breeding season.
5. Male-to-female aggression of pheasants did not have a significant effect on any of the assessed biochemical indicators.
6. The influence of the breeding season affected the activities of alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase as well as the concentrations of glucose, magnesium, potassium and chloride in the blood plasma of cage-housed male pheasants. 相似文献
The impact of extreme events (such as prolonged droughts, heat waves, cold shocks and frost) is poorly represented by most of the existing yield forecasting systems. Two new model-based approaches that account for the impact of extreme weather events on crop production are presented as a way to improve yield forecasts, both based on the Crop Growth Monitoring System (CGMS) of the European Commission. A first approach includes simple relations – consistent with the degree of complexity of the most generic crop simulators – to explicitly model the impact of these events on leaf development and yield formation. A second approach is a hybrid system which adds selected agro-climatic indicators (accounting for drought and cold/heat stress) to the previous one. The new proposed methods, together with the CGMS-standard approach and a system exclusively based on selected agro-climatic indicators, were evaluated in a comparative fashion for their forecasting reliability. The four systems were assessed for the main micro- and macro-thermal cereal crops grown in highly productive European countries. The workflow included the statistical post-processing of model outputs aggregated at national level with historical series (1995–2013) of official yields, followed by a cross-validation for forecasting events triggered at flowering, maturity and at an intermediate stage. With the system based on agro-climatic indicators, satisfactory performances were limited to microthermal crops grown in Mediterranean environments (i.e. crop production systems mainly driven by rainfall distribution). Compared to CGMS-standard system, the newly proposed approaches increased the forecasting reliability in 94% of the combinations crop × country × forecasting moment. In particular, the explicit simulation of the impact of extreme events explained a large part of the inter-annual variability (up to +44% for spring barley in Poland), while the addition of agro-climatic indicators to the workflow mostly added accuracy to an already satisfactory forecasting system. 相似文献
Plants are often subjected to periods of water stress. There are little data examining the effect of water stress on the forage species Plantago lanceolata and Cichorium intybus. In two pot experiments with P. lanceolata and C. intybus, morphological responses under optimum, dry, and very‐dry water treatments with weekly, fortnightly and 3‐weekly defoliation intervals and physiological responses under optimum and very‐dry water treatments were measured. A third experiment compared the rooting depths of P. lanceolata and C. intybus under field conditions. These findings suggest that both P. lanceolata and C. intybus can survive and continue to grow under water stress conditions with the main differences between the two species being attributable to morphological characteristics (root mass, taproot diameter and shoot mass fraction) rather than differences at a physiological level. Overall, the results suggest plantain may be more productive under moderate drought due to its greater shoot mass fraction, whereas chicory may be more productive and persistent under severe drought due to its greater root mass, taproot diameter and root depth under field conditions. 相似文献