The sterile insect technique is used to manage or control fruit flies throughout the world. The technique relies on large scale production before delivery to release managers. As part of the mass production phase, there are many quality control tests to demonstrate and maintain high quality pupae and flies. One highly desirable characteristic is adults with a long life so that these adults can reach sexual maturity and sterile males mate with wild fertile flies in the field and thus produce no viable offspring. Originally longevity was assessed allowing adults to have unlimited access to food and water. As quality and longevity increased, this methodology added significantly to workload and space demands and many facilities moved to testing longevity under stress where no food or water was provided. Here we examined >27,000 Queensland fruit fly Bactrocera tryoni (Froggatt) from 160 weekly production batches from July 2004 to October 2009 where flies were not provided food or water. The mean longevity was 54.4 ± SE hours. Longevity was significantly shorter from August to March, and the longevity was significantly longer in June. Longevity was not related to pupal weight, contrary to expectations. Weights were significantly lower in June and highest in summer.

1. Many prey organisms show adaptive trait shifts in response to predation. These responses are often studied under benign conditions, yet energy stress may be expected to interfere with optimal shifts in trait values. 2. We exposed the water flea Daphnia magna to fish predation and food stress and quantified both life history responses as well as physiological responses (metabolic rate, stress proteins, energy storage and immune function) to explore the architecture of defence strategies in the face of the combined stressors and the occurrence of trade-offs associated with energy constraints. 3. All traits studied showed either an overall or clone-dependent response to food stress. The chronic response to predation risk was less strong for the measured physiological traits than for life history traits, and stronger under food stress than under benign conditions for age at maturity, intrinsic population growth rate and offspring performance (measured as juvenile growth). Immune function (measured as phenoloxidase activity) was lower under predation risk but only at high food, probably because minimum levels were maintained at low food. 4. Overall, food stress induced stronger adaptive predator-induced responses, whereas more energy was invested in reproduction under benign conditions at the cost of being less defended. Our results suggest that food stress may increase the capacity to cope with predation risk and underscore the importance of integrating responses to different stressors and traits, and show how responses towards one stressor can have consequences for the susceptibility to other stressors.

²H/¹H ratios in animal biomass reflect isotopic input from food and water. A 10-week controlled laboratory study raised 48 mice divided in two generations (8 mothers Mus musculus and their offspring). The mice were divided into four groups based on the combination of ²H, ¹³C, ¹⁵N-enriched and non-enriched food and water. Glycine, the most common amino acid in bone collagen, carried the ²H, ¹³C, ¹⁵N-isotopic spike in food. ANOVA data analysis indicated that hydrogen in food accounted for ∼81 % of the hydrogen isotope inventory in collagen whereas drinking water hydrogen contributed ∼17 %. Air humidity contributed an unspecified amount. Additionally, we monitored ¹³C and ¹⁵N-enrichment in bone collagen and found strong linear correlations with the ²H-enrichment. The experiments with food and water indicate two biosynthetic pathways, namely (i) de novo creation of non-essential amino acids using hydrogen from water, and (ii) the integration of essential and non-essential amino acids from food. The lower rate of isotope uptake in mothers’ collagen relative to their offspring indicates incomplete bone collagen turnover after ten weeks. The variance of hydrogen stable isotope ratios within the same cohort may limit its usefulness as a single sample proxy for archaeological or palaeoenvironmental research.

We describe a nanosized Hg(II)-imprinted polymer that was prepared from methacrylic acid as functional monomer, ethyleneglycol dimethacrylate as cross-linker, 2,2′-azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) as radical initiator, 2, 2′-di pyrydyl amine as a specific ligand, and Hg (II) as the template ions by precipitation polymerization method in methanol as the progeny solvent. Batch adsorption experiments were carried out as a function of pH, Hg (II) imprinted polymer amount, adsorption and desorption time, volume, and concentration of eluent. The synthesized polymer particles were characterized physically and morphologically by using infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopic techniques. The maximum adsorption capacity of the ion-imprinted and non-imprinted sorbent was 27.96 and 7.89 mg g⁻¹, respectively. Under optimal conditions, the detection limit for mercury was 0.01 μg L⁻¹ and the relative standard deviation was 3.2 % (n = 6) at the 1.00 μg L⁻¹. The procedure was applied to determination of mercury in fish and water samples with satisfactory results.