The meeting place problem: Salience and search.

The notion of salience was developed by Schelling in the context of the meeting-place problem of locating a partner in the absence of a pre-agreed meeting place. In this paper, we argue that a realistic specification of the meeting place problem involves allowing a strategy of active search over a range of possible meeting places. We solve this extended problem, allowing for extensions such as repeated play, search costs and asymmetric payoffs. The result is a considerably richer, but more complex, notion of salience. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.

Experience-induced preference for oviposition repellents derived from a non-host plant by a specialist herbivore

Foraging adults of phytophagous insects are attracted by host-plant volatiles and supposedly repelled by volatiles from non-host plants. In behavioural control of pest insects, chemicals derived from non-host plants applied to crops are expected to repel searching adults and thereby reduce egg laying. How experience by searching adults of non-host volatiles affects their subsequent searching and oviposition behaviour has been rarely tested. In laboratory experiments, we examined the effect of experience of a non-host-plant extract on the oviposition behaviour of the diamondback moth (DBM), Plutella xylostella, a specialist herbivore of cruciferous plants. Naive ovipositing DBM females were repelled by an extract of dried leaves of Chrysanthemum morifolium, a non-host plant of DBM, but experienced females were not repelled. Instead they were attracted by host plants treated with the non-host-plant extract and laid a higher proportion of eggs on treated than on untreated host plants. Such behavioural changes induced by experience could lead to host-plant range expansion in phytophagous insects and play an important role in determining outcome for pest management of some behavioural manipulation methods.

Exploring the use of Viagra in place of animal and plant potency products in traditional Chinese medicine

Recently, conservationists have debated whether consumers of animal and plant potency products used to treat erectile dysfunction (ED) in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) might be switching to Viagra, consequently consuming fewer of these animals and plants. To address this question, a survey examined the medical decisions of male consumers of TCM in Hong Kong who were over the age of 50. As predicted, these consumers reported selectively switching to Western medicines to treat ED, but not to treat other health ailments. These findings provide support for the possibility that Viagra may have conservation benefits for certain species.