Where to hike? Mobile application for guiding tourists in the Bükkalja Region, Hungary

Hiking is one of the most popular outdoor sports activities in Hungary. Despite not having many mountainous areas, a wide network of hiking trails crosses the country’s landscapes. As online tourist maps and thematic mobile applications become more and more popular among hikers, the role of paper-based, analogue tourist maps decreases. However, no thematic application has been issued that contains detailed surveyed (or crowdsourced) data on attractions or the natural circumstances (coverage, difficulty) for a certain area in Hungary yet. Nature tourism in the Bükkalja Region, Hungary is mostly based on geological-geomorphological features that are completed with cultural facilities. The length of the hiking trail system is more than 370 km in the examined 354 km2 large sample area. We have developed an OS mobile application that offers guidance for tourists based on four basic pillars: the physical condition of the trails, the attractions along a trail, dangerous trail segments and hiking trail marking quality. These pillars are visualized with an OpenLayers-based online map. The result is a multi-purpose smartphone application. Its main aim is to offer a planning platform for tourists by examining the difficulty of the trails and designating the attractions to visit. There is information on the most important attractions of the area: cultural and geoscientific sites are also presented. We also encourage users to report changes to the map data content via the crowdsourcing menu. These comments and remarks are continuously checked for validity and the database is modified with the use of them.

The Bayesian superorganism: externalized memories facilitate distributed sampling

A key challenge for any animal (or sampling technique) is to avoid wasting time by searching for resources (information) in places already found to be unprofitable. In biology, this challenge is particularly strong when the organism is a central place forager—returning to a nest between foraging bouts—because it is destined repeatedly to cover much the same ground. This problem will be particularly acute if many individuals forage from the same central place, as in social insects such as the ants. Foraging (sampling) performance may be greatly enhanced by coordinating movement trajectories such that each ant (walker) visits separate parts of the surrounding (unknown) space. We find experimental evidence for an externalized spatial memory in Temnothorax albipennis ants: chemical markers (either pheromones or cues such as cuticular hydrocarbon footprints) that are used by nest-mates to mark explored space. We show these markers could be used by the ants to scout the space surrounding their nest more efficiently through indirect coordination. We also develop a simple model of this marking behaviour that can be applied in the context of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods (Baddeley et al . 2019 J. R. Soc. Interface 16 , 20190162 ( doi:10.1098/rsif.2019.0162 )). This substantially enhances the performance of standard methods like the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm in sampling from sparse probability distributions (such as those confronted by the ants) with only a little additional computational cost. Our Bayesian framework for superorganismal behaviour motivates the evolution of exploratory mechanisms such as trail marking in terms of enhanced collective information processing.

The Bayesian Superorganism: externalised memories facilitate distributed sampling

A key challenge for any animal (or sampling technique) is to avoid wasting time by searching for resources (information) in places already found to be unprofitable. In biology, this challenge is particularly strong when the organism is a central place forager – returning to a nest between foraging bouts – because it is destined repeatedly to cover much the same ground. This problem will be particularly acute if many individuals forage from the same central place, as in social insects such as the ants. Foraging (sampling) performance may be greatly enhanced by coordinating movement trajectories such that each ant (‘walker’) visits separate parts of the surrounding (unknown) space. We find experimental evidence for an externalised spatial memory in Temnothorax albipennis ants: chemical markers (either pheromones or cues such as cuticular hydrocarbon footprints) that are used by nestmates to mark explored space. We show these markers could be used by the ants to scout the space surrounding their nest more efficiently through indirect coordination. We also develop a simple model of this marking behaviour that can be applied in the context of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods (Baddeley et al. 2019). This substantially enhances the performance of standard methods like the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm in sampling from sparse probability distributions (such as those confronted by the ants) with little additional computational cost. Our Bayesian framework for superorganismal behaviour motivates the evolution of exploratory mechanisms such as trail marking in terms of enhanced collective information processing.

Infochemicals: An effective and environment friendly management of insect pests for sustainable agriculture

Chemical signals and cues have been collectively called semiochemicals or infochemicals referring to “a chemical substance, which in a natural context, is implicated in the transfer of information from one individual to other that results certain behavioral and physiological changes in response in one or both. Infochemicals that mediate interactions between members of the same species are collectively referred to as pheromones, and can be classified as sex pheromone, aggregation pheromone, alarm pheromone, trail marking pheromone on the basis of their functions etc. Allelochemicals are also infochemicals which cause an insect to respond interspecifically. They include a more number of chemicals than pheromones, and can be grouped into: allomones, kairomones, apneumones and synomones. The idea of infochemicals using for management of insect pests in agricultural, horticultural, forestry and storage has been a driving ambition through few decades of pheromone research. Several chemicals have been identified from insects that can be used in monitoring of native and invasive pest and also to protect the plants against herbivores. They can also be used as mass trapping, annihilation, and behavior manipulation of insect in host finding. Since these compounds are species specific, highly biodegradable and require in minute quantity, they could be exploited as green alternative to insecticides for ecofriendly management of insect pest for sustaining agriculture growth.

Búsqueda de alimento y marcación de trillo por larvas de Brassolis sophorae (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) en condiciones naturales

The daily periodicity of foraging and trail marking behaviour of Brassolis sophorae larvae was studied between August, 1991 and July, 1992 in a cocoa plantation in Bahia, Brazil. Larvae, originating from eight different nests, were observed continually during the dark phase for 20 consecutive days. They foraged for a single period of time each day, starting at 17:56 h, and for a meam duration of 90 min and 36 s. Larvae mark trails with threads of silk while moving from the nest to the foraging site and viceversa