The allocation of fat resources to somatic and reproductive tissues was studied in females of five species of pine sawflies (Diprion pini (L.), Diprion similis (Htg.), Gilpinia frutetorum (F.), Gilpinia pallida (Klug), Neodiprion sertifer (Geoffroy); Hymenoptera, Diprionidae). The soma and eggs of newly emerged females were separated and then put in ether to extract and determine their fat content. The fat allocation patterns differed between species. The gregarious outbreak species D. pini and N. sertifer allocated most of the fat to their eggs, whereas the gregarious non-outbreak species, G. pallida, allocated most to its somatic tissues. No modification of these basic allocation patterns was observed with increasing total fat content. In contrast, the solitary non-outbreak species, D. similis and G. frutetorum, invested equal amounts of fat in soma and eggs, and the proportion allocated to the egg load decreased as total fat content increased. That is, they invested additional resources in somatic tissues. Apparently, outbreak species tend to allocate more fat to reproductive tissues than non-outbreak species.
This paper is concerned with solving the distributed resource allocation optimization problem by multi-agent systems over undirected graphs. The optimization objective function is a sum of local cost functions associated to individual agents, and the optimization variable satisfies a global network resource constraint. The local cost function and the network resource are the private data for each agent, which are not shared with others. A novel gradient-based continuous-time algorithm is proposed to solve the distributed optimization problem. We take an event-triggered communication strategy and an event-triggered gradient measurement strategy into account in the algorithm. With strongly convex cost functions and locally Lipschitz gradients, we show that the agents can find the optimal solution by the proposed algorithm with exponential convergence rate, based on the construction of a suitable Lyapunov function. Finally, a numerical example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
A total of 79 females of spirlin Alburnoides bipunctatus from the Rudava stream (small lowland stream, Western Slovakia) were examined to obtain data on fecundity and annual oocyte development cycle. Within spawning season (mid- April to early July), the reproduction resources seemed to be allocated in its former half more intensively (more yolked eggs present in ovaries compared to the rest of spawning season). For the mean SL = 76 mm and eviscerated body weight = 7.2 g, mean absolute fecundity of females in pre-spawning phase (n=13) was 3020 eggs (SD = 923; 2695 yolked eggs, SD = 1054), and mean relative fecundity 430 eggs/g (SD = 81; 373 yolked eggs, SD = 100). Number of eggs in the right and the left ovary differed significantly in 63.3 % of females, with a maximum difference of 1405 eggs. Two clues, namely 1) no gap in distribution between immature, unyolked oocytes (present in an ovary throughout the whole year), and yolked (vitellogenic) oocytes, 2) no increase in mean diameter of yolked oocytes towards the end of spawning season, suggest that spirlin is a species with indeterminate fecundity.