[Functional assessment of serial coronary lesions and diffuse coronary disease]. / Többszörös coronarialaesiók és diffúz coronariabetegség funkcionális értékelése.

Functional assessment performed during diagnostic coronary angiography has gained an increasing role during the last few decades. Traditional coronary angiography using only anatomical data cannot provide information whether intermediate lesions cause ischaemia or not, and frequently there is no evidence from non-invasive functional tests with appropriate sensitivity and specificity to guide us regarding the localization and severity of ischaemia. Several studies proved the clinical benefit of the use of invasive functional tests. The functional severity of unrevascularized coronary artery disease is correlated with prognosis. It is important to precisely define the lesions causing ischaemia when we plan to improve the blood supply to the heart. The functional assessment of diffuse or serial lesions is not well established. New investigations and methods have been developed such as pullback pressure gradient or instantaneous wave-free ratio intensity besides the well-established and studied functional tests. This could help us find and revascularize the lesions within a coronary vessel primarily responsible for ischaemia and symptoms or, in the case of diffuse disease and no obvious target, to optimize medical therapy. Orv Hetil. 2022; 163(48): 1902-1908.

Associations between carabid beetles and fungi in the light of 200 years of published literature.

Describing and conserving ecological interactions woven into ecosystems is one of the great challenges of the 21st century. Here, we present a unique dataset compiling the biotic interactions between two ecologically and economically important taxa: ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) and fungi. The resulting dataset contains the carabid-fungus associations collected from 392 scientific publications, 129 countries, mostly from the Palearctic region, published over a period of 200 years. With an updated taxonomy to match the currently accepted nomenclature, 3,378 unique associations among 5,564 records were identified between 1,776 carabid and 676 fungal taxa. Ectoparasitic Laboulbeniales were the most frequent fungal group associated with carabids, especially with Trechinae. The proportion of entomopathogens was low. Three different formats of the data have been provided along with an interactive data digest platform for analytical purposes. Our database summarizes the current knowledge on biotic interactions between insects and fungi, while offering a valuable resource to test large-scale hypotheses on those interactions.

Resilience of spider communities affected by a range of silvicultural treatments in a temperate deciduous forest stand.

To secure the ecosystem services forests provide, it is important to understand how different management practices impact various components of these ecosystems. We aimed to uncover how silvicultural treatments affected the ground-dwelling spider communities during the first five years of a forest ecological experiment. In an oak-hornbeam forest stand, five treatments, belonging to clear-cutting, shelterwood and continuous cover forestry systems, were implemented using randomised complete block design. Spiders were sampled by pitfall traps, and detailed vegetation, soil and microclimate data were collected throughout the experiment. In the treatment plots spider abundance and species richness increased marginally. Species composition changes were more pronounced and treatment specific, initially diverging from the control plots, but becoming more similar again by the fifth year. These changes were correlated mostly to treatment-related light intensity and humidity gradients. The patchy implementation of the treatments induced modest increase in both gamma and beta diversity of spiders in the stand. Overall, spiders gave a prompt and species specific response to treatments that was by the fifth year showing signs of relatively quick recovery to pre-treatment state. At the present fine scale of implementation the magnitude of changes was not different among forestry treatments, irrespective of their severity.

Landscape structure affects the sunflower visiting frequency of insect pollinators.

Mass-flowering crop monocultures, like sunflower, cannot harbour a permanent pollinator community. Their pollination is best secured if both managed honey bees and wild pollinators are present in the agricultural landscape. Semi-natural habitats are known to be the main foraging and nesting areas of wild pollinators, thus benefiting their populations, whereas crops flowering simultaneously may competitively dilute pollinator densities. In our study we asked how landscape structure affects major pollinator groups' visiting frequency on 36 focal sunflower fields, hypothesising that herbaceous semi-natural (hSNH) and sunflower patches in the landscape neighbourhood will have a scale-dependent effect. We found that an increasing area and/or dispersion of hSNH areas enhanced the visitation of all pollinator groups. These positive effects were scale-dependent and corresponded well with the foraging ranges of the observed bee pollinators. In contrast, an increasing edge density of neighbouring sunflower fields resulted in considerably lower visiting frequencies of wild bees. Our results clearly indicate that the pollination of sunflower is dependent on the composition and configuration of the agricultural landscape. We conclude that an optimization of the pollination can be achieved if sufficient amount of hSNH areas with good dispersion are provided and mass flowering crops do not over-dominate the agricultural landscape.

Simplified and rapid staining of leafhopper salivary sheaths in plant tissues for electrical penetration graph waveform correlations.

Herbivorous insects in the order Hemiptera use piercing-sucking mouthparts to utilize plant sap. Among them salivary sheath feeders penetrate into the plant by their flexible stylets to reach vascular elements. Manoeuvering stylets in plant tissues is aided by the creation of salivary sheaths, which solidify from proteinous gelling saliva and remain as lasting artefacts in the plant tissues. Studying their structure reveals hidden details of the feeding behaviour and the transmission of pathogens in case of vector insects. One important aspect of studying salivary sheaths is that it can be used to confirm the biological function of electropenetrography (EPG) waveform patterns. Previously, complex and vaguely documented histological methods have been used to observe salivary sheath structure. Building on existing methodologies, we report a simplified histological procedure where each step was optimized to offer a rapid process that does not require special equipment, can be applied to many samples, has good success rate and a low cost of errors in terms of time and materials. We describe the procedure, using a Psammotettix alienus - barley model system, in three steps. (i) Clarification of entire plant parts and pre-staining salivary sheaths with aqueous fuchsin. This step allows to identify salivary sheath starting points on the surface. (ii) Knowing salivary sheath location, using hand sectioning, produce a single c. 60 µm section that contains the entire salivary sheath. (iii) Counterstain the section with methylene green and, after further clarification, study under light microscope in a glycerol - ethanol embedding solution, without fixed mounting.

Consuming alternative prey does not influence the DNA detectability half-life of pest prey in spider gut contents.

BACKGROUND: Key natural enemy-pest interactions can be mapped in agricultural food webs by analysing predator gut content for the presence of a focal pest species. For this, PCR-based approaches are the most widely used methods providing the incidence of consumption of a focal pest in field sampled predators. To interpret such data the rate of prey DNA decay in the predators' gut, described by DNA detectability half-life (t 1/2), is needed. DNA decay may depend on the presence of alternative prey in the gut of generalist predators, but this effect has not been investigated in one of the major predatory arthropod groups, spiders. METHODS: In a laboratory feeding experiment, we determined t 1/2 of the key cereal pest virus vector leafhopper Psammotettix alienus in the digestive tracts of its natural enemy, the spider Tibellus oblongus. We followed the fate of prey DNA in spiders which received only the focal prey as food, or as an alternative prey treatment they also received a meal of fruit flies after leafhopper consumption. After these feeding treatments, spiders were starved for variable time intervals prior to testing for leafhopper DNA in order to establish t 1/2. RESULTS: We created a PCR protocol that detects P. alienus DNA in its spider predator. The protocol was further calibrated to the digestion speed of the spider by establishing DNA decay rate. Detectability limit was reached at 14 days, where c. 10% of the animals tested positive. The calculated t 1/2 = 5 days value of P. alienus DNA did not differ statistically between the treatment groups which received only the leafhopper prey or which also received fruit fly. The PCR protocol was validated in a field with known P. alienus infestation. In this applicability trial, we showed that 12.5% of field collected spiders were positive for the leafhopper DNA. We conclude that in our model system the presence of alternative prey did not influence the t 1/2 estimate of a pest species, which makes laboratory protocols more straightforward for the calibration of future field data.

The description of Alloxysta chinensis, a new Charipinae species from China (Hymenoptera, Figitidae).

A new figitid species, Alloxysta chinensis Fülöp & Mikó sp nova, based on females, is described from China and South Korea. The functional morphology and the phylogenetic implication of some anatomical structures frequently used in Charipinae and the validity of the genus Carvercharips is discussed. This manuscript is the first of its kind linking descriptive terminology to Hymenoptera Anatomy Ontology classes, which provides persistent links to definitions for terms used within this manuscript.