The African cultivated rice (O. glaberrima) has very high breeding level with the African wild rice (Oryza barthii).
Pyramiding of R genes that recognize different P. infestans effectors, whether they be multiple variants of ipiO or unrelated effectors such as avrRpi-blb2, will be important in battling this disease at the breeding level.
This may reflect the generally more advanced breeding level and higher yields of modern oilseed rape forms which also have high oil and low seed glucosinolate contents.
Past studies in European starlings (as well as other species) have demonstrated that experimentally elevating plasma T levels up to breeding levels induces reproductive behaviour, such as increased song rate and increased nestbox visitation [13], [25], [26].
We calculated breeding-failure equivalents in an analogous fashion to the calculation of lethal equivalents with maximum-likelihood [39] to overcome the problem of zero breeding success at one or more breeding levels.
Numerous previous studies have proved the efficacy of this method for increasing T levels from baseline up to breeding levels in European starlings, both in the wild and in captivity [13], [14], [25], [26].
To do so, we had to take into account two constraints: (i) that results from different populations could not be pooled in a single analysis, as just mentioned above (Appendix S1); and (ii) that molecular identifications were carried out either at batch level for sympatric populations or at breeding site level for all other populations.
Analyses at the nestbox and breeding event level were made in similar fashion: environmental cues acting at a nestbox level (Eb) were used to calculated a nestbox-based median value of environmental cues; all cases where Eb>ME and Eb ≤ME were defined as "good" and "bad" environments (nestboxes) in terms of a given environmental axis, respectively.
While effective in breeding, this level of information leaves the underlying casual biochemical pathways and mechanisms in the black box.
Analysis of the T levels showed that the T+ males maintained breeding season levels of T, and that the males without T replacement had negligible levels.
Based on an intercept only model (i.e., without the fixed effects), 26.3 %, 39.6 %, and 34.1 % of the variance in survival was explained at the fledgling, clutch, and breeding pair levels, respectively.
