Many tropical rain forests has been lost or degraded as a result of human activities and environmental factors. Since the level of biodiversity is high in the tropics, maintaining these areas is of great importance. Forests like these are often assumed to benefit from forest restoration and rehabilitation. The INIKEA project area in Eastern Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, aims to improve biodiversity and/or species richness in the degraded forest through enrichment planting with indigenous species. The objective of this thesis was to evaluate how different treatments (liberation, gap-cluster planting and line planting) affect the biodiversity of natural regeneration in different forest types in the Rain forest Restoration Experiment, located in the INIKEA project area.

The aim of the project was to investigate if Swedish rodents, brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), house mouse (Mus musculus), wood mouse (Apodemus spp) and water vole (Arvicola terrestris) captured in pig herds and in urban areas, constitute a reservoir for pathogenic Leptospira spp. Under Swedish conditions leptospirosis gives rise to reproductive disorders in pigs and symptoms of flu in humans. It has long been established that rodents are chronic carriers of pathogenic leptospires in their kidneys, and can spread the bacteria with urine. The old nomenclature of serovoars is still in use, but a new system of genetic classification has developed and today the genus Leptospira contains 17 species. There are several diagnostic test developed for leptospirosis.

In the tropics, logging and wild fire can result in degraded secondary forests with lower biodiversity than in the natural forest. One way to limit forest degradation is to rehabilitate the present large areas of secondary forests. However, there is a lack of knowledge concerning the ecology of tropical tree species and further studies would be advantageous for future rehabilitation efforts of degraded rainforest. The objective of this study was to investigate how mother trees in secondary forest and different site factors affect the abundance and spatial distribution of natural regeneration of non-pioneer tree species in a tropical rainforest in Sabah, Malaysia. The study took place in the INIKEA Forest Rehabilitation Project area, which suffered from wild fire in 1983 and has been selectively logged over both before and after the fire. Natural regeneration and site variables were inventoried in plots, while mother trees were inventoried in the whole survey area.

Every observation method has its advantages and disadvantages and a well-adopted method gives more reliable results. Factors affecting the choice of the most appropriate methods for recording foraging behaviours include species, group size, environment, seasons and age. The focus for this study was to determine which method is most appropriate for studying the foraging behaviour of a troop of 89 olive baboons (Papio anubis) living in a riverine forest by the Southern Ewaso Ng'iro River by Lale'enok Resource Centre in Kenya. To determine this, a literature study was carried out to compare methods from monkeys and apes. I found instantaneous sampling was the most common method with intervals of 5 minutes in most cited studies.

The demands for higher production yields and better quality materials from the forests are increasing globally. Tree breeding programs are directed to meet the future demands on forests. In order to capture the full benefits from the breeding programs, clonal propagation is necessary. For most conifer species, somatic embryogenesis (SE) is the only available option for large scale clonal propagation of Elite clonal material. For Norway spruce (Picea abies L.

The aim of the project was to investigate if Swedish rodents, brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), house mouse (Mus musculus), wood mouse (Apodemus spp) and water vole (Arvicola terrestris) captured in pig herds and in urban areas, constitute a reservoir for pathogenic Leptospira spp. Under Swedish conditions leptospirosis gives rise to reproductive disorders in pigs and symptoms of flu in humans. It has long been established that rodents are chronic carriers of pathogenic leptospires in their kidneys, and can spread the bacteria with urine. The old nomenclature of serovoars is still in use, but a new system of genetic classification has developed and today the genus Leptospira contains 17 species. There are several diagnostic test developed for leptospirosis.

The vegetation?s impact on erosion control is widely explored, even though research? results are scattered where it suggests a both positive and negative relationship between roots and erosion tendency. Research has measured the roots? impact on erosion by many different methods, hence the aim of this study is to offer a clearance of what factors play an important role in the choice of appropriate species controlling river bank erosion. I have therefore studied 17 articles concerning vegetation and erosion control, which were found in different databases such as: Web of Knowledge, Biological Sciences, Academic Search Elite and Google Scholar.

Vi undersöker genom denna uppsats i vilken grad ett informationssystem som utvecklats med ett användbarhetsperspektiv också uppnår handlingsbarhet. Då vi under vår utbildning blivit väl bevandrade i både användbarhet och handlingsbarhet, framförallt teoretiskt, så har det uppstått enfråga som vi vill behandla. Nämligen: leder systemutveckling utifrån ett användbarhetsperspektiv gärna till handlingsbara system? För att söka svar på denna fråga så är intervjuer av användare i ett egenutvecklat system samt observation av densamma det som utgör de empiriska erfarenheterna.Slutsatsen är att användbarhetsperspektivet inte i detta fall per automatik lett till en hög handlingsbarhet utan vi ser en tämligen låg handlingsbarhet trots att användbarheten är tydlig och rådande. Utvecklingen av systemet har skett med användarmedverkan och intervjuerna visar på att det mest är funktionalitetskrav där samråd varit gällande.

This is a study of the insect community associated to the wood-decaying fungus Inonotus radiatus found on Alnus glutinosa trees growing in riparian forests at the northern and southern shores of boreal lakes in the province Uppland. Little is known about this particular bracket fungus and its inhabitants. Insects were reared out at the laboratory from samples of fruiting bodies of the fungus taken at five lakes. During the fieldwork in 2009, data about several environmental variables was also taken. After the rearing period, these variables and their effects over the insects were analyzed.

This project investigated how elevation and vegetation type influences variation in plant litter phenolic content and protein precipitation capacity among and within common plant species for two different vegetation types, heath and meadow, in a subarctic ecosystem in the Abisko region of northern Sweden. As nutrient availability generally decreases with increasing elevation as a result of decreasing temperature, I hypothesised that phenolic content would increase with elevation and be higher on the heath than the meadow. To test this, the total phenolic content and protein precipitation capacity was estimated in leaf litter from 13 species in both heath and meadow vegetation across an elevational gradient ranging from 500 to 1000 meters above sea level (m.a.s.l.) in the study region. The results showed that elevation and vegetation type both had a strong impact on both variables. Total phenolic concentrations decreased with elevation for the meadow, and were greater for the heath than the meadow.

The aim of the project was to investigate if Swedish rodents, brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), house mouse (Mus musculus), wood mouse (Apodemus spp) and water vole (Arvicola terrestris) captured in pig herds and in urban areas, constitute a reservoir for pathogenic Leptospira spp. Under Swedish conditions leptospirosis gives rise to reproductive disorders in pigs and symptoms of flu in humans. It has long been established that rodents are chronic carriers of pathogenic leptospires in their kidneys, and can spread the bacteria with urine. The old nomenclature of serovoars is still in use, but a new system of genetic classification has developed and today the genus Leptospira contains 17 species. There are several diagnostic test developed for leptospirosis.

Biodiversity is under threat in Sweden and many species are on the brink of extinction. This is mainly due to the large-scale drainage projects during the 19th and 20th century and the increasingly intensive land use in agriculture and forestry. The intensive land use with sharply defined boundaries between the production units has in many cases led to either overgrazing or overgrowing. As a result many species have been pushed back to "leftover" habitats like shooting ranges, power line corridors, roadsides, dumps, embankments and other similar areas. Therefore the question has been raised, wether or not it is needed to re-introduce large herbivores into the wild in order to maintain the biodiversity that is related to the extensive land use.This study has been conducted as a literature review and will focus on the European bison?s (Bison bonasus) impact on other species and biodiversity; conditions for reintroducing large herbivores in Sweden are also discussed.Free roaming populations of large herbivores have a positive impact on plants, insects and many other groups of organisms.

The aim of the thesis is to analyse and understand resolution, repeatability and reproducibility of the measurement system for package distance. The measurement system for package distance is already in use, no Gage R&R has been performed on the system and before spreading use of the system the quality of the system has to be understood and approved.

The aim of this study was to investigate the possibility of performing inter-species embryo transfer under actual field conditions in the natural habitat of South American camelids. In this study embryos from llamas were transferred to alpaca recipients. In a parallel study alpaca embryos were transferred to llama recipients. All animals used were free of uterine and ovarian abnormalities detectable by rectal palpation and /or ultrasound examination. Embryos were harvested twice after single ovulation in 10 mated female llamas and non-surgically transferred to synchronized alpaca recipients.

Sycamore maple (Acer pseudoplatanus L.) is a common broadleaved species throughout Europe, however often of minor interest to the forest sector. There is currently a lack of research on sycamore maple, and some of its characteristics have throughout history contributed to a negative reputation in both literature and the forest society. Since broadleaved species in general are of great importance to the forest sector in Europe and presumably of enhanced significance in the future, deepened research is needed and particularly Swedish. With a desire to hopefully increase the interest for sycamore maple, was the objective of the study to examine the current status of the sycamore stands in southern Sweden. The study was carried out both as a survey with inventory field work and as a literature study. Parts of the latter mentioned is also presented in the introduction. The study shows that the majority of the sycamore stands in Sweden are growing well, producing fairly high qualities and volumes.