The study focused on the bird-cherry ermine moth and the orchard ermine moth--two insects that feed on the leaves of orchard trees
and as caterpillars can strip trees of their bark. Durrett helped the Swedish researchers use enzymes from plants
and moths to create a biological pathway that made it possible for plants to produce the moths'sex pheromones.
The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS Horttechnology electronic journal web site: http://horttech. ashspublications. org/content/23/6/747. abstractstory Source:
while global warming is causing the fruit trees to flower as much as a month earlier than 50 years ago
and ashes from burning the husk so this material is cheap and easy to get hold of he says.
It's all about the acidthe ashes from burnt rice husks have a high content of silicate
Making the new acid3 grams of ash from burned rice husk were mixed with 100 ml of caustic soda (Naoh) in a plastic container.
so that the ash content of the silicate was converted to sodium silicate. To the solution was added nitric acid to control its concentration
Scientists at Michigan State university (MSU) and in China embarked on a dangerous boots-on-the-ground effort to understand how well the trees bamboo and critical ground cover were recovering.
forest recovery at a finer scale than can be observed from satellites and getting a better handle on the nuances of tree species height and soil conditions.
and that China's $17 million effort at replanting native trees and bamboo were helping in areas handicapped by poor soil and growing conditions.
Fruit is only ripe and ready to eat on a given tree for a limited time
and the next fruit-laden tree may be far away in the forest. Coquerel's sifakas eat mostly leaves
Airborne lasers help researchers understand tree growthout of an effort to account for what seemed in airborne images to be unusually large tree growth in a Hawaiian forest scientists at Brown University
and the Carnegie Institution for Science have developed a new mathematical model that predicts how trees compete for space in the canopy.
What their model revealed for this particular forest of hardy native Metrosideros polymorpha trees on the windward slope of Manua Kea is that an incumbent tree limb greening up a given square meter would still dominate its position two years
later a forbidding 97.9 percent of the time. The model described online in the journal Ecology Letters could help generate similar predictions for other forests too.
Tracking the height of a forest's canopy reveals how tall the trees are and therefore how much carbon they are keeping out of the atmosphere--that is
They signaled places where one tree had managed to overtop another or where the canopy was filling in a bare spot.
taller trees were growing a few meters to the side and creating exaggerated appearances of vertical growth in the overhead images.
whether the height change in a pixel is likely to be the normal growth of the incumbent tree a takeover by a neighboring tree or another branch of the incumbent tree.
Accounting for several neighborhoods including some with more variance can delineate trends such as how close trees have to be before one could overtop another.
They found that a tree's height was a poor predictor of whether it would evade rivals.
Very short trees (less than 11 meters) were clearly in some trouble but beyond 11 meters tallness was not much of a factor.
Instead they saw proximity to taller neighbors was a tree's biggest threat. When a position in the canopy was lost to a neighbor it was almost exclusively due to competition among the immediate neighbors (the 3-by-3 pixel neighborhood)
But in a forest with trees capable of more dramatic lateral growth that distance might end up being bigger.
If you think of the trees as competing for access to space in the canopy and we can infer what those rules are by analyzing data like these.
Holly Dunsworth URI assistant professor of anthropology said that the research team found fossils of a single individual of Proconsul which lived 18 to 20 million years ago among geological deposits that also contained
and even beautifully preserved fossil leaves it's possible to say that the forest was closed a canopy one meaning the arboreal animals like Proconsul could easily move from tree-to-tree without coming to the ground.
This environmental evidence jibes with our behavioral interpretations of Proconsul anatomy--as being adapted for a life of climbing in the trees--and with present-day monkey and ape ecology.
Why has chosen nature such radically different forms as the loose-limbed beauty of a flowering tree and the fearful symmetry of a tiger?
and quite different bodies but natural selection has acted on the two groups so the geometries of modern trees
a tree and a tiger. In evolutionary terms the tree has the easier task: convert sunlight to energy and move it within a body that more or less stays put.
To make that task as efficient as possible the tree has evolved a branching shape with many surfaces--its leaves.
The tree's surface area and the volume of space it occupies are nearly the same said physicist Jayanth Banavar dean of the UMD College of Computer Mathematical and Natural sciences.
The tree's nutrients flow at a constant speed regardless of its size. With these variables the team calculated the relationship between the mass of different tree species
and their metabolisms and found that the relationship conformed to Kleiber's Law. To nourish its mass an animal needs fuel.
Burning that fuel generates heat. The animal has to find a way to get rid of excess body heat.
or branching form that is common to tree limbs and animals'blood vessels but added in new assumptions about the volume of fluids contained in those fractal networks.
--and trees do not. Plugging that information into their equation the researchers found they had attained a complete explanation for Kleiber's Law.
history booksa new study reconstructing the evolutionary tree of flu viruses challenges conventional wisdom and solves some of the mysteries surrounding flu outbreaks of historical significance.
Once you resolve the evolutionary trees for these viruses correctly everything snaps into place and makes much more sense Worobey said adding that the study originated at his kitchen table.
I had a bunch of those evolutionary trees printed out on paper in front of me and started measuring the lengths of the branches with my daughter's plastic ruler that happened to be on the table.
Just like branches on a real tree you can see that the branches on the evolutionary tree grow at different rates in humans versus horses versus birds.
According to Worobey the newly generated evolutionary trees show a global replacement of the genes in the avian flu virus coinciding closely with the horse flu outbreak
what we see in our trees. He added that the evolutionary results didn't allow for a definitive determination of
study showsepidemiological data integrated with climate data taken from tree-ring estimates of soil moisture levels demonstrate that drought contributed to the spread of typhus in Mexico from 1655 to 1918 according to a new study by researchers
Now because of Mexico's rich historical record of epidemic disease we can see that drought as reconstructed by tree-ring chronologies caused conditions that allowed typhus to flourish in central Mexico over a 250-year period.
Stahle and Jordan Burns a graduate student in geography at the U of A compared historical records of 22 typhus epidemics in central Mexico with soil moisture estimates based on tree-ring reconstructions.
Below-average tree growth drought and low crop yields occurred during 19 of the 22 typhus epidemics.
and the United states. For more than 30 years Stahle has taken core samples from trees and examined the chronology of their rings to help explain the societal impact of drought and other climate changes.
Stahle's recently published 1238-yearlong tree-ring chronology the longest and most accurate of its kind for Mesoamerica was the first to reconstruct the climate of pre-colonial Mexico on an annual basis over a period of more than a thousand years.
#Asian longhorned beetles pheromone could be used to manage pestfemale Asian longhorned beetles lure males to their locations by laying down sex-specific pheromone trails on tree surfaces according to an international
The finding could lead to the development of a tool to manage this invasive pest that affects about 25 tree species in the United states. Tens of thousands of hardwood trees mostly maples have been cut down
Females after emerging from the tree where they pupated require about two weeks of feeding on twigs
and help the male find the female again on a huge tree in order to guard her from other males Hoover said.
This fungus can be sprayed on a tree and when beetles walk on it they pick up the fungus
The team plans to further investigate the pheromone by attempting to identify where on the body the female produces it how the pheromone is detected by the male how long the pheromone remains detectable on the tree
#Why did the orangutan come down from the trees? Orangutans come down from the trees and spend more time on the ground than previously realised
--but this behaviour may be influenced partly by humans a new study has found. Dr Mark Harrison based in the Department of Geography at the University of Leicester
The Bornean Orangutan Pongo pygmaeus) is the world's largest arboreal (tree-dwelling) mammal. Records of terrestrial behaviour are rare
The capacity of Orangutans to come down from the trees may increase their ability to cope with at least smaller-scale forest fragmentation
In recent history their biggest predator has been man who is actually more likely to pick Orangutans off in the trees:
and so are very obvious in the trees whereas they can move with almost no noise
We're seeing the trees and not the forest or how to do things and not why to do things.
The logging story emerged from 16 trenches dug in 2008 2010 and 2011 along the fault at the Hazel Dell site in the mountain range.
High-resolution radiocarbon dating of tree-rings from the wood chips and charcoal confirm these are post European deposits
Additionally in 1906 individuals living near the Hazel Dell site reported to geologists that cracks from the 1906 earthquake had occurred just where they had 16 years earlier in 1890
which Streig and colleagues say was centered probably in the Hazel Dell region. Another displacement of sediment at the Hazel Dell site matched the timeline of the 1906 quake.
The project also allowed the team to conclude that another historically reported quake in 1865 was not surface rupturing
Ashley's combination of historical research C-14 dating tree rings pollen and stratigraphic correlation between sites has allowed us to credibly argue for precision that allows identification of the 1838 and 1890 earthquakes.
#New species of Oak hidden away in the greenery of Ton Pariwat Wildlife Sanctuaryan international team of scientists from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical garden (China)
and the Forest Herbarium (BKF--Thailand) discovered a new species of Stone Oak in the Ton Pariwat Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand.
A recent addition to the endemic species of this area is described the newly species of Stone Oak currently known only from the sanctuary.
The new species Lithocarpus orbicarpus is a medium to small tree with simple leaves. It can be distinguished easily by its spherical acorns covered with a dense pattern of irregularly placed scales that completely conceal the nut except for a tiny opening at the top and
During our field survey we found only one individual tree located on a gentle sloping section of closed dense forest explains one of the authors Dr. Strijk.
Such distribution limitation and rarity is not uncommon in tropical Oaks. Within this region alone there are several species that are known only from one or two localities.
Currently more than 300 species of Stone Oak have been described occurring from eastern India to Japan and the eastern tip of Papua new guinea.
The fieldwork and surveys in Ton Pariwat Wildlife Sanctuary by the team of Dutch and Thai botanists are part of ongoing research on the genomics systematics biogeography and evolution of tropical Asian Oaks
#Recent decades likely wettest in four millennia in Tibetresearchers looked at 3500-yearlong tree ring records from North East Tibet to estimate annual precipitation.
The precipitation records have been reconstructed using sub-fossil archaeological and living juniper tree samples from the northeastern Tibetan Plateau.
what is currently the longest tree-ring-width record in the cold and arid northeastern Tibetan Plateau.
Not only is the record very long it is based on samples from more than 1000 trees some
These are among the longest-lived trees in the world. Not only are these trees long-lived
but they are useful for understanding how climate has changed. The widths of the tree rings show a close correspondence with observations from rain gauges over the last 55 years such that tree rings in wetter years tend to be wider than tree rings in drier years.
Dr Osborn said: The most recent few decades have on average the widest rings in the 3500-year record which suggests that this may have been the wettest period perhaps associated with global warming during the last century.
#Crocodilians can climb trees and bask in the tree crownswhen most people envision crocodiles and alligators they think of them waddling on the ground or wading in water--not climbing trees.
However a University of Tennessee Knoxville study has found that the reptiles can climb trees as far as the crowns.
Vladimir Dinets a research assistant professor in the Department of psychology is the first to thoroughly study the tree-climbing
and-basking behavior. The research is published in the journal Herpetology. Dinets and his colleagues observed crocodilian species on three continents--Australia Africa and North america--and examined previous studies and anecdotal observations.
They found that four species climbed trees--usually above water --but how far they ventured upward
and outward varied by their sizes. The smaller crocodilians were able to climb higher and further than the larger ones.
Some species were observed climbing as far as four meters high in a tree and five meters down a branch.
The crocodilians seen climbing trees whether at night or during the day were skittish of being approached jumping
This response led the researchers to believe that the tree climbing and basking are driven by two conditions:
The most frequent observations of tree-basking were in areas where there were few places to bask on the ground implying that the individuals needed alternatives for regulating their body temperature the authors wrote.
The data suggests that at least some crocodilian species are able to climb trees despite lacking any obvious morphological adaptations to do so.
#Eucalypt in Ethiopian highlands: Increasing productivity of important treeresearchers at the UPM are collaborating in a eucalypts breeding program in the Ethiopian highlands
which will increase this species productivity. This program is developed by the research group of Forest Physiology and Genetics and the cooperative group of Support to Forestry Development of the Universidad Politã cnica de Madrid (UPM.
The main project consists of a eucalypt breeding program that will result in improvements in many areas.
The eucalypt is the species with the highest demand among Ethiopian farmers and has an important environmental and socioeconomic key role in the highlands area.
The consumption of eucalypt is been boosted because of its compatibility with the grazing system and its high yields even in marginal agricultural soils of abandoned lands.
Within the improvement program the researchers established an experimental test with eucalypt plants from Ethiopia and Spain in order to compare their potential productivity in local conditions.
and hard survival due to frost and drought the early results give an idea of the potential of forest improvements to increase eucalypt productivity.
The eucalypt research was possible thanks to a nursery setting for the production of eucalypt and its native plant.
Meanwhile a eucalypt national congress was held in order to share knowledge and results also to create a network of species users.
#Coffee growing: More biodiversity, better harvestbees birds and bats make a huge contribution to the high yields produced by coffee farmers around Mount kilimanjaro â#an example of how biodiversity can pay off.
This effect has been described as result of a study now published in the â#Proceedings of the Royal Society Bâ#oe.
A large amount of coffee is grown on Kilimanjaro the East African massif almost 6000 meters high.
The most traditional form of cultivation can be found in the gardens of the Chagga people Hhere the sun-shy coffee trees
and many other crop plants thrive in the shade of banana trees and other tall trees.
However the largest part of the coffee is grown on plantations. Usually the plantations still feature a large number of shade trees.
But these are progressively being chopped down because of the increasing replacement of â#oeconventional coffee varieties
which rely on shade by varieties that tolerate lots of sun and are more resistant to fungiâ#explains Professor Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter a tropical ecologist at the University of WÃ rzburg's Biocenter.
If there are only few shade trees left the habitat may become unsuitable for the animal species that pollinate the coffee eat pests
and to biological pest control in the coffee fields. The aim was to find out whether and how intensified farming affects these services provided by the ecosystem.
They used finely woven nets to prevent animalsâ##access to the coffee flowers or even to entire coffee trees.
Contribution of animals to coffee cultivationthe results revealed that where birds and bats had access to the plants there was almost a ten percent higher fruit set. â#oewe believe that this is due to the fact that the animals eliminate pests that would
otherwise feed on the coffee plantsâ#says Julia Schmack (Bik-F Frankfurt). Reduced leaf damage is supposed to reduce the number of coffee cherries falling from the tree while ripening.
The pollination experiments showed interesting results as well: Bees and other insects should actually be redundant here as the examined coffee variety Coffea arabica is self-pollinating.
Yet the researchers found that if pollinators have access to the coffee blossoms the cherries were about seven percent heavier
which contributes to a higher coffee quality. â#oeso the effects of pollination and pest control complement each other perfectly;
both are important for higher yieldsâ#says Steffan-Dewenter: â#oebirds and bats provide more cherries;
On the coffee blossoms in the Chagga gardens however they additionally recorded wild bees hoverflies and butterflies.
Or possibly trees add more leaves to capture sunlight in the dry season when the skies are less cloudy.
#Tree roots in the mountains acted like a thermostat for millions of yearsfor the first time scientists have discovered how tree roots in the mountains may play an important role in controlling long-term global temperatures.
which the tree roots grow. In a warmer world this means that tree roots are more likely to grow into the mineral layer of the soil breaking down rock into component parts
which will eventually combine with carbon dioxide. This process called weathering draws carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere
In their research paper published online in Geophysical Research Letters the researchers carried out studies in tropical rain forests in Peru measuring tree roots across different sites of varying altitude--from the warm Amazonian Lowlands to the cooler mountain ranges
They measured the growth of the tree roots to 30 cm beneath the surface every three months over several years.
This is a simple process driven by tree root growth and the decomposition of organic material.
This study shows how trees can act as brakes on extreme climate change and the roots of trees in tropical mountains such as the Andes play a disproportionate role.
However these responses take thousands to millions of years and cannot do much to slow the rate of global warming we are experiencing this century.
'However two years later other researchers reclassified this specimen as an existing species Mesoplodon ginkgodens named for the tusk-like teeth of the adult males that are shaped like the leaves of a ginkgo tree.
While it is closely related to the ginkgo-toothed beaked whale it is definitely not the same species says Dr Dalebout.
and physical characteristics to identify the new species from seven specimens found stranded in Sri lanka the Gilbert islands (now Kiribati) Palmyra Atoll in the Northern Line Islands near Hawai'i the Maldives and the Seychelles.
including six specimens of the closely related gingko-toothed beaked whale. A number of species in this group are known from only a handful of animals
For example the ginkgo-toothed beaked whale first described in 1963 is known only from about 30 strandings
#Soil biota explains tree growth: Why the Canadian lodgepole pine does better in Sweden than Canadathanks to its excellent growth the Canadian lodgepole pine has become a popular feature of forestry in Northern Sweden.
Researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences are now able to demonstrate that organisms in the Swedish soil most likely contribute to the success of this exotic tree species
. When the researchers studied the growth of the lodgepole pine in sterilized and unsterilized Swedish and Canadian soil samples they discovered clear differences in growth:
it grew better in soil inoculated with Swedish soil biota compared to Canadian soil biota.
These results improve our understanding of why some exotic tree species and invasive plants at times can function so well in new environments.
what the organisms found in Swedish and Canadian soils mean for the growth of the lodgepole pine.
By conducting a series of experiments on young plants the researchers have shown that the growth of the lodgepole pine is affected greatly by
A first greenhouse trial indicated that the plants grew much better in soil samples from the areas in northern Sweden where the lodgepole pine has been introduced compared with the soil samples from its original habitat in Canadian British columbia.
We have therefore clear evidence that differences in soil organisms between Pinus contorta's Canadian and Swedish ranges have a great impact on the trees growth says Michael Gundale.
One plausible explanation is that plants growing in Canadian soil are exposed to antagonistic microorganisms that are specialised to lodgepole pine
while the Swedish soil offers an enhanced mutualism with mycorrhizal fungi. But we have not yet had the opportunity to examine this.
I would love to conduct an equivalent study on Swedish pines concludes Michael Gundale. If it were to turn out that the Swedish pines (Pinus sylvestris) are stunted equally by the indigenous soil organisms it would be interesting to examine which soil biota are responsible for it and
what could be done to protect the plants. The lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) originates from western North america. In the north of Sweden the lodgepole pine has been planted on hundreds of thousands of acres.
This introduction started in the 1970s and at the time it was thought that a natural rejuvenation could only take place in connection with a fire
--which would prevent an uncontrollable spread. This however has not proven to be entirely true.
In urban areas initially pesticide treatments were applied to ACP-infested trees and chemically-treated buffer zones were established around sites to control the pest.
The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS Hortscience electronic journal web site: http://hortsci. ashspublications. org/content/48/10/1327. abstractstory Source:
and the second in Auburn Alabama using Satsuma mandarin trees. The citrus plants were exposed to progressively lower nonfreezing temperatures for 9 weeks.
During the experiments trees were watered twice daily--three times on the days data were collected--to minimize drought stress.
Leaf relative water content was not different for cold-acclimated trees compared with the control trees.
However this study demonstrates that those relationships are not consistent for citrus trees exposed to cold-acclimating temperatures.
The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS Hortscience electronic journal web site: http://hortsci. ashspublications. org/content/48/10/1309. abstractstory Source:
The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS Hortscience electronic journal web site: http://hortsci. ashspublications. org/content/48/10/1241. abstractstory Source:
#Trees diminished resistance to tropical cyclone winds attributed to insect invasionsguam experiences more tropical cyclones than any other state
As recently as 2002 Cycas micronesica was the most abundant tree species in Guam. The species is recognized for its innate ability to recover from damage after a tropical cyclone Resprouting on snapped tree trunks
or direct regeneration enabled C. micronesica to sustain its status as the most abundant tree in Guam through 2002.
Although native tree species like C. micronesica possess traits that enable them to recover from tropical cyclone damage invasive pests
Thomas Marler from the College of Natural and Applied sciences at the University of Guam and John Lawrence from the U s. Department of agriculture Natural resources Conservation Service reported on a large-scale study of Cycas micronesica in Hortscience.
The team compared the impact of two tropical cyclones--Typhoon Chaba in 2004 and Typhoon Paka in 1997--on the resilience and health of Cycas micronesica.
They noticed that the proportion of trees exhibiting mechanical failure during Typhoon Chaba--in which peak wind speeds were less than half of those in Typhoon Paka--surpassed the damage documented during the more powerful Typhoon Paka.
We set out to determine how a tropical cyclone with moderate wind speeds could impose greater mechanical damage to a highly resistant tree species than a more powerful event only 7 years earlier explained Marler.
Invasions of two invasive insects (Aulacaspis yasumatsui in 2003 and Chilades pandava in 2005) were found to be responsible for the 100%mortality of the intact portions of the trees'snapped stems during the 5 years after Typhoon Chaba.
A span of less than one decade allowed two alien invasions to eliminate the incipient resilience of a native tree species to tropical cyclone damage the authors wrote.
This study underscores the fact that many years of observations after tropical cyclones are required to accurately determine trees'resilience.
The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS Hortscience electronic journal web site: http://hortsci. ashspublications. org/content/48/10/1224. fullstory Source:
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