and published today in the Journal of Ecology suggest that as pine stands are fragmented increasingly by widespread tree death surviving trees may be hindered in their ability to produce their usually abundant seeds.
With fewer seeds you get less regeneration says ecologist Joshua Rapp affiliated with NSF's Harvard Forest Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) site
Whitebark pine populations vary between producing a high number of seed cones some years and a low number of seed cones other years.
male pollen cones female seed cones wind and proximity. Each year pollen from male cones is carried on the air to fertilize female seed cones perched atop nearby trees.
In low-cone years less pollen is released reaching extremely few female cones says Elizabeth Crone senior ecologist at the NSF Harvard Forest LTER site
In isolated pockets of trees the gene pool is diminished also meaning the seeds produced may be less viable over time.
By combining field data on seed and pollen production for whitebark pines with models that simulate mature cone production this study helps to answer that question for these pines.
They inspected branches from seven whitebark pine sites in western Montana counting the scars left by pollen cones and seed cones.
All the years with a high number of seed cones had one thing in common: a high number of pollen cones says Rapp.
The success of the seeds seems to depend on the amount of pollen produced. Whitebark pine seeds are an essential food source for many animals in mountain habitats.
The Clark's nutcracker a mountain bird can store up to 100000 seeds in underground caches each year. Squirrels also store thousands of seeds underground.
A diminished number of seed cones has an effect on grizzly bears the scientists say; the bears regularly raid squirrel seed caches to prepare for winter hibernation.
In the past low years for whitebark pine cones have led to six times more conflicts between grizzlies and humans as hungry bears look for food in campgrounds says Crone.
Now concerns about viability of whitebark pine populations are one of the main reasons grizzly bears in Yellowstone national park are listed still as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Their branches retain snow as it blows across gusty mountaintops. Their shade moderates snow-melt in the spring keeping flows down the mountain in check.
Masses of several thousand domesticated grape seeds pedicels and even skin excavated from an earlier context near the press further attest to its use for crushing transplanted domesticated grapes and local wine production.
and expansion of a worldwide wine culture--one that has known its earliest roots in the ancient Near east circa 7000-6000 BCE with chemical evidence for the earliest wine at the site of Hajji Firiz in what is now northern
and rushes but have stems and triangular cross sections. At last we have a look at 4 million years of the dietary evolution of humans
The isotope method cannot distinguish what parts of grasses and sedges human ancestors ate--leaves stems seeds and-or underground storage organs such as roots or rhizomes.
C4 plants are warm-season or tropical grasses and sedges and their seeds leaves or storage organs like roots and tubers.
Today North americans eat about half C3 plants including vegetables fruits and grains such as wheat oats rye and barley and about half C4
10.7554/elife. 00421) Green leaf odorsplants have developed many different strategies to defend themselves against herbivorous animals particularly insects.
whereas others--notably compounds called green-leaf volatiles--are produced mainly once the plant has been wounded or attacked.
Green-leaf volatiles--which are also responsible for the smell of freshly cut grass--have been observed to provide plants with both direct protection by inhibiting
In an effort to defend itself the host plant releases green-leaf volatiles to attract various species of Geocoris predatory bugs that eat insect eggs and tiny larvae.
One of these green-leaf volatiles released by tobacco plants is known as (Z)- 3-hexenyl acetate
#Human activity echoes through Brazilian rainforestthe disappearance of large fruit-eating birds from tropical forests in Brazil has caused the region's forest palms to produce smaller less successful seeds over the past century researchers say.
and sugar cane development during the 1800's to set up their natural experiment. They collected more than 9000 seeds from 22 different Euterpe edulis palm populations
and used a combination of statistics genetics and evolutionary models to determine that the absence of large seed-dispersing birds in the area was the main reason for the observed decrease in the palm's seed size.
The study appears in the 31 may issue of the journal Science. Unfortunately the effect we document in our work is probably not an isolated case said Galetti.
Galetti and the other researchers found that palms produced significantly smaller seeds in patches of forest that had been fragmented by coffee
and sugar cane plantations and were no longer capable of supporting large-gaped birds or those whose beaks are more than 12 millimeters wide such as toucans and large cotingas.
and palms continue to produce large seeds successfully dispersed by the birds they say. Small seeds are more vulnerable to desiccation
and cannot withstand projected climate change explained Galetti. But small-gaped birds such as thrushes that populate the fragmented patches of forest are unable to swallow
and disperse large seeds. As a result of this impaired dispersal palm regeneration became less successful in the area with less-vigorous seedlings germinating from smaller seeds.
The researchers considered the influence of a wide range of environmental factors such as climate soil fertility
They performed genetic analyses to determine that the shrinkage of seeds among forest palms in the region could have taken place within 100 years of an initial disturbance.
and displaced many large bird populations in the region triggered a rapid evolution of forest palms that resulted in smaller less successful seeds.
Long periods of drought and increasingly warmer climate (as predicted by climate model projections for South america) could be particularly harmful to tropical tree populations that depend on animals to disperse their seeds.
wheat maize rice barley rye millet sorghum soybean sunflower potato cassava sugarcane sugar beet oil palm rapeseed (canola) and groundnut (peanut.
The researcher took a closer examination of a few tree stumps on the edge of the loamy building pit in the neighborhood of Zurich Binz that had been discarded by the construction workers as waste timber.
To counteract this problem producers have included saturated fats such as corn germ beef tallow palm kernel oil and glycerol in diets containing DDGS
For this study corn germ beef tallow palm kernel oil and glycerol were added each to a diet containing DDGS.
which suggests the human role in transporting pathogens to new locations such as the international seed trade is a major factor.
More flexible in the Mediterraneanin the Atlantic as well as Mediterranean domain the observations were consistent with the data available on the ecology of the species. M. bechsteinii prefer roosts carved out by woodpeckers in the trunks of living oak trees located inside the forest
The harp-shaped structures or vanes number from two to six and each has more than 20 parallel vertical branches often capped by an expanded balloon-like terminal ball.
With few exceptions this and other ultra-small frogs are associated with moist leaf litter in tropical wet forests--suggesting a unique ecological guild that could not exist under drier circumstances.
The new species E. petrikensis is a shrub growing to two meters with emerald green slightly glossy foliage and beautiful dense clusters of small magenta flowers.
Living species of hangingflies can be found as the name suggests hanging beneath foliage where they capture other insects as food.
when the seeds needed could be collected. The genes that have been identified now indicate when mass flowering is about to happen.
Now for the first time dendritic or tree like polymers have been synthesised in bulk with branch points after every few monomers of the build process.
When the logging machinery moves on what it usually leaves behind are piles of branches and tops.
Norway possesses major unexploited energy resources in the form of these branches and tops--known in their Norwegian acronym as GROT (see Fact-box).
Many environmental factors leave an imprint on the carbon contained in tree trunks from this period.
ie. some seeds and tuberous plants such as freshwater chestnuts lotus root and the fern root the addition of starch from palms was unexpected totally and very exciting.
and washed out of the trunk pith dried as flour and of course eaten. It is nontoxic not particularly tasty
and various roots raises the intriguing possibility that these plants may have been planted nearby the settlement.
While artificial leaf is the popular term for such a system the key to this success was an artificial forest.
To facilitate solar water-splitting in our system we synthesized treelike nanowire heterostructures consisting of silicon trunks and titanium oxide branches.
In Switzerland the Federal office for Agriculture (FOAG) has followed suit suspending the authorizations of three insecticides used on oilseed rape and maize fields.
Generally Gray said forest managers should consider using seed from more southern climates or lower elevation environments.
The seed should still be of the same tree species rather than introducing a new species into a foreign environment she added.
Foresters in British columbia have started using the study's results as one of the tools to aid assisted seed migration strategies Gray noted.
#Untangling the tree of lifethese days phylogeneticists--experts who painstakingly map the complex branches of the tree of life--suffer from an embarrassment of riches.
and provide greater accuracy in deciphering the deep branches of life's tree. The study by Salichos and Rokas comes at a critical time
A lot of the debate on the differences in the trees has been between studies concerning the'bushy'branches that took place in these'radiations'Rokas said.
and roots said Betsy Beers an entomologist based at WSU's Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee and Gontijo's mentor and co-author on the paper.
#Untangling the tree of lifethese days phylogeneticists--experts who painstakingly map the complex branches of the tree of life--suffer from an embarrassment of riches.
and provide greater accuracy in deciphering the deep branches of life's tree. The study by Salichos and Rokas comes at a critical time
A lot of the debate on the differences in the trees has been between studies concerning the'bushy'branches that took place in these'radiations'Rokas said.
and roots said Betsy Beers an entomologist based at WSU's Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee and Gontijo's mentor and co-author on the paper.
#New non-GM technology platform for genetic improvement of sunflower oilseed cropscientists have developed techniques for the genetic improvement of sunflowers using a non-GMO based approach.
which will improve its role as an important oilseed crop. The work was led by Dr Manash Chatterjee an Adjunct Faculty member of Botany
Among oilseed crops sunflowers are one of the most important sources of edible vegetable oil for human consumption worldwide.
Sunflower and other oilseed crops are the source of the vast majority of vegetable oil used for cooking and food processing.
Seeds Argentina. NUI Galway Phd student Anish PK Kumar has been working on the technology platform development as a component of his Phd research studies.
Its seeds can survive up to 1300 years its petals and leaves repel grime and water and its flowers generate heat to attract pollinators.
The plant lineage that includes the sacred lotus forms a separate branch of the eudicot family tree
and biology professor at the University of California at Los angeles (who germinated a 1300-year-old sacred lotus seed);
Many agricultural crops benefit from genome duplications including banana papaya strawberry sugarcane watermelon and wheat said Robert Vanburen a graduate student in Ming's lab and collaborator on the study.
Because of its dense evergreen foliage and dominance in riparian and cove habitats eastern hemlock plays an important role in the area's water cycle regulating stream flow year round.
Although rhododendron is evergreen it has lower leaf area than hemlock and thus transpiration in rhododendron-dominated forest stands is lower than in previously-healthy hemlock forests.
and other products in the United states use dried cassia bark or cassia cinnamon. Ceylon cinnamon contains very little coumarin a naturally occurring substance that has been linked to liver damage in people sensitive to the substance.
Even when other known means of communication such as contact chemical and light-mediated signals are blocked chilli seeds grow better when grown with basil plants.
Monica Gagliano and Michael Renton from the University of Western australia attempted to grow chilli seeds (Capsicum annuum) in the presence or absence of other chilli plants or basil (Ocimum basilicum.
but when the plants were able to openly communicate with the seeds more seedlings grew.
However when the seeds were separated from the basil plants with black plastic so that they could not be influenced by either light
A partial response was seen for fully grown chilli plants blocked from known communication with the seeds.
Dr Gagliano explained Our results show that plants are able to positively influence growth of seeds by some as yet unknown mechanism.
The leaves of infected plants can look healthy even as the roots cassava's most prized asset are being ravaged underground.
The telltale signs of the disease are brown streaks in the root's flesh that
Farmers also help spread the disease by planting new fields with infected stem cuttings. Scientists note that
while it would take several years for the disease to spread across the continent via whiteflies alone infected stem cuttings could spark outbreaks in new areas overnight.
Wetlands and buffers of trees grasses and shrubs help to keep runoff from fields out of the waterways slowing erosion of soil and blooms of algae downstream.
In addition to being a food source the bark and roots from fig trees are used for manufacturing items such as barkcloth handicrafts shields and buildings.
The authors provide examples of barkcloth manufacture from Mexico Uganda and Sulawesi. Despite the different fig species involved the same method for making barkcloth has evolved three times--a remarkable demonstration of cultural convergent evolution.
while taking supplements containing the antioxidant polyphenol from fish oil grape seed extract and vitamins. Antioxidants are thought to slow cell aging.
and microbes adjacent to rice roots--can be used to block the arsenic uptake. Bais first identified the bacterial species in soil samples taken from rice fields in California.
and slow arsenic uptake in rice roots but the researchers have not yet determined exactly how this process works
if creating an iron shield around the rice roots will slow arsenic movement into other parts of the plant Bais said.
Sherrier and Bais who received a 2012 seed grant for the project from Delaware's National Science Foundation Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCOR) ultimately want to determine how UD1023 slows arsenic movement into rice roots
Coating seeds with bacteria is very easy. With this bacteria you could implement easy low-cost strategies that farmers could use that would reduce arsenic in the human food chain.
Levels of emodin in the environment are greatest at leaf out which is occurring right now in early spring.
The Chicago Wilderness 2004 Woodland Audit found that in the Chicagoland area alone more than 26 million stems of European buckthorn exist with a density of 558 stems per acre.
From their recent findings the plant biologists now understand how transport proteins control processes that allow roots to tolerate toxic aluminum.
#Identification of stem cells two separate roles raises possibility of therapies that could inhibit fat formation,
The findings are published in the April 27 online edition of Stem Cells and Development. The Wake Forest Baptist researchers proved that pericytes stem cells associated with blood vessels contain two sub-types with completely different roles:
Type 1 which forms only fat cells and Type 2 which forms only muscle cells. We found that Type 1 contributes to fat accumulation in the skeletal muscle under pathogenic conditions
but will consume aquatic plants tubers grasses and small invertebrates such as insect larvae worms and snails when fruits are said scarce Dr. Keuroghlian.
and other habitats as a seed predator and disperser and it is a favorite prey of jaguars and pumas.
How burning plants tell seeds to rise from the ashesin the spring following a forest fire trees that survived the blaze explode in new growth
What we discovered she says is how a dying plant generates a chemical message for the next generation telling dormant seeds it's time to sprout.
First the researchers determined the structure of a plant protein know as KAI2 which binds to karrikin in dormant seeds.
Then comparing the karrikin-bound KAI2 protein to the structure of an unbound KAI2 protein allowed the researchers to speculate how KAI2 allows a seed to perceive karrikin in its environment.
and plant geneticist Zuyu Zheng says this karrikin-induced shape change may send a new signal to other proteins in the seeds.
U s. wild relatives of the world's most important food crops--including strawberry sunflower sweet potato bean stone fruits
and then identify the priority places for collecting seed from species that haven't yet been secured.
Wheat varieties grown in the Great plains are protected from the leaf rust disease by genes extracted from goatgrass
But the plant also differentiates between species. Maize growing beside wheat will produce deep roots to avoid those of the wheat
whereas if there are roots of beans close by the maize roots will grow towards them.
Hopefully we'll find some weed seeds as they may help confirm that fertilisers were used indeed
#Early dialogue between parents, children stems teen smokingearly substantive dialogue between parents and their grade-school age children about the ills of tobacco and alcohol use can be more powerful in shaping teen behavior
and specializes in consumer misbehavior a branch of marketing that attempts to change undesirable or risky behavior.
The team tested a wide variety of sources of biomass--leaves stems flowers seeds and legumes--with particular interest in those with high protein content
and number of tubers as well as by their resistance to the usual diseases of this crop.
The varieties imported from Peru have a very low productivity in our latitudes both in size and the number of tubers.
The Argonne-UPM team has created the world's first model for how iron is transported in the plant's root nodule to trigger nitrogen fixation.
amounts in the different developmental regions of rhizobia-containing roots. This is the first high-energy X-ray analysis of plant-microbe interactions.
For example tunas and marlins are both fast-swimming marine fishes with large streamlined bodies yet they appear on very different branches of the tree.
Researchers sampled plant tissues at six incrementally spaced growth stages. They separated them into their different fractions (leaves stems cobs grain) to determine season-long nutrient accumulation utilization and movement.
Although maximum uptake rates were found to be nutrient-specific they generally occurred during late vegetative growth.
or less to water seeds of peas beans and wheat on a weekly basis. Treating the seeds less often reduced the effect
With wheat all the seeds germinated in one to two days instead of four or five and with peas and beans the typical 40 percent rate of germination rose to 60 to 70 percent.
Corn stover consists of the stem leaves and husk of the corn plant remaining after ears of corn are harvested.
The study published in the current edition of the journal Science examines how Ug99--new virulent forms of stem rust first found in Uganda in 1999--could continue its movement across Africa the Middle east and Southwest asia.
Spending on stem rust research has been inadequate for some time and increased research investment must be sustained over the long haul
Among plants the lack of genomic data from lineages which split away from the main evolutionary branch early on has prevented researchers from reconstructing patterns of genome evolution.
It belongs to a more unusual group of dicotyledons (plants with two seed leaves) known as magnoliids
For example when gypsy moth caterpillars consume foliage high in certain toxic compounds transmission of viruses between the caterpillars is reduced facilitating moth outbreaks.
Deep inside your brain a legion of stem cells lies ready to turn into new brain
and keeps them in their stem-cell state. In a paper published online in Nature Neuroscience the U-M team shows that a particular protein called FIP200 governs this cleaning process in neural stem cells in mice.
Without FIP200 these crucial stem cells suffer damage from their own waste products --and their ability to turn into other types of cells diminishes.
It is the first time that this cellular self-cleaning process called autophagy has been shown to be important to neural stem cells.
The findings may help explain why aging brains and nervous systems are more prone to disease
or permanent damage as a slowing rate of self-cleaning autophagy hampers the body's ability to deploy stem cells to replace damaged or diseased cells.
and colleagues from around the world discuss the growing evidence that autophagy is crucial to many types of tissue stem cells
and embryonic stem cells as well as cancer stem cells. As stem cell-based treatments continue to develop the authors say it will be increasingly important to understand the role of autophagy in preserving stem cells'health
and ability to become different types of cells. The process of generating new neurons from neural stem cells
and the importance of that process is understood pretty well but the mechanism at the molecular level has not been clear says Jun-Lin Guan Ph d. the senior author of the FIP200 paper
and the organizing author of the autophagy and stem cells review article. Here we show that autophagy is crucial for maintenance of neural stem cells and differentiation and show the mechanism by
which it happens. Through autophagy he says neural stem cells can regulate levels of reactive oxygen species--sometimes known as free radicals--that can build up in the low-oxygen environment of the brain regions where neural stem cells reside.
Abnormally higher levels of ROS can cause neural stem cells to start differentiating Guan is a professor in the Molecular Medicine & Genetics division of the U-M Department of Internal medicine and in the Department of Cell & Developmental Biology.
A long path to discoverythe new discovery made after 15 years of research with funding from the National institutes of health shows the importance of investment in lab science--and the role of serendipity in research.
Several years ago Guan's team stumbled upon clues that FIP200 might be important in neural stem cells when studying an entirely different phenomenon.
when an observant postdoctoral fellow noticed that the mice experienced rapid shrinkage of the brain regions where neural stem cells reside.
what we were actually intending to study says Guan as it suggested that without FIP200 something was causing damage to the home of neural stem cells that normally replace nerve cells during injury or aging.
In 2010 they worked with other U-M scientists to show FIP200's importance to another type of stem cell those that generate blood cells.
In that case deleting the gene that encodes FIP200 leads to an increased proliferation and ultimate depletion of such cells called hematopoietic stem cells.
But with neural stem cells they report in the new paper deleting the FIP200 gene led neural stem cells to die
It's clear that autophagy is going to be important in various types of stem cells says Guan pointing to the new paper in Autophagy that lays out
what's currently known about the process in hematopoietic neural cancer cardiac and mesenchymal (bone and connective tissue) stem cells.
Guan's own research is now exploring the downstream effects of defects in neural stem cell autophagy--for instance how communication between neural stem cells
The team is also looking at the role of autophagy in breast cancer stem cells because of intriguing findings about the impact of FIP200 deletion on the activity of the p53 tumor suppressor gene
In addition they will study the importance of p53 and p62 another key protein component for autophagy to neural stem cell self-renewal and differentiation in relation to FIP200.
The bug-encrusted greenery was burned the next morning to exterminate the insects. Through painstaking detective work the scientists discovered that the creatures are trapped within seconds of stepping on a leaf their legs impaled by microscopic hooked hairs known botanically as trichomes.
Using the bean leaves as templates the researchers have microfabricated materials that closely resemble them geometrically.
The types of lily pads and waterborne plants found within these basins helped naturally purify the water.
The algae bloom and eventually die and decay removing oxygen from the water. The result is water too oxygen-depleted to support life.#
#¢Direct reflection where the light bounces back without being absorbed by the leaf.#¢#¢Fluorescence which is light emitted by plants.
This gives the company a completely consistent repeatable industrial process to produce tailored oil at scale Sugar from traditional sources such as sugarcane
The company's first fit-for-purpose commercial-scale production plant is under construction with their partner Bunge next to a sugarcane mill in Brazil.
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