When damaged many plants release hydrocarbons called volatile organic compounds similar to the compounds that cause the characteristic smell of freshly cut grass.
These volatile organic compounds are known to be attractive to parasitoid wasps that lay their eggs inside other insects killing them Plants appear to use this strategy to fight back against herbivorous insects by calling for their enemies'enemies.
The caterpillars were more than twice as likely to crawl towards the odor from maize plants under attack by conspecifics than towards undamaged plants especially
When S. littoralis caterpillars drop from a plant they are highly vulnerable to predators and pathogens in the soil as well as to starvation.
The advantage seems to be fallen that caterpillars can quickly rediscover the plant on which they fed.
Turlings and colleagues propose that hungry S. littoralis caterpillars do the best of a bad job by moving towards volatile organic compounds released by damaged maize plants.
On these plants the competition may be more intense but at least the caterpillars are assured of a suitable plant.
Adult moths on the other hand are much more mobile and take little risk exploring the environment to discover the best food source
Disequilibrium will become the norm in the plant communities of the futurethe forest we are used to looking at is not at all in equilibrium.
Since the Ice age a number of plants have been'missing'in Northern europe i e. species that have not yet arrived.
Similarly there is evidence that--even today--it often takes a very long time before plants follow
In future such disequilibrium will become the norm in the plant communities On earth. This has been demonstrated by a new synthesis carried out by two researchers at Aarhus University--Professor of Biology Jens-Christian Svenning and Assistant professor Brody Sandel.
Even fast spreaders such as some invasive exotic plants remain in disequilibrium for decades or centuries.
The challenges we faceconsequently if you're trying to practise natural forest management with natural regeneration you may see completely different plants regenerating compared with
Plant life and ecosystems will become much more dynamic and often out of sync with the climate.
We're used to a situation where flora fauna and climate are matched reasonably well. In future this equilibrium will shift on an ongoing basis
and if it disperses on the forest floor it may create too much shade for the existing flora on the forest floor to survive.
This gene Sr35 functions as a key component of plants'immune system Akhunov said. It recognizes the invading pathogen
and triggers a response in the plant to fight the disease. Wheat stem rust is caused by a fungal pathogen.
First they chemically mutagenized the resistant accession of wheat to identify plants that become susceptible to the stem rust pathogen.
It was a matter of knocking out each candidate gene until we found the one that made a plant susceptible Akhunov said.
because unlike their larger bodied relatives in other parts of the country that eat larger prey their diet consists of small mammals birds carrion insects fungi and other plant material.
because unlike their larger bodied relatives in other parts of the country that eat larger prey their diet consists of small mammals birds carrion insects fungi and other plant material.
or other crops said Julin Maloof professor of plant biology in the College of Biological sciences at the University of California Davis. Maloof is senior author on the study published June 24 in the journal Proceedings
Comparison of the plants'genomes shows the effects of evolutionary bottlenecks Maloof noted--for example at the original domestication in South america
The researchers studied not just the plants'DNA but also the MESSENGER RNA being transcribed from different genes.
Gene expression profiling combined with an understanding of the plants'biology allows researchers to understand how genes interact to create complex phenotypes said Neelima Sinha professor of plant biology at UC Davis
The despised weed makes herbicide to kill neighboring plantscontrary to popular belief crabgrass does not thrive in lawns gardens and farm fields by simply crowding out other plants.
A new study in ACS'Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry has found that the much-despised weed actually produces its own herbicides that kill nearby plants.
The chemical-specific changes in the soil microbial community generated a negative feedback on crop growth the scientists said noting that the chemicals also would have a direct toxic effect on other plants.
However rotting fruit and plants--the flies'main sources of food--also release carbon dioxide. Neurobiologists in Martinsried have discovered now how the brain deals with this constant conflict in deciding between a hazardous substance and a potential food source taking advantage of the fly as a great genetic model organism for circuit neuroscience.
and tolerate the plant's defenses a little better the researchers report. This boost in digestive finesse allows rotation-resistant beetles to survive long enough to lay their eggs in soybean fields.
and also paralleled--in a graduated fashion--the plant diversity of the landscapes they inhabited.
--and displace slower-growing native plants. The spread of ailanthus in Pennsylvania occurred in spurts that seem to be connected with stages of human development particularly during cross-state transportation projects Kasson said.
and wealthy plant collectors commercialization of ailanthus after 1820 coupled with railroad construction projects that connected the eastern and western parts of the state in the mid-1800s intensified its spread according to Kasson who worked with Matthew Davis lab
along with historic surveys and reports on plant species in the state to determine age and growth patterns.
The research is a follow-up to her team's award-winning 2012 study of the ways that plants use their internal circadian clocks to defend themselves from hungry insects.
That study found that Arabidopsis thaliana--a widely used model organism for plant studies--begins ramping up production of insect-fighting chemicals a few hours before sunrise the time that hungry insects begin to feed.
The pollen tubes from all three plants reliably made it to ovules but in 70 percent of the ovules encountered by the triple mutants the pollen tubes didn't stop growing and then burst.
Among crop plants pollination means food. Understanding this molecular back-and-forth at all the different levels and stages will be useful to either engineer the process
and other wetland big boys that produce a lot of plant biomass and carbon Mitsch says. Once carbon ends up in wetland soil it can also remain there for hundreds to thousands of years because of waterlogged conditions that inhibit microbial decomposition.
Only 1%of women used insect repellents during pregnancy. 10%of pregnant women used outdoor insecticides such as in gardens or vegetable plots and yards with plants:
and they are more likely to have close contact with plants grass and other surfaces.
Fructose and dextrose are simple sugars found naturally in plants. We studied fructose because it is the most commonly added sugar in the American diet
Stomata are used tiny pores by plants to take up carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and release water vapor and oxygen.
Because the plants are unable to counteract this removal of water the plants dehydrate more rapidly.
or being stored in the bodies of plants. However this pathway is looked seldom at in terms of specific animal responses like fear from predation.
some that contained only native grasses and herbs others that had plants and an herbivore grasshopper and some others that had plants and herbivores along with a carnivore spider species--all three tiers of the food chain.
In addition a form of traceable carbon dioxide was injected into sample cages covered with Plexiglas which allowed the team to track the carbon levels by periodically taking leaf root and dead animal samples.
The study found that the presence of spiders drove up the rate of carbon uptake by the plants by about 1. 4 times more than
It was revealed also that the pattern of carbon storage in the plants changed when both herbivores and carnivores were present.
and consumed less plant matter when the predators were around. The grasshoppers also shifted towards eating more herbs instead of grass under fearful scenarios.
In cases where only herbivores were present the plants stored less carbon overall likely due to the more intense eating habits of the herbivores that put pressure on plants to reduce their storage
These stress impacts then caused both the plants and the herbivores to change their behaviors and change the composition of their local environment.
because a lot of plant biomass goes in and is converted to energy for the ants says Frank Aylward a bacteriology graduate student and researcher with the Great lakes Bioenergy Research center.
In addition to providing nitrogen and key vitamins the bacteria appear to help the fungus access energy-rich cellulose by breaking apart other plant polymers that encase it such as hemicellulose.
The EBI is working on how to get the sugars out of plants and how to turn those to alcohols.
By coppicing the plants after a period of growth or cutting the plants back from a single stem just a few inches from the ground Kling explained that this process allows the plant to grow back with multiple stems coming from the base
but not all plants will tolerate this process. It forces the plants to essentially grow up as shrubs with more frequent harvests.
By planting much closer together and causing them to branch like that you are able to fill up available space intercept light more quickly
By the end of last season the plants were nearly equivalent to the first two years'growth he said.
This spring a preliminary check on the black locust crops which included harvesting 3 plants from the edge of the field produced a yield of 12 to 13 mega grams per hectare (Mg ha-1)
and the other researchers will evaluate whether to coppice the plants at the end of 1 or 2 years.
or rolling lawns have been infiltrated by invasive plant species the perennial marauders of the back yard set.
and professor of biology at Saint joseph's University advises that it's best to investigate the plant that's choking your columbines
and each state's department of natural resources will typically provide information about problem plants. In addition the National park service's Weeds Gone Wild site has a manageable list of factsheets for some of the most common invasives.
if it's mowed the stiltgrass will just produce seeds on tiny little plants. It's better to wait until the grass matures a little--not to the point where it's actually making seeds
Invasive plants are likely to keep most of us busy for a long time Snetselaar says and factors that we can't control such as climate change
But though they may present many thorny problems it's not inevitable that the invasive plants will win.
Gradually removing aggressive plants and replacing them with better-behaved species takes patience she adds
The Arctic's extremely cold wet conditions prevent dead plants and animals from decomposing so each year another layer gets added to the reservoirs of organic carbon sequestered just beneath the topsoil.
Thousands of plant genes activated by ethylene gasit's common wisdom that one rotten apple in a barrel spoils all the other apples
In the online journal elife a large international group of scientists led by investigators at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have traced the thousands of genes in a plant that are activated once ethylene a gas that acts as a plant
and helps defends a plant against pathogens among a variety of other functions. Teasing out the specific genes that perform each of these discrete functions from the many genes found to be activated by ethylene might allow scientists to produce plant strains that slow down growth
or make plants more resistant to disease says the senior investigator Joseph R. Ecker head of Salk's Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology laboratory.
and genomicist Bing Ren from the University of California San diego. The study also represents a milestone for Ecker who has devoted his career to understanding the power exerted by plant-based ethylene.
and four hydrogens--can cause such profound changes in a plant Ecker says. Now we can see that by altering the expression of one protein ethylene produces cascading waves of gene activation that profoundly alters the biology of the plant.
Although the plant they studied is the Arabidopsis thaliana related to cabbage and mustard ethylene functions as a key hormone in all plants he adds.
The researchers looked at what happens in Arabidopsis after ethylene gas causes activation of EIN3 a master transcription factor--a protein that controls gene expression--that Ecker had discovered
and cloned in 1997. EIN3 and a related protein EIL1 are required for the response to ethylene gas;
without these proteins ethylene has no effect on the plant. We wanted to know how ethylene is actually doing its job Ecker says.
Once the plant responds to ethylene by activating EIN3 what happens? What genes are turned on?
Using a technique known as Chip-Seq the researchers exposed Arabidopsis to ethylene and identified all the regions of the plant genome that bound to EIN3
They found that thousands of genes in the plant responded to EIN3. Then the investigators discovered two interesting things.
That tells us that a plant making a critical master regulator like EIN3 wants to keep that production pathway under very tight control Ecker says.
The second discovery is that EIN3 targets all other hormone signaling pathways in the plant.
If ethylene tells a plant to stop growing it has to control other hormones that are telling the plant to grow he says.
In addition to gaining insight into how ethylene genetically controls diverse functions within a plant he adds that findings from the study provides a template by
) National Science Foundation Plant Systems Biology IGERT (DGE-0504645) The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Grant GBMF3034) Gates Millennium Scholarship National institutes of health (1ro1
By keeping a protective layer of plant matter on the soil surface no-till practices reduce the loss of soil
Kongming Wu director of the Institute for Plant Protection at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing said This review paper will be very helpful for understanding insect resistance in agricultural systems
These plants have been remarkably useful and in most cases resistance has evolved slower than expected Tabashnik said.
The Michigan Tech research demonstrates that the relationship of deer to their habitat is more complex than just the plants they eat Webster said.
and plants in survivng hemlock stands we can identify sustainable management strategies for this critical resource.
#The intensity of land use doubled in the 20th centurythe growth of green plants--which can be measured in terms of net primary production
HANPP reveals the percentage of the annual plant-based biomass production that is coopted by humans through land use activities such as agriculture
Animals eating C4 and CAM plants have enriched amounts of carbon-13. C3 plants include trees bushes and shrubs and their leaves and fruits;
most vegetables; cool-season grasses and grains such as timothy alfalfa wheat oats barley and rice;
C4 plants are warm-season or tropical grasses and sedges and their seeds leaves or storage organs like roots and tubers.
C4 plants are common in African savannas and deserts. C4 grasses include Bermuda grass and sorghum.
CAM plants include tropical succulent plants such as cactus salt bush and agave. Today North americans eat about half C3 plants including vegetables fruits and grains such as wheat oats rye and barley and about half C4
which largely comes from corn sorghum and meat animals fed on C4 grasses and grains Cerling says.
The odor of A z)- 3-isomer or A z)- 3/(E)- 2 ratio in favor of A z)- 3-isomer according to the odor bouquet of an unattacked plant guides ovipositing Manduca
females to plants that have yet been spared by herbivorous caterpillars. Copyright: Anna Spã¤the MPI Chem.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology Jena Germany discovered that the ability of Manduca sexta moths to recognize changes in the profile of volatile compounds released by plants being attacked by Manduca caterpillars allows them to lay their eggs on plants that are less likely
Some of these metabolites are produced on a continuous basis by plants 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
or repelling herbivores and indirect protection by attracting predators of the herbivores themselves. Attracting the enemies of the herbivoresthe hawkmoth Manduca sexta lays its eggs on various plants including tobacco and Sacred Datura plants (Datura wrightii.
Once the eggs have hatched into caterpillars they start eating the leaves of their host plant
and destroy the plant. 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
The resulting changes in the volatile profile alerts Geocoris bugs to the presence of M. sexta caterpillars on the plant their potential prey.
and caterpillars on the plant and as a consequence the moths lay their eggs on unattacked plants.
Another positive effect is that the competition for resources with larvae that already feed on a plant is reduced.
New plant protection strategiesa similar behavioral pattern is known from potato beetles (Leptinotarsa decemlineata. An artificial application of (Z)- 3-or (E)- 2-hexenol (E)- 2-hexanal or 1-hexanol to potato plants lead to a disoriented behavior observed in egg-laying potato beetles.
On the basis of these results plant protection strategies seem possible which utilize artificial odor application
in order to deter ovipositing insects from field crops and thereby reduce insect infestation. Mclennan/AO/JWK Story Source:
Cacao plant breeders trying to produce a delicious high-yield strain through cross breeding have met with limited success. So the genetic marker could in theory be used to screen young seedlings
and highlight desirable plants long before they reach maturity. This would avoid the expense and labour of growing up potential duds ultimately improving the quality of cacao plants
and the chocolate made from them. Although the genome sequence of the Criollo cacao variety was reported two years ago it's genetically quite distinct
Since the publication of the genome sequence researchers have been working to identify genetic markers that can produce more productive cocoa plants for farmers
and cacao beans harvested from the plants'pods are used to produce chocolate as well as in the confectionary and cosmetic industries.
but there is also evidence of episodic tree recruitment during extreme rainy years says Milena Holmgren leading author of the study and a specialist on plant ecology.
and that includes engineers at Iowa State university who are using high-frequency sound waves to break down plant materials
Lignin is the chemical compound that binds cellulose and hemicellulose together in plant cell walls. Commonly enzymes or chemicals are used to remove it from biomass
About 80 percent of the entire Atlantic rainforest biome remains in small fragments according to the researchers and the successful restoration of these habitats critically depends on the preservation of mutualistic interactions between animals and plants.
rdenas'report also refers to findings by Smithsonian plant physiologist Klaus Winter that leaves of some tropical trees tolerate short-term exposure to temperatures up to 122 F (5 C)
However no amount of reafforestation or growing of new trees will ultimately offset continuing CO2 emissions due to environmental constraints on plant growth and the large amounts of remaining fossil fuel reserves.
#Ugly plants worse for allergy patientsas allergy season continues for Middle Tennessee and much of the nation a largely unknown adage rings true:
Ragweed can produce up to 1 billion pollen grains per plant throughout a pollen season according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
Of those allergic to pollen-producing plants 75 percent are allergic to ragweed. The relationship between allergy-causing pollens and their flowers is something like a beauty pageant Valet said.
Professor G. Eric Schaller the paper's senior author studies the molecular mechanisms by which a plant recognizes a hormone
which play critical roles in regulating plant growth and development including stimulating yield greening branching metabolism and cell division.
To regulate plant growth plants need to perceive cytokinins and convert this information into changes in gene expression.
which plants can regulate the cytokinin response and may serve as a method to help regulate agriculturally important cytokinin responses.
and domesticated plants and animals constitutes a fundamental threat to the well-being and even the survival of humankind warns the founding Chair of a new global organization created to narrow the gulf between leading international biodiversity scientists and national policy-makers.
There are 30000 edible plant species but only 30 crops account for 95%of human food energy the bulk
The authors note that their study does not consider the value of land cover as habitat for wild fauna and flora.
Selecting the final list of new species from a wide representation of life forms such as bacteria fungi plants
The entire above ground portion of the plant is barely 1 centimeter tall. Named obviously for the race of little people on the island of Lilliput in Jonathan swift's Gulliver's Travels.
and are associated with the decomposition of plant matter. As far as scientists know this fungus one of two new species of the genus from Lascaux is harmless.
No investment makes more sense than completing a simple inventory to the establish baseline data that tells us what kinds of plants
Since he initiated the modern system for naming plants and animals nearly two million species have been named described and classified.
Other plant and animal species have efficient mechanisms to eliminate such repetitive DNA but these do not seem to operate so well in conifers.
or run other processes in the plant itself. A typical pair of running shoes comprises 65 discrete parts requiring more than 360 processing steps to assemble from sewing
and wild plants have slowed in recent years according to a new study. Researchers led by the University of Leeds and the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in The netherlands found evidence of dramatic reductions in the diversity of species in Britain Belgium and The netherlands between the 1950s and 1980s.
But the picture brightened markedly after 1990 with a slowdown in local and national biodiversity losses among bees hoverflies and wild plants.
but what we are seeing is a significant slowing or reversal of the declines for wild plants and their insect pollinators.
In addition mass flowering is typical for the tropical forests in Borneo and elsewhere where hundreds of different plant timber species from the Dipterocarpaceae family flower synchronously.
The researchers can also confirm the flowering functions of these two genes using transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana plants. 85-meter canopy crane necessary for sample collectionthe Phd student Masaki Kobayashi his supervisor Professor
In this way Kobayashi and Shimizu identified 98 genes that are associated with the flowering of the plant-including the genes Sbft and Sbsvp
These nanoparticles which we've named grapefruit-derived nanovectors (GNVS) are derived from an edible plant
It made sense for us to consider eatable plants as a mechanism to create medical nanoparticles as a potential nontoxic therapeutic delivery vehicle.
It is the first time scientists have decoded the genome of a plant pathogen and its plant host from dried herbarium samples.
This opens up a new area of research to understand how pathogens evolve and how human activity impacts the spread of plant disease.
and the US reconstructed the spread of the potato blight pathogen from dried plants. Although these were 170 to 120 years old they were found to have many intact pieces of DNA.
which we can learn a tremendous amount about the historical distribution of plants and their pests--and also about the history of the people who grew these plants according to Kentaro Yoshida from The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich.
The researchers examined the historical spread of the funguslike oomycete Phytophthora infestans known as The irish potato famine pathogen.
and were very generous in providing the dried plants said Marco Thines from the Senckenberg Museum
This study directly documents the effect of plant breeding on the genetic makeup of a pathogen.
and plants he says can reveal a lot about carbon cycling which is so central for applying the work to climate change today.
and various roots raises the intriguing possibility that these plants may have been planted nearby the settlement.
but that an indigenous system of plant cultivation may have been in place by the mid Holocene.
Similar to the chloroplasts in green plants that carry out photosynthesis our artificial photosynthetic system is composed of two semiconductor light absorbers an interfacial layer for charge transport
The information helps forest managers have more confidence in their decisions on what and where to plant.
Publication in Phytokeys means the data from the in depth taxonomic work will be shared with a wide audience who can reuse the data for further work with these plants.
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