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opencc-zeroOct 2021View details →

Nitrogen fertilization and high plant growing temperature increase herbivore performance

Global environmental change exerts growing pressure on biodiversity. Anthropogenic climate and land use change are particularly important drivers of biodiversity loss. While their effects on biodiversity have been widely studied individually, interactions among them are poorly understood. Here, we investigate the effects of two common drivers of global change, increased temperature and nitrogen fertilization, on host-plant quality and herbivore performance in the butterfly Lycaena tityrus. We show that butterfly performance was positively affected by plants grown at increased temperatures and nitrogen fertilization, the latter being in line with the nitrogen limitation hypothesis. Effects were largely consistent across treatments, i.e. nitrogen deposition and temperature did not interact strongly to affect herbivore performance. Overall, females suffered more strongly than males from poor host-plant quality. Our study demonstrates changes in host-plant quality caused by variation in temperature and nitrogen availability, which induced indirect effects in an herbivore. Such indirect effects of global environmental change are an important source of variation and should be considered in order to reduce uncertainties with regard to the effects of global change on biodiversity.

opencc-by-4.0Oct 2021View details →

Data from: Different management practices influence growth of small plants in species-rich hay meadows through shading

Data from: Different management practices influence growth of small plants in species-rich hay meadows through shading, published in Applied Vegetation Science. Photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and Dry Matter Yield (DMY)

opencc-zeroOct 2021View details →

Inter- and intraspecific selection in alien plants: how population growth, functional traits and climate responses change with residence time

Aim: When alien species are introduced to new ranges, climate or trait mismatches may initially constrain their population growth. However, inter- and intraspecific selection in the new environment should cause population growth rates to increase with residence time. Using a species-for-time approach, we test whether with increasing residence time (a) negative effects of climatic mismatches between the species' new and native range on population growth weaken, and (b) functional traits converge towards values that maximize population growth in the new range. Location: Germany. Time period: 12,000 years BP to present. Major taxa studied: 46 plant species of the Asteraceae family. Methods: We set up a common-garden mesocosm-experiment using annual plant species with a wide range of residence times (7-12,000 years) and followed their population dynamics over two years. We calculated climatic distance between the common garden and the species' native range. We also measured key functional traits of each species to analyse trait-demography relationships and test trait convergence with increasing residence time. Results: We found no support for the hypothesis that negative effects of climatic mismatches on population growth weaken with residence time. However, seed mass had a clear negative effect on population growth. As expected under such strong directional selection between or within species, increasing residence time led seed mass to converge to low values that increase population growth. Accordingly, population growth tended to increase with residence time. Main conclusions: We identify trait but not climatic mismatches as important constraints on population growth of invaders. Understanding how inter- and intraspecific selection shapes functional traits of alien species should improve the predictability of future invasions and help understanding limits to the population growth and spread of invaders already present. In a broader context, this study contributes to the conceptual integration of invasion biology with community, functional, and population ecology.

opencc-zeroOct 2021View details →

Acute pseudo-landmarking and Constellation homologies: A generalized workflow to identify and track segmented structures in plant time series images

Assessing plant phenotypes throughout the lifecycle is integral to exploring the development, genetics, and evolution of morphology, and can be critical for agronomic and basic research studies. Although various automated or semi-automated phenomic approaches have been developed, it has been challenging to analyze differential growth because of difficulties in segmenting and annotating specific structures or positions in the plant body and maintaining their identities throughout time-series data. To address this gap, we have developed a generalized workflow linking our previously published function, Acute, with a companion homology workflow, Constellation, in the PlantCV environment. Acute identifies acute shapes (pseudo-landmarks) in the plant body, most often corresponding to leaf tips and ligular regions. Constellation uses a strategy of dimensionality reduction via starscape followed by hierarchical clustering through constella to identify 'constellations' of segments in eigenspace that represent the same landmark in consecutive images of a time-series. We devised a quality control function, constellaQC, to test the accuracy of the clustering approach, and use it to show that the approach appropriately clusters the pseudo-landmarks derived from Acute, with 80-90% accuracy. We discuss the reasons for and consequences of this lack of 100% accuracy in automated workflows and suggest how to develop these functions for other phenomics datasets that may vary in dimensional complexity.

opencc-by-2.0Nov 2021View details →

A Study for Dose Impact of MCR Operators in Nuclear Power Plants Under ICRP 30 and ICRP 60

Impact evaluation on tritium in Korean heavy water reactor was performed. The purpose of this study is to find the dose suitability for Tritium, Iodine, Xe and Kr. Another purpose is to find the contribution of Tritium during NPP operator's dose in Main Control Room of Design Basic Accident of NPP. In this study, DCF (Dose Conversion Factor) is ICRP 30 and ICRP 60. From this condition, some sensitivity analysis is carried out by simulation code RADTRAD 3.03 and ARCON96. These codes are approved from US NRC for the safety analysis of Nuclear Power Plants. Analysis condition is under considering the core coolant pipe break of Heavy Water Reactor. In order to recover the NPP state, some operator operation is carried out by the signal of DBA. In this moment, the operators reside in MCR (Main Control Room) against the DBA to response the NPP States. RADTRAD 3.03 simulates the accident of NPP and ARCON96 simulates the diffusion of fission products. MCR operator's dose effects are different between ICRP 30 and ICRP 60. Noble gas is reduced in dose calculation and Tritium contribution is very small in dose effects. In the effect of tritium, it had an effect of less than 1% comparing with external dose and less than 2% comparing with internal dose. In this study, every calculation is carried out by assumption of no deposition of fission products on the wall surface, pipe and concrete. This conservation increase the TEDE of Tritium, Noble gas (Xe and Kr) and Iodine. Otherwise, in condition of deposition coefficient 0.01, RADTRAD's calculation results make 5~10% reduction of TEDE. In ICRP 60, I suggest that ICRP60's radio nuclides deposition should be studied in concrete material, metal pipe material, structure material and so on. Exact deposition coefficient allow the accurate and optimized TEDE dose calculations to be performed.

opencc-zeroDec 2020View details →

Unexpected cryptic species among streptophyte algae most distant to land plants

Streptophytes are one of the major groups of the green lineage (Chloroplastida or Viridiplantae). During one-billion-years of evolution, streptophytes have radiated into an astounding diversity of uni- and multicellular green algae as well as land plants. Most divergent from land plants is a clade formed by Mesostigmatophyceae, Spirotaenia spp., and Chlorokybophyceae. All three lineages are species-poor and the Chlorokybophyceae consist of a single described species, Chlorokybus atmophyticus. In this study, we used phylogenomic analyses to shed light into the diversity within Chlorokybus using a sampling of isolates across its known distribution. We uncovered a consistent deep genetic structure within the Chlorokybus isolates, which prompted us to formally extend the Chlorokybophyceae by describing four new species. Gene expression differences among Chlorokybus species suggest certain constitutive variability that might influence their response to environmental factors. Failure to account for this diversity can hamper comparative genomic studies aiming to understand the evolution of stress response across streptophytes. Our data highlight that future studies on the evolution of plant form and function can tap into an unknown diversity at key deep branches of the streptophytes.

Light availability and light demand of plants shape the arbuscular fungal communities in their roots

Plants involved in the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis trade photosynthetically derived carbon for fungal-provided soil nutrients. However, little is known about how plant light demand and ambient light conditions influence root-associating AM fungal communities. We conducted a manipulative field experiment to test whether plants' shade tolerance influences their root AM fungal communities in open and shaded grassland sites. We found similar light-dependent shifts shifts in AM fungal community structure for experimental bait plant roots and the surrounding soil. Yet, deviation from the sorrounding soil towards lower AM fungal beta-diversity in the roots of shade-intolerant plants in shade suggested preferential carbon allocation to specific AM fungi in conditions where plant-assimilated carbon available to fungi was limited. We conclude that favourable environmental conditions widen the plant biotic niche, as demonstrated here with optimal light availability reducing plants' selectivity for specific AM fungi, and promote compatibility with a larger number of AM fungal taxa. The deposited dataset contains the raw fungal sequence table for each sample and information on the characteristics of the sample (light treatment, sample type, sampling point in time etc).

opencc-by-4.0Nov 2021View details →

Source Data for the publication: "A different perspective for nonphotochemical quenching in plant antenna complexes"

This dataset contains the raw data for all the results shown in the paper either in Excel or in csv format. The Excel file contains one Excel sheet for each figure panel: <ul> <li>Figure 2a</li> <li>Figure 2b</li> <li>Figure 3a</li> <li>Figure 3d</li> <li>Figure 4a</li> <li>Figure 4b</li> <li>Figure 4c</li> <li>Figure 5b</li> <li>Supplementary Figure 2</li> <li>Supplementary Figure 3</li> <li>Supplementary Figure 4</li> <li>Supplementary Table 1</li> <li>Supplementary Figure 5</li> <li>Supplementary Figure 6</li> <li>Supplementary Figure 7</li> <li>Supplementary Figure 11e</li> </ul> The zipped csv files contain the remaining figures (one per file) and are named accordingly

opencc-by-4.0Nov 2021View details →

10000 most identified plant species on Pl@ntNet

We have compiled a list of the most identified plant species since the beginning of Pl@ntNet. This represents more than 320 millions identification requests made by users within Pl@ntNet apps (mobile and website). More exactly, this is the first species in the list proposed to the user from his image (automatically identified). https://identify.plantnet.org/

Vegetation survey data to understand drivers of plant rarity

Determining the drivers of plant rarity is a major challenge in ecology. Analysing spatial associations between different plant species can provide an exploratory avenue for understanding the ecological drivers of plant rarity. Here, we examined the different types of spatial associations between rare and common plants to determine if they influence the occurrence patterns of rare species. We completed vegetation surveys at 86 sites in woodland, forest, and heath communities in south-east Australia. We also examined two different rarity measures to quantify how categorisation criteria affected our results. Rare species were more likely to have positive associations with both rare and common species across all three vegetation communities. However, common species had positive or negative associations with rare and other common species, depending on the vegetation community in which they occurred. Rare species were positively associated with species diversity in forest communities. In woodland communities, rare species were associated negatively with species diversity but positively associated with species evenness. Rare species with high habitat specificity were more clustered spatially than expected by chance. Efforts to understand the drivers of plant rarity should use rarity definitions that consider habitat specificity. Our findings suggest that examining spatial associations between plants can help understand the drivers of plant rarity.

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2020View details →

Data belonging to: Decreasing relatedness among mycorrhizal fungi in a shared plant network increases fungal network size but not plant benefit

Dataset beloning to the publication: "Decreasing relatedness among mycorrhizal fungi in a shared plant network increases fungal network size but not plant benefit" in Ecology letters (2021). R script used to analyse the data in the .csv files

Plant and bird phenology and plant occurrence from 1851 to 2020 (non-continuous) in Thoreau's Concord, Massachusetts

Concord, Massachusetts, USA has served as an active location for phenological observations since philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau began recording plant and animal occurrence and phenology in 1851. Since that time, numerous naturalists, scientists, and researchers have continued this tradition, creating an invaluable time series of 758 species in a single location. A total of 13,441 phenological records, spanning 118 years, now exist, with observations of many species ongoing. Relative abundance data for an additional 200 plant species is also provided. Thoreau's published journals and records in Special Collections libraries at the Concord Free Public Library, Harvard University, Peabody Essex Museum, and Morgan Library and Museum provide insight into his methods of routinely walking around Walden Pond, through natural areas, and within the town of Concord, seeking the first leaf or flower on plants, seasonal observations of migratory birds, and fruit maturation times. Several amateur naturalists, and most recently the present research group, have followed this method of regularly searching Concord for the earliest signs of seasonal events, visiting many of the same locations including Walden Pond, the site made famous by Thoreau. While Thoreau's observations were initially made out of a curious desire to document the natural world, these data have led to dozens to contemporary studies, addressing timely issues such as climate change, conservation, ecology, and invasive species. This time series of data, initiated by Thoreau and continued by others, has resulted in dozens of peer-reviewed publications, a popular science book, and numerous educational and outreach opportunities. These data grow increasingly valuable with time and as new and creative studies are undertaken with Thoreau's historic records. No copyright restrictions apply to the use of this data set other than citing this publication.

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2015View details →

Fig. 5 in The vascular plant diversity of Burkina Faso (West Africa) - a quantitative analysis and implications for conservation

Fig. 5. – Species richness in Burkina Faso on a province level.

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2015View details →

Fig. 2 in The vascular plant diversity of Burkina Faso (West Africa) - a quantitative analysis and implications for conservation

Fig. 2. – The twelve most species-rich plant families in Burkina Faso.

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2015View details →

Fig. 4 in The vascular plant diversity of Burkina Faso (West Africa) - a quantitative analysis and implications for conservation

Fig. 4. – Proportion of life forms in the different phytogeographic zones of Burkina Faso.

Plant-soil feedback and crop rotation

Plant-soil feedback (PSF) can be a major driver of plant performance in communities, and this concept can be used in selecting crop rotation sequences to maximize agricultural yields. Potential benefits of using PSF in this context include nutrient use optimization, pathogen reduction and enhancement of mutualisms between crops and microbes. Yet, the contributions of these combined mechanisms are poorly understood. Here we investigated the relative contributions of these mechanisms using five major crops commonly cultivated in rotation (alfalfa, canola, maize, soybean and wheat) under controlled conditions. We trained soil by growing each of the five crops in a 'training phase', and then reciprocally planted the five crops in the trained soils in a 'feedback phase'. To tease out soil biota from nutrient effects, we established three treatments: 'control' (trained unsterilized soil used in the feedback phases), 'biota' (sterilized soil in the feedback phase inoculated with soil biota from the 'control' treatment after the training phase), and 'nutrient' (sterilized soils in both phases). Plant-soil feedback for each crop was calculated by comparing the total biomass of each crop grown in soils trained by each of the four other crops (i.e., in rotation) against total biomass in self-trained soil (i.e., monocropping). We found that PSF values varied among crop combinations in all the treatments, but such variation was the greatest in the 'nutrient' treatment. Overall, soil 'biota' feedback tended to be lower whereas 'nutrient' feedback tended to be greater compared to the unsterilized 'control' soil, suggesting that effects of antagonistic biota outweighed those of beneficial microbes in the 'biota' treatment, and that plants optimized nutrient uptake when the soil microbiome was absent in the 'nutrient' treatment. Furthermore, soils in the 'nutrient' treatment trained by the legume crops (alfalfa and soybean) tended to provide the greatest positive feedback, emphasizing the important legacy of N2-fixers in crop rotation. Taken together, our data demonstrate how nutrients and soil biota can be integral to PSFs among crops, and that assessing PSFs under controlled conditions can serve as a basis to determine the most productive crop rotation sequences prior to field testing.

Directional selection shifts trait distributions of planted species in dryland restoration

1. The match between species trait values and local abiotic filters can restrict community membership. An often-implicit assumption of this relationship is that abiotic filters select for a single locally optimal strategy, though difficulty in isolating effects of the abiotic environment from those of dispersal limitation and biotic interactions has resulted in few empirical tests of this assumption. Similar constraints have made it difficult to assess whether the type and intensity of abiotic filters shift along gradients of environmental harshness, as predicted by the stress dominance hypothesis. 2. We planted 9,216 plants of perennial grass and forb species that had a range of functional trait values and were assigned to a warm, intermediate, or cool temperature tolerance pools across eight sites on the Colorado Plateau. We compared the distributions of traits of surviving individuals to null distributions to evaluate whether there were shifts in trait means and variation. Borrowing from phenotypic selection concepts in evolutionary biology, we assessed support for stabilizing, directional, and disruptive abiotic filtering of trait distributions and whether these types of filtering varied with initial species pool. 3. Functional composition was significantly different from null distributions for nearly all traits at all sites, with trait variation more restricted in harsher abiotic conditions, supporting the stress-dominance hypothesis. Contrary to expectations, we primarily found evidence for directional selection, which increased in frequency in warm species pools while disruptive selection was found more often in cool and intermediate species pools. 4. Synthesis: This study provides a controlled experimental approach to test the effect of the abiotic environment on plant trait filtering. We found that opportunistic strategies allowing for rapid water acquisition during favorable periods improved survival at warmer sites. Species with these strategies may be expected to benefit from increasing aridity and may be selected for active management efforts. More generally, the prevalence of directional selection may have important implications for dynamic vegetation models that rely on trait distributions for translating environmental variation into ecosystem processes.

Mercury accumulation in leaves of different plant types – the significance of tissue age and specific leaf area

Mercury, Hg, is one of the most problematic metals from an environmental perspective. To assess the problems caused by Hg in the environment it is crucial to understand the processes of Hg biogeochemistry, but the exchange of Hg between the atmosphere and vegetation is not sufficiently well characterised. We explored the mercury concentration, [Hg], in foliage from a diverse set of plant types, locations and sampling periods to study whether there is a continuous accumulation of Hg in leaves/needles over time. Measurements of [Hg] were made in deciduous and conifer trees in Gothenburg, Sweden (Botanical Garden and city area) as well as of evergreen trees in Rwanda. In addition, data for wheat from an ozone experiment conducted at Östad, Sweden, were included. Conifer data were quantitatively compared with literature data. In every case where older foliage was directly compared with younger, [Hg] was higher in older tissue. Covering the range of current year up to four-year old needles, there was no sign of Hg saturation in conifer needles with age. Thus, over time scales of approximately one month to several years, the Hg uptake in foliage from the atmosphere always dominated over Hg evasion. Rwandan broadleaved trees had generally older leaves due to lack of seasonal abscission and higher [Hg] than Swedish broadleaved trees. The significance of atmospheric Hg uptake in plants was shown in a wheat experiment where charcoal filtrated air lead to significantly lower leaf [Hg]. To search for general patterns, the accumulation rates of Hg in the diverse set of tree species in the Gothenburg area were related to the specific leaf area (SLA). Leaf area based [Hg] was strongly negatively and non-linearly correlated with SLA, while mass-based [Hg] had a somewhat weaker positive relationship with SLA (both relationships with p < 0.001). An elaborated understanding of the relationship behind [Hg] and SLA would support large-scale modelling of Hg uptake by vegetation and Hg circulation in general.

MetaComNet: A random forest-based framework for making spatial prediction of plant-pollinator interactions

1. Predicting plant-pollinator interaction networks over space and time will improve our understanding of how environmental change is likely to impact the functioning of ecosystems. Here we propose a framework for producing spatially explicit predictions of the occurrence and number of pairwise plant-pollinator interactions and of the species richness, diversity, and abundance of pollinators visiting flowers. We call the framework 'MetaComNet' because it aims to link metacommunity dynamics to the assembly of ecological networks. 2. To illustrate the MetaComNet functionality, we used a dataset on bee-flower networks sampled at 16 sites in southeast Norway along with random forest models to predict bee-flower interactions. We included variables associated with climatic conditions (elevation) and habitat availability within a 250m radius of each site. Regional commonness, site-specific distance to conspecifics, social guild, and floral preference were included as bee traits. Each plant species was assigned a score reflecting its site-specific abundance, and four scores reflecting the bee species that the plant family is known to attract. We used leave-one-out cross-validations to assess the models' ability to predict pairwise plant-bee interactions across the landscape. 3. The relationship between observed occurrence or absence of interactions and the predicted probability of interactions was nearly proportional (GLMlogistic regression slope = 1.09), matching the data well (AUC = 0.88), and explained 30% of the variation. Predicted probability of interactions was also correlated with the number of observed pairwise interactions (r = 0.32). The sum of predicted probabilities of bee-flower interactions were positively correlated with observed species richness (r = 0.50), diversity (r = 0.48), and abundance (r = 0.42) of wild bees interacting with plant species within sites. 4. Our findings show that the MetaComNet framework can be a useful approach for making spatially explicit predictions and mapping plant-pollinator interactions. Such predictions have the potential to identify areas where the pollination potential for wild plants is particularly high, and where conservation action should be directed to preserve this ecosystem function.

Repeated measure plant community data after fire in boreal forest, Taiga Shield, Northwest Territories, Canada, 1998-2018

10 transects were established in the years following fire in boreal forest stands on the Taiga Shield, Northwest Territories, Canada in 1998-1999. These were remeasured annually. Six transects were returned to on 2018 for another measurement. At each measurement, we recorded ground covers, species identities, and counted tree stems (seedlings).