51 research outputs found
Opportunistic, human-pathogenic species in the Herpotrichiellaceae are phenotypically similar to saprobic or phytopathogenic species in the Venturiaceae
Although morphologically similar, species of Cladophialophora
(Herpotrichiellaceae) were shown to be phylogenetically distinct from
Pseudocladosporium (Venturiaceae), which was revealed to be
synonymous with the older genus, Fusicladium. Other than being
associated with human disorders, species of Cladophialophora were
found to also be phytopathogenic, or to occur as saprobes on organic material,
or in water, fruit juices, or sports drinks, along with species of
Exophiala. Caproventuria and Metacoleroa were
confirmed to be synonyms of Venturia, which has Fusicladium
(= Pseudocladosporium) anamorphs. Apiosporina, based on
A. collinsii, clustered basal to the Venturia clade, and
appears to represent a further synonym. Several species with a
pseudocladosporium-like morphology in vitro represent a sister clade
to the Venturia clade, and are unrelated to Polyscytalum.
These taxa are newly described in Fusicladium, which is
morphologically close to Anungitea, a heterogeneous genus with
unknown phylogenetic affinity. In contrast to the
Herpotrichiellaceae, which were shown to produce numerous
synanamorphs in culture, species of the Venturiaceae were
morphologically and phylogenetically more uniform. Several new species and new
combinations were introduced in Cladophialophora, Cyphellophora
(Herpotrichiellaceae), Exophiala, Fusicladium, Venturia
(Venturiaceae), and Cylindrosympodium (incertae
sedis)
Global maps of soil temperature.
Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we provide global maps of soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at a 1-km <sup>2</sup> resolution for 0-5 and 5-15 cm soil depth. These maps were created by calculating the difference (i.e. offset) between in situ soil temperature measurements, based on time series from over 1200 1-km <sup>2</sup> pixels (summarized from 8519 unique temperature sensors) across all the world's major terrestrial biomes, and coarse-grained air temperature estimates from ERA5-Land (an atmospheric reanalysis by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). We show that mean annual soil temperature differs markedly from the corresponding gridded air temperature, by up to 10°C (mean = 3.0 ± 2.1°C), with substantial variation across biomes and seasons. Over the year, soils in cold and/or dry biomes are substantially warmer (+3.6 ± 2.3°C) than gridded air temperature, whereas soils in warm and humid environments are on average slightly cooler (-0.7 ± 2.3°C). The observed substantial and biome-specific offsets emphasize that the projected impacts of climate and climate change on near-surface biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are inaccurately assessed when air rather than soil temperature is used, especially in cold environments. The global soil-related bioclimatic variables provided here are an important step forward for any application in ecology and related disciplines. Nevertheless, we highlight the need to fill remaining geographic gaps by collecting more in situ measurements of microclimate conditions to further enhance the spatiotemporal resolution of global soil temperature products for ecological applications
Cortisol response to an experimental stress paradigm prospectively predicts long-term distress and resilience trajectories in response to active police service
Heterogeneity in glucocorticoid response to experimental stress conditions has shown to differentiate individuals with healthy from maladaptive real-life stress responses in a number of distinct domains. However, it is not known if this heterogeneity influences the risk for developing stress related disorders or if it is a biological consequence of the stress response itself. Determining if glucocorticoid response to stress induction prospectively predicts psychological vulnerability to significant real life stressors can adjudicate this issue. To test this relationship, salivary cortisol as well as catecholamine responses to a laboratory stressor during academy training were examined as predictors of empirically identified distress trajectories through the subsequent 4 years of active duty among urban police officers routinely exposed to potentially traumatic events and routine life stressors (N = 234). During training, officers were exposed to a video vignette of police officers exposed to real-life trauma. Changes in salivary 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylglycol (MHPG) and cortisol in response to this video challenge were examined as predictors of trajectory membership while controlling for age, gender, and baseline neuroendocrine levels. Officers who followed trajectories of resilience and recovery over 4 years mounted significant increases in cortisol in response to the experimental stressor, while those following a trajectory of chronic increasing distress had no significant cortisol change in response to the challenge. MHPG responses were not associated with distress trajectories. Cortisol response prospectively differentiated trajectories of distress response suggesting that a blunted cortisol response to a laboratory stressor is a risk factor for later vulnerability to distress following significant life stressors
sPlotOpen – An environmentally balanced, open‐access, global dataset of vegetation plots
Assessing biodiversity status and trends in plant communities is critical for understanding, quantifying and predicting the effects of global change on ecosystems. Vegetation plots record the occurrence or abundance of all plant species co-occurring within delimited local areas. This allows species absences to be inferred, information seldom provided by existing global plant datasets. Although many vegetation plots have been recorded, most are not available to the global research community. A recent initiative, called ‘sPlot’, compiled the first global vegetation plot database, and continues to grow and curate it. The sPlot database, however, is extremely unbalanced spatially and environmentally, and is not open-access. Here, we address both these issues by (a) resampling the vegetation plots using several environmental variables as sampling strata and (b) securing permission from data holders of 105 local-to-regional datasets to openly release data. We thus present sPlotOpen, the largest open-access dataset of vegetation plots ever released. sPlotOpen can be used to explore global diversity at the plant community level, as ground truth data in remote sensing applications, or as a baseline for biodiversity monitoring
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