Fast invasives fastly become faster: invasive plants align largely with the fast side of the plant economics spectrum

1. Invasive plants generally align with the fast side of the plant's trait economics spectrum, characterized by fast nutrient acquisition, growth and reproduction. However, there are numerous and notable exceptions, including woody invasives. 2. The generalization that invasives are fast is driven by the high occurrence of invasive ruderal species colonizing nutrient-rich disturbed habitats, a consequence of anthropogenic disturbance usually going hand-in-hand with biological introductions. 3. Successful invasive plans have shown a remarkable ability to rapidly adapt to the new regions where they are introduced. These changes predominantly involve increased resource acquisition, growth and reproduction, aligning them even further with the fast side of the plant economics spectrum. 4. Common garden experiments with invasive model systems provide valuable insights about the speed and direction of adaptive responses to different climates, helping us to predict general plant responses to global change. 5. Synthesis. Invasive plant species commonly present fast nutrient acquisition, growth and reproduction, but this general pattern is mostly driven by ruderal species. Still, common garden experiments comparing populations from distant world regions show a clear trend for already fast invasive plants to rapidly adapt towards even faster traits in their non-native regions

Editorial: Pay to criticise? Rebuttal articles in open-access journals should be published for free

Open access has not quite lived up to the utopian expectations we once envisaged (Borrego, 2023). Regardless, open access brought a much needed shift in the editorial world, with many positive outcomes, some negative ones, and many other neutral ones (see a thoughtful analysis by Racimo et al., 2022). The viability of the open-access system is dependent on the existence of a minimal set of agreed principles, the most obvious one being that any article published under this model will remain freely available to everyone in perpetuity. On a larger scale, the above-mentioned case points to a clear need for reputable open-access scientific journals to establish an unavoidable ethical commitment to waive all APCs for rebuttal articles and possibly also for all critical comments. This should be clearly stated and publicised in the instructions for authors of each open-access journal. Failure to do so will result in a strong disincentive to critical discussion that is at the core to scientific progress. More immediately, it will also result in a clear loss of credibility for the open-access journals, editors, and publishing companies that, for all practical purposes, are putting a hefty price on criticising their own publications. There are finer details that are more difficult to standardise, though; one such area is the fee-waiving policies of critical comments on published articles and particularly of rebuttal articles. Such articles are always unpleasant to write, and, for open-access journals, they might also involve costly article processing charges (APCs). Presently, authors willing to unveil critical flaws in published research might not be able to overcome the added burdens of cost, time, and confrontation risks in exchange for small professional recognition

Invasive neo-species and how to name them

Range-expansion and speciation are not new to life on Earth, but they have been scarcely observed contemporarily and, likely, never over several continents simultaneously. Evidence of incipient reproductive isolation between native and non-native regions of some invasive alien species indicates that invasive speciation is closer than we expected. Some neo-allopatric populations are likely to qualify as distinguishable subspecies already. Given their trajectory, whether they will become new species is not an if, but a when. I present two decision tables to help to (1) assess the coining of new invasive species or subspecies with the current taxonomical approach or (2), introduce the term “neo” to name invasive neo-species resulting from synchronous allopatric speciation from a single, known, living ancestor. This later case can be exemplified with the hypothetical case: “Gingko biloba neo americana”, “G. biloba neo europea”, etc

Surgery untying of coloured knots

For p=3 and for p=5 we prove that there are exactly p equivalence classes of p-coloured knots modulo (+/-1)--framed surgeries along unknots in the kernel of a p-colouring. These equivalence classes are represented by connect-sums of n left-hand (p,2)-torus knots with a given colouring when n=1,2,...,p. This gives a 3-colour and a 5-colour analogue of the surgery presentation of a knot.Comment: This is the version published by Algebraic & Geometric Topology on 24 May 200

Understanding the three and four-leg inverter Space Vector

This paper shows a new point of view of the classical voltage space vectors and its implications on three and four-leg converters. It is easy to find in the literature, authors using bi-dimensional and threedimensional representations of the converter states. Nonetheless, the literature rarely specifies what these spaces represent. Therefore, this paper proposes a wide analysis of the state voltages and its references for three-leg, three-leg four-wire and four-leg inverters, in favour of understanding the space vector behaviour under three and four-wire scenarios.Postprint (published version

Neotypification for five names linked to Arenaria (Caryophyllaceae) for the endemic flora of Peru and Bolivia

The names Arenaria mattfeldii, A. pallens, A. peruviana, A. pintaudii, and A. stuebelii (Caryophyllaceae, Arenarieae) from Peru and Bolivia were studied and neotypified based on specimens preserved at B and P

Perceptual Color Image Smoothing via a New Region-Based PDE Scheme

In this paper, we present a new color image regularization method using a rotating smoothing filter. This approach combines a pixel classification method, which roughly determines if a pixel belongs to a homogenous region or an edge with an anisotropic perceptual edge detector capable of computing two precise diffusion directions. Using a now classical formulation, image regularization is here treated as a variational model, where successive iterations of associated PDE (Partial Differential Equation) are equivalent to a diffusion process. Our model uses two kinds of diffusion: isotropic and anisotropic diffusion. Anisotropic diffusion is accurately controlled near edges and corners, while isotropic diffusion is applied to smooth regions either homogeneous or corrupted by noise. A comparison of our approach with other regularization methods applied on real images demonstrate that our model is able to efficiently restore images as well as handle diffusion, and at the same time preserve edges and corners well

Molecular phylogenetics and morphology reveal the Plettkea lineage including several members of Arenaria and Pycnophyllopsis to be a clade of 21 South American species nested within Stellaria (Caryophyllaceae, Alsineae)

Caryophyllaceae with a cushion-like life form occur with a large number of species at the higher altitudes of the Andes (3500–5000 m) and have evolved convergently in several different lineages. Based on molecular phylogenetic analysis it is shown that members of the former genera Plettkea and Pycnophyllopsis, but also certain species previously classified as Arenaria constitute a subclade nested within the monophyletic genus Stellaria. Both plastid (trnK-matK-psbA + trnL-F) and nuclear (nrITS) trees converged on such a highly supported ‘Plettkea’ clade. Morphologically, the members of the ‘Plettkea’ subclade of Stellaria are further characterized by reduced to completely absent petals and seeds with a more or less conspicuous tuberculate testa. This clade is described as S. sect. Plettkea (Mattf.) Montesinos & Borsch. Species-level relationships within S. sect. Plettkea are also congruently inferred by plastid and nuclear genomic compartments, with three further sublineages recognized: Altogether, our detailed taxonomic revision showed that the ‘Plettkea’ clade in fact constitutes an Andean radiation of 21 species within Stellaria, four of which are described as new to science. Earlier treatments indicated just a few species with a putative placement. The results of this investigation underscore the importance of fieldwork and integrated molecular-morphological approaches to assess the species diversity in Andean plant groups. In addition to the phylogenetic analysis, we provide a taxonomic backbone including all names and types, descriptions and information on distribution and ecology and a key for identification. Regarding the next relatives of the S. sect. Plettkea clade, our plastid trees depict the ‘Nitentes’ clade of Stellaria as sister, whereas nrITS instead suggests a sister group relationship of the ‘Nitentes’ with the speciose ‘Larbreae’ clade. Our inferred relationships of major clades further deviate from published molecular trees by indicating an early branching position of the ‘Petiolares’ clade