An integrative environmental pollen diversity assessment and its importance for the Sustainable Development Goals

Pollen is at once intimately part of the reproductive cycle of seed plants and simultaneously highly relevant for the environment (pollinators, vector for nutrients, or organisms), people (food safety and health), and climate (cloud condensation nuclei and climate reconstruction). We provide an interdisciplinary perspective on the many and connected roles of pollen to foster a better integration of the currently disparate fields of pollen research, which would benefit from the sharing of general knowledge, technical advancements, or data processing solutions. We propose a more interdisciplinary and holistic research approach that encompasses total environmental pollen diversity (ePD) (wind and animal and occasionally water distributed pollen) at multiple levels of diversity (genotypic, phenotypic, physiological, chemical, and functional) across space and time. This interdisciplinary approach holds the potential to contribute to pressing human issues, including addressing United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, fostering social and political awareness of these tiny yet important and fascinating particles

Towards a multisensor station for automated biodiversity monitoring

Rapid changes of the biosphere observed in recent years are caused by both small and large scale drivers, like shifts in temperature, transformations in land-use, or changes in the energy budget of systems. While the latter processes are easily quantifiable, documentation of the loss of biodiversity and community structure is more difficult. Changes in organismal abundance and diversity are barely documented. Censuses of species are usually fragmentary and inferred by often spatially, temporally and ecologically unsatisfactory simple species lists for individual study sites. Thus, detrimental global processes and their drivers often remain unrevealed. A major impediment to monitoring species diversity is the lack of human taxonomic expertise that is implicitly required for large-scale and fine-grained assessments. Another is the large amount of personnel and associated costs needed to cover large scales, or the inaccessibility of remote but nonetheless affected areas. To overcome these limitations we propose a network of Automated Multisensor stations for Monitoring of species Diversity (AMMODs) to pave the way for a new generation of biodiversity assessment centers. This network combines cutting-edge technologies with biodiversity informatics and expert systems that conserve expert knowledge. Each AMMOD station combines autonomous samplers for insects, pollen and spores, audio recorders for vocalizing animals, sensors for volatile organic compounds emitted by plants (pVOCs) and camera traps for mammals and small invertebrates. AMMODs are largely self-containing and have the ability to pre-process data (e.g. for noise filtering) prior to transmission to receiver stations for storage, integration and analyses. Installation on sites that are difficult to access require a sophisticated and challenging system design with optimum balance between power requirements, bandwidth for data transmission, required service, and operation under all environmental conditions for years. An important prerequisite for automated species identification are databases of DNA barcodes, animal sounds, for pVOCs, and images used as training data for automated species identification. AMMOD stations thus become a key component to advance the field of biodiversity monitoring for research and policy by delivering biodiversity data at an unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. (C) 2022 Published by Elsevier GmbH on behalf of Gesellschaft fur Okologie

Utility of arsenic-treated bird skins for DNA extraction

Background: Natural history museums receive a rapidly growing number of requests for tissue samples from preserved specimens for DNA-based studies. Traditionally, dried vertebrate specimens were treated with arsenic because of its toxicity and insect-repellent effect. Arsenic has negative effects on in vivo DNA repair enzymes and consequently may inhibit PCR performance. In bird collections, foot pad samples are often requested since the feet were not regularly treated with arsenic and because they are assumed to provide substantial amounts of DNA. However, the actual influence of arsenic on DNA analyses has never been tested. Findings: PCR success of both foot pad and body skin samples was significantly lower in arsenic-treated samples. In general, foot pads performed better than body skin samples. Moreover, PCR success depends on collection date in which younger samples yielded better results. While the addition of arsenic solution to the PCR mixture had a clear negative effect on PCR performance after the threshold of 5.4 μg/μl, such high doses of arsenic are highly unlikely to occur in dried zoological specimens. Conclusions: While lower PCR success in older samples might be due to age effects and/or DNA damage through arsenic treatment, our results show no inhibiting effect on DNA polymerase. We assume that DNA degradation proceeds more rapidly in thin tissue layers with low cell numbers that are susceptible to external abiotic influences. In contrast, in thicker parts of a specimen, such as foot pads, the outermost horny skin may act as an additional barrier. Since foot pads often performed better than body skin samples, the intention to preserve morphologically important structures of a specimen still conflicts with the aim to obtain optimal PCR success. Thus, body skin samples from recently collected specimens should be considered as alternative sources of DNA

The Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) Data Standard specification

© The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. Page 1 of 11 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The article attached is the publisher's pdf

Flower color evolution within the Cichorieae (Asteraceae): the Flavonoid-3’5’-Hydroxylase

The blue flower color within the Cichorieae (Asteraceae) is thought to be determined by the presence of anthocyanins. The anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway is quite well studied. Two enzymes, flavonoid 3’ hydroxylase and flavonoid 3’, 5’ hydroxylase, determine the hydroxylation pattern of the anthocyaninswhich exhibit three classes: cyanidins (mainly in charge of redish/pink flowers), delphinidins (in charge of bluish flowers), and pelargonidins (one possibility to exhibit orange flower color). We here investigate flower color evolution in two closely related species of two different genera of the Cichorieae featuring yellow (Catananchelutea L.; Lactucaserriola L.) and bluish (Catananchecaerulea L., Lactucaperennis L.) flowers.Whereas, the yellow flowering species C. lutea and L. serrioladid notexpress F3’5’H it was possible to partially sequence the F3’5’H mRNA in C. caerulea and L. perennis. The q-RT PCR expression pattern revealed F3’5’Hto be expressed in different levels at different times and developmental stages during flower development of C. caerulea and L. perennis.The expression is preceding the petal coloration in the flowers. A phylogenetic analysis revealed high similarity of the bluish Cichorieae F3’5’H with other AsteraceaeF3’Hs and F3’5’H pinpointing to a neofunctionalization of this enzyme, to enable the Asteraceae to produce delphinidins again. In addition, the flavonoid composition was analyzed via LC-MS and HPLC. All four species contain caffeic acid, p-coumaric acid and 3’ hydroxylated flavonoids like quercetin derivatives. Delphinidin, Pelargonidin and Cyanidin were found in C. caerulea, while L. perennis only featured Pelargonidin and Cyanidin which was also found in much lower concentrations in L. serriola. Missing anthocyaninsin C. lutea might be indicative for an inactivation of the DFRenzyme(dihydroflavonol 4-reductase) in this species which might be yellow flowered due to carotinoids. Investigating enzyme activities will be the next step to reveal flower color evolution within the Cichoriea

Negative spill-over effects of agricultural practices on plant species conservation in nature reserves

Nature reserves are one of the most important instruments for biodiversity protection and to limit regional species extinctions. However, these functions can only be fulfilled if environmental influences from the surroundings, such as agrochemical inputs do not negatively affect the protected habitats.Here, we compare the effectiveness of conservation measures under the influence of yield-optimized cultivation in Germany using vegetation analyses of transects from the edge to the core of protected areas at 21 sites. By analysing nitrogen and phosphate deposition, herbicide number and concentration in soil and vegetation as well as Ellenberg indicator values of plant communities as a function of the distance from the field margin at each site, we aimed at assessing the impact of these stressors in different environmental settings.The results indicate strong chemical edge effects and negative influences for plant communities resulting from increased nutrient input and amounts of herbicide residues closer to the edge of the agricultural fields. Concordantly, the number of endangered plants species decreased with increasing proximity to the field edge. The strong influence of yield-optimized cultivation on the edges of nature reserves which decrease with distance show that nature protection needs effective buffer zones surrounding conservation areas, especially if nature reserves are only small and narrow. To prevent spill-over effects the application of fertilizer and herbicides on croplands adjacent to conservation areas has to be reduced. This could be achieved most effectively through organic farming and targeted agricultural subsidies