Sexual differences in growth and defence of Populus yunnanensis under drought stress

Dioecious woody species often exhibit male biased sex ratios under drought habitat, which may result in vulnerability in drying soils. However, whether biased sex ratios are associated with sex-specific responses in growth and defence against insect herbivory under drought stress conditions is unknown. We investigated the sexual responses in terms of growth and defence in Populus yunnanensis in response to two water treatments (40% and 100% field capacity). Drought stress reduced the plant growth (e.g., height increment, gas exchange, photosynthetic nitrogen use efficiency, water potential) of both sexes and reduced the leaf water content and defensive performance (increased damaged area by leaf-chewing generalists and decreased leaf contents of total phenolics, condensed tannins and flavonoids) of the females but not the males. Moreover, female defensive performance was lower than that of the males under drought conditions. Additionally, the plant mortality rate increased for both sexes, and it was higher for females than for males during drought stress in response to all leaf defoliation treatments. Our results suggest that sexual responses in terms of growth and defence to drought are significantly different and that P. yunnanensis females have a lower defence capability than males do, which may explain the male-biased sex ratio that exists in the natural population. Hence, this study provides new insight into forecasting population dynamics for dioecious plant species in drying habitats.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

Dynamics induced by environmental stochasticity in a phytoplankton-zooplankton system with toxic phytoplankton

Environmental stochasticity and toxin-producing phytoplankton (TPP) are the key factors that affect the aquatic ecosystems. To investigate the effects of environmental stochasticity and TPP on the dynamics of plankton populations, a stochastic phytoplankton-zooplankton system with two TPP is studied theoretically and numerically in this paper. Theoretically, we first prove that the system possesses a unique and global positive solution with positive initial values, and then derive some sufficient conditions guaranteeing the extinction and persistence in the mean of the system. Significantly, it is shown that the system has a stationary distribution when toxin liberation rate reaches some a critical value. Additionally, numerical analysis shows that the white noise can affect the survival of plankton populations directly. Furthermore, it has been observed that the increasing one toxin liberation rate can increase the survival chance of phytoplankton and reduce the biomass of zooplankton, but the combined effects of two liberation rates on the changes in plankton populations are stronger than that of controlling any one of the two TPP

Dynamic Analysis of a Heterogeneous Diffusive Prey-Predator System in Time-Periodic Environment

In this paper, a heterogeneous diffusive prey-predator system is first proposed and then studied analytically and numerically. Some sufficient conditions are derived, including permanence and extinction of system and the boundedness of the solution. The existence of periodic solution and its stability are discussed as well. Furthermore, numerical results indicate that both the spatial heterogeneity and the time-periodic environment can influence the permanence and extinction of the system directly. Our numerical results are consistent with the analytical analysis