552 research outputs found
Does smoke water enhance seedling fitness of serotinous species in fire-prone southwestern Western Australia?
Studies have begun to show the potential for smoke to improve seedling fitness of species from fire-prone environments. The seeds of serotinous species have rarely been known to exhibit any dormancy, or require any further cue for germination once seeds are released from the woody fruits. However, these seeds are often released into a post-fire environment that contains active smoke chemicals. Recent studies recognise chemicals from smoke may regulate diverse aspects of plant development; we hypothesised that smoke may have important effects on seedling fitness of serotinous species in fire-prone environments. To explore the role of fire on the post-fire recruitment processes of serotinous species we first conducted a germination experiment with smoke water treatments on eight serotinous species from southwestern Western Australia; with a replicated design, we subsequently tested the post-treatment seedling growth of the eight species in a glasshouse experiment. The results showed that while the seeds of the eight serotinous species readily germinated with or without smoke treatment, there were significant smoke responses with regards to enhanced seedling fitness in three species. Petrophile filifolia, Isopogon divergens, and Banksia menziesii, seedlings treated with Oaten Hay smoke-water demonstrated significantly greater mean shoot length (mm) (F = 25.51,4, p = 0.007), mean root length (mm) (F = 31.41,4, p = 0.005), and root dry-weight (mg) (F = 12.83,12, p < 0.001) respectively, than untreated seedlings. This study demonstrates the potential for some serotinous species to exhibit growth responses elicited by fundamental fire traits
High nutrient-use efficiency during early seedling growth in diverse Grevillea species (Proteaceae)
Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the rich floristic diversity in regions characterised by nutrient-impoverished soils; however, none of these hypotheses have been able to explain the rapid diversification over a relatively short evolutionary time period of Grevillea, an Australian plant genus with 452 recognised species/subspecies and only 11 million years of evolutionary history. Here, we hypothesise that the apparent evolutionary success of Grevillea might have been triggered by the highly efficient use of key nutrients. The nutrient content in the seeds and nutrient-use efficiency during early seedling growth of 12 species of Grevillea were compared with those of 24 species of Hakea, a closely related genus. Compared with Hakea, the Grevillea species achieved similar growth rates (root and shoot length) during the early stages of seedling growth but contained only approximately half of the seed nutrient content. We conclude that the high nutrient-use efficiency observed in Grevillea might have provided a selective advantage in nutrient-poor ecosystems during evolution and that this property likely contributed to the evolutionary success in Grevillea
Whole genome sequencing of a banana wild relative Musa itinerans provides insights into lineage-specific diversification of the Musa genus
Crop wild relatives are valuable resources for future genetic improvement. Here, we report the de novo genome assembly of Musa itinerans, a disease-resistant wild banana relative in subtropical China. The assembled genome size was 462.1 Mb, covering 75.2% of the genome (615.2Mb) and containing 32, 456 predicted protein-coding genes. Since the approximate divergence around 5.8 million years ago, the genomes of Musa itinerans and Musa acuminata have shown conserved collinearity. Gene family expansions and contractions enrichment analysis revealed that some pathways were associated with phenotypic or physiological innovations. These include a transition from wood to herbaceous in the ancestral Musaceae, intensification of cold and drought tolerances, and reduced diseases resistance genes for subtropical marginally distributed Musa species. Prevalent purifying selection and transposed duplications were found to facilitate the diversification of NBS-encoding gene families for two Musa species. The population genome history analysis of M. itinerans revealed that the fluctuated population sizes were caused by the Pleistocene climate oscillations, and that the formation of Qiongzhou Strait might facilitate the population downsizing on the isolated Hainan Island about 10.3 Kya. The qualified assembly of the M. itinerans genome provides deep insights into the lineage-specific diversification and also valuable resources for future banana breeding
Arabidopsis in the wild—the effect of seasons on seed performance
Climate changes play a central role in the adaptive life histories of organisms all over the world. In higher plants, these changes may impact seed performance, both during seed development and after dispersal. To examine the plasticity of seed performance as a response to environmental fluctuations, eight genotypes known to be affected in seed dormancy and longevity were grown in the field in all seasons of two years. Soil and air temperature, day length, precipitation, and sun hours per day were monitored. We show that seed performance depends on the season. Seeds produced by plants grown in the summer, when the days began to shorten and the temperature started to decrease, were smaller with deeper dormancy and lower seed longevity compared to the other seasons when seeds were matured at higher temperature over longer days. The performance of seeds developed in the different seasons was compared to seeds produced in controlled conditions. This revealed that plants grown in a controlled environment produced larger seeds with lower dormancy than those grown in the field. All together the results show that the effect of the environment largely overrules the genetic effects, and especially, differences in seed dormancy caused by the different seasons were larger than the differences between the genotypes.</p
Water wave propagation and scattering over topographical bottoms
Here I present a general formulation of water wave propagation and scattering
over topographical bottoms. A simple equation is found and is compared with
existing theories. As an application, the theory is extended to the case of
water waves in a column with many cylindrical steps
Understanding the newly observed Y(4008) by Belle
Very recently a new enhancement around 4.05 GeV was observed by Belle
experiment. In this short note, we discuss some possible assignments for this
enhancement, i.e. and molecular state. In these two
assignments, Y(4008) can decay into with comparable
branching ratio with that of . Thus one suggests
high energy experimentalists to look for Y(4008) in channel.
Furthermore one proposes further experiments to search missing channel
, and especially and
, which will be helpful to distinguish and
molecular state assignments for this new enhancement.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Typos correcte
Magnetic rogue wave in a perpendicular anisotropic ferromagnetic nanowire with spin-transfer torque
We present the current controlled motion of dynamic soliton embedded in spin
wave background in ferromagnetic nanowire. With the stronger breather character
we get the novel magnetic rogue wave and clarify its formation mechanism. The
generation of magnetic rogue wave is mainly arose from the accumulation of
energy and magnons toward to its central part. We also observe that the
spin-polarized current can control the exchange rate of magnons between
envelope soliton and background, and the critical current condition is obtained
analytically. Even more interesting is that the spin-transfer torque plays the
completely opposite role for the cases of below and above the critical value.Comment: 5 figure
A_4 Symmetry and Lepton Masses and Mixing
Stimulated by Ma's idea which explains the tribimaximal neutrino mixing by
assuming an A_4 flavor symmetry, a lepton mass matrix model is investigated. A
Frogatt-Nielsen type model is assumed, and the flavor structures of the masses
and mixing are caused by the VEVs of SU(2)_L-singlet scalars \phi_i^u and
\phi_i^d (i=1,2,3), which are assigned to {\bf 3} and ({\bf 1}, {\bf 1}',{\bf
1}'') of A_4, respectively.Comment: 13 pages including 1 table, errors in Sec.7 correcte
Lepton flavor violation decays in the topcolor-assisted technicolor model and the littlest Higgs model with parity
The new particles predicted by the topcolor-assisted technicolor ()
model and the littlest Higgs model with T-parity (called model) can
induce the lepton flavor violation () couplings at tree level or one loop
level, which might generate large contributions to some processes. Taking
into account the constraints of the experimental data on the relevant free
parameters, we calculate the branching ratios of the decay processes
with = , and
in the context of these two kinds of new physics models. We find
that the model and the model can indeed produce significant
contributions to some of these decay processes.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figure
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