TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits—almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

A novel family of functional operons encoding methane/ammonia monooxygenase-related proteins in gammaproteobacterial methanotrophs

Contains fulltext : 84355.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access

Cultivation, detection, and ecophysiology of anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing bacteria

Contains fulltext : 91680.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access

Comparing the birth rate of stellar black holes in binary black hole mergers and long gamma-ray bursts

International audienceContext. Gravitational wave interferometers have proven the existence of a new class of binary black hole (BBH) weighing tens of solar masses, and have provided the first reliable measurement of the rate of coalescing black holes (BHs) in the local Universe. Furthermore, long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected with gamma-ray satellites are believed to be associated with the birth of stellar-mass BHs, providing a measure of the rate of these events across the history of the Universe, thanks to the measure of their cosmological redshift. These two types of sources, which are subject to different detection biases and involve BHs born in different environments with potentially different characteristics, provide complementary information on the birth rate of stellar BHs.Aim. We compare the birth rates of BHs found in BBH mergers and in long GRBs.Methods. We construct a simple model that makes reasonable assumptions on the history of GRB formation, and takes into account some major uncertainties, like the beaming angle of GRBs or the delay between the formation of BBHs and their coalescence. We use this model to evaluate the ratio of the number of stellar mass BHs formed in BBH mergers to those formed in GRBs.Results. We find that in our reference model the birth rate of stellar BHs in BBH mergers represents a significant fraction of the rate of long GRBs and that comparable birth rates are favored by models with moderate beaming angles. These numbers, however, do not consider subluminous GRBs, which may represent another population of sources associated with the birth of stellar mass BHs. We briefly discuss this result in view of our understanding of the progenitors of GRBs and BBH mergers, and we emphasize that this ratio, which will be better constrained in the coming years, can be directly compared with the prediction of stellar evolution models if a single model is used to produce GRBs and BBH mergers with the same assumptions.Key words: stars: black holes / gravitational waves / gamma-ray burst: genera

Transcription of the amoC, amoA and amoB genes in Nitrosomonas europaea and Nitrosospira sp. NpAV

Nitrifying bacteria such as Nitrosomonas europaea and Nitrosospira sp. NpAV use ammonia monooxygenase (AMO) for oxidation of their primary growth substrate, ammonia. Two polypeptides of AMO are coded for by contiguous genes, amoA and amoB, which are preceded by a third gene, amoC. The amoCAB clusters are present in multiple copies in nitrifying bacteria of the β subdivision. These bacteria also have one amoC copy that is not adjacent to a copy of amoAB. The seven known amoC genes in different nitrifiers code for similar polypeptides (>68%). Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reactions and Northern blots indicated that amoC from the amoCAB cluster is contained on a transcript with amoAB. Two other transcripts were detected with amo probes and may be a product of processing of the amoCAB mRNA or independent transcripts

Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry-based proteomics of nitrosomonas

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Draft genome sequence of the volcano-inhabiting thermoacidophilic methanotroph methylacidiphilum fumariolicum strain solv

Contains fulltext : 93817.pdf (author's version ) (Open Access