1,706 research outputs found
First Miocene fossils of Vivianiaceae shed new light on phylogeny, divergence times, and historical biogeography of Geraniales
The origin of Geraniales (approximately 900 species in three families: Geraniaceae, Melianthaceae, and Vivianiaceae) is traced back to the Cretaceous of Gondwana, yet their geotemporal history is largely unknown because of a limited fossil record and incomplete phylogenies. In the present study, we provide the first fossil record of Vivianiaceae and a highly resolved molecular phylogeny for all extant Geraniales genera. Our results support the hypothesis that five (instead of three) families should be recognized in the order Geraniales: Francoaceae A. Juss. (Francoa, Greyia, Tetilla), Geraniaceae Juss. (Erodium, Geranium, Monsonia, Pelargonium), Hypseocharitaceae Wedd. (monogeneric), Melianthaceae Horan. (Bersama, Melianthus), and Vivianiaceae Klotzsch (Balbisia, Rhynchotheca, Viviania). The four major lineages (i.e. Geraniaceae, Francoaceae+Melianthaceae, Hypseocharitaceae, Vivianiaceae) all originated within a narrow time frame during the Eocene (36.9-49.9Mya) based on the five fossil calibration points. The divergence of most of the extant genera occurred much later, from the Miocene onwards. The South American-South African disjunction in Francoaceae apparently goes back to long distance dispersal with an estimated divergence time of the lineages in the Middle Miocene [11.2 (5.9-17.7)Mya]. Diversification in Melianthus appears to be much more recent than previously assumed [starting approximately 3.4 (1.9-5.2)Mya rather than approximately 8-20Mya]. However, divergence of the Andean Hypseocharis lineage [36.9 (31.9-42.8)Mya] significantly predates the main Andean uplift: Current distributions likely go back to northward migrations and subsequent extinctions in Patagonia. Similarly, Rhynchotheca, Balbisia, and Viviania have a current southern distribution limit >10°N of the fossil finds, indicating a massive northward displacement. The present evidence suggests that niche conservatism likely played a major role in the historical biogeography of Geraniales. © 2012 The Linnean Society of London.Fil: Palazzesi, Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia”; Argentina. Freie Universität Berlin; AlemaniaFil: Gottschling, Marc. Ludwig Maximilians Universitat; AlemaniaFil: Barreda, Viviana Dora. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia”; ArgentinaFil: Weigend, M. Freie Universität Berlin; Alemani
Nectar sugars and bird visitation define a floral niche for basidiomycetous yeast on the Canary Islands
Studies on the diversity of yeasts in floral nectar were first carried out in the late 19th century. A narrow group of fermenting, osmophilous ascomycetes were regarded as exclusive specialists able to populate this unique and species poor environment. More recently, it became apparent that microorganisms might play an important role in the process of plant pollination. Despite the importance of these nectar dwelling yeasts, knowledge of the factors that drive their diversity and species composition is scarce
The prediction of future from the past: an old problem from a modern perspective
The idea of predicting the future from the knowledge of the past is quite
natural when dealing with systems whose equations of motion are not known. Such
a long-standing issue is revisited in the light of modern ergodic theory of
dynamical systems and becomes particularly interesting from a pedagogical
perspective due to its close link with Poincar\'e's recurrence. Using such a
connection, a very general result of ergodic theory - Kac's lemma - can be used
to establish the intrinsic limitations to the possibility of predicting the
future from the past. In spite of a naive expectation, predictability results
to be hindered rather by the effective number of degrees of freedom of a system
than by the presence of chaos. If the effective number of degrees of freedom
becomes large enough, regardless the regular or chaotic nature of the system,
predictions turn out to be practically impossible. The discussion of these
issues is illustrated with the help of the numerical study of simple models.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
Many Roads to Synchrony: Natural Time Scales and Their Algorithms
We consider two important time scales---the Markov and cryptic orders---that
monitor how an observer synchronizes to a finitary stochastic process. We show
how to compute these orders exactly and that they are most efficiently
calculated from the epsilon-machine, a process's minimal unifilar model.
Surprisingly, though the Markov order is a basic concept from stochastic
process theory, it is not a probabilistic property of a process. Rather, it is
a topological property and, moreover, it is not computable from any
finite-state model other than the epsilon-machine. Via an exhaustive survey, we
close by demonstrating that infinite Markov and infinite cryptic orders are a
dominant feature in the space of finite-memory processes. We draw out the roles
played in statistical mechanical spin systems by these two complementary length
scales.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures:
http://cse.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/compmech/pubs/kro.htm. Santa Fe Institute Working
Paper 10-11-02
A case of behavioural diversification in male floral function – the evolution of thigmonastic pollen presentation
The authors gratefully acknowledge funding provided by an Else-Neumann-Stipendium (http://www.fu-berlin.de/sites/promovieren/drs/nachwuchs/nachwuchs/nafoeg.html), Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) and botconsult GmbH at different stages of data acquisition. We thank Tobias Grass, Joana Bergmann and Franziska Weber (Freie Universität Berlin) for help with data collection in the field and in the greenhouse. Nicole Schmandt, Federico Luebert, Juliana Chacón and Dietmar Quant (Universität Bonn) provided help in the molecular laboratory and the edition of the molecular dataset. We furthermore thank Markus Ackermann (Koblenz) for providing photographs, Philipp Klein (Berlin) for editing the video and Katy Jones (Berlin) for helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Rafael Acuña has been supported by the ALECOSTA scholarship program. Coverage of the article processing charge by the German Research Foundation via the Open Access Publication Fund of the Freie Universität Berlin is gratefully acknowledged.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Conductance of molecular wires and transport calculations based on density-functional theory
The experimental value for the zero bias conductance of organic molecules coupled by thiol-groups to gold electrodes tends to be much smaller than the theoretical result based on density functional theory (DFT) calculations, often by orders of magnitude. To address this puzzle we have analyzed the regime within which the approximations made in these calculations are valid. Our results suggest that a standard step in DFT based transport calculations, namely approximating the exchange-correlation potential in quasistatic nonequilibrium by its standard equilibrium expression, is not justified at weak coupling. We propose, that the breakdown of this approximation is the most important source for overestimating the width of the experimentally observed conductance peak and therefore also of the zero bias conductance. We present a numerical study on the conductance of an organic molecule that has recently been studied in experiments that fully agrees with this conclusion
Local prediction of turning points of oscillating time series
For oscillating time series, the prediction is often focused on the turning
points. In order to predict the turning point magnitudes and times it is
proposed to form the state space reconstruction only from the turning points
and modify the local (nearest neighbor) model accordingly. The model on turning
points gives optimal prediction at a lower dimensional state space than the
optimal local model applied directly on the oscillating time series and is thus
computationally more efficient. Monte Carlo simulations on different
oscillating nonlinear systems showed that it gives better predictions of
turning points and this is confirmed also for the time series of annual
sunspots and total stress in a plastic deformation experiment.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, submitted to PR
A pseudo-spectral approach to inverse problems in interface dynamics
An improved scheme for computing coupling parameters of the
Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation from a collection of successive interface
profiles, is presented. The approach hinges on a spectral representation of
this equation. An appropriate discretization based on a Fourier representation,
is discussed as a by-product of the above scheme. Our method is first tested on
profiles generated by a one-dimensional Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation where it
is shown to reproduce the input parameters very accurately. When applied to
microscopic models of growth, it provides the values of the coupling parameters
associated with the corresponding continuum equations. This technique favorably
compares with previous methods based on real space schemes.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, revtex 3.0 with epsf style, to appear in Phys.
Rev.
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