Direct and indirect effects of climate on richness drive the latitudinal diversity gradient in forest trees

Data accessibility statement: Full census data are available upon reasonable request from the ForestGEO data portal, http://ctfs.si.edu/datarequest/ We thank Margie Mayfield, three anonymous reviewers and Jacob Weiner for constructive comments on the manuscript. This study was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFC0506100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31622014 and 31570426), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (17lgzd24) to CC. XW was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB3103). DS was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (grant no. 16-26369S). Yves Rosseel provided us valuable suggestions on using the lavaan package conducting SEM analyses. Funding and citation information for each forest plot is available in the Supplementary Information Text 1.Peer reviewedPostprin

Why might Libra be "Dead in the Womb"?

The day after the news of Libra came out, it is said that Ma Huateng said on WeChat: "Libra has no technical problems, the main problem is about regulatory issues." I think this sentence is very simple, but it reflects many of his experiences, and I think it is correct. Many people's analysis of Libra implicitly assumes that it can pass the review of regulatory authorities. However, I think that it may not pass such a review. So the topic I speak today is: Why might Libra be "dead in the womb"? Therefore, in the beginning, I want to talk about Libra itself, then analyse the impact and consequences of digital currency on the currency system

BECN1s, a short splice variant of BECN1, functions in mitophagy

<div><p>Mitochondria selective autophagy, known as mitophagy, plays a pivotal role in several biological processes, such as elimination of the damaged mitochondria, removal of the mitochondria from immature red blood cells and sperm. The defects in mitophagy are associated with a wide spectrum of human diseases, including neurodegenerative disease, aging, cardiac disease and autoimmune disease. However, the mechanism underlying mitophagy remains largely unclear. Here, we report the characterization of a novel splice variant of BECN1/Beclin 1, BECN1s, which is produced by an alternative splicing mechanism. BECN1s is primarily associated with the outer-membrane of mitochondria. Unlike unspliced BECN1, which is essential for nonselective macroautophagy induction, BECN1s is indispensible for mitochondria-selective autophagy. Furthermore, BECN1s plays an important role in starvation- and membrane depolarization-induced mitophagy. Taken together, our findings broaden the view of BECN1 as an important regulator in autophagy, and implicate BECN1s as a specific mitophagy mediator.</p></div

Meeting 24-Hour Movement and Dietary Guidelines: Prevalence, Correlates and Association with Weight Status among Children and Adolescents: A National Cross-Sectional Study in China

China is confronted with a &ldquo;double burden&rdquo; of underweight and overweight/obesity in children and adolescents. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and correlates of meeting 24 h movement and dietary guidelines among Chinese children and adolescents. Further, the study aimed to examine the association of meeting 24 h movement and dietary guidelines with weight status in Chinese children and adolescents. A total of 34,887 Chinese children and adolescents were involved. Only 2.1% of participants met the 24 h movement guidelines. Compared to those who met all three 24 h movement guidelines, those who only met the sleep duration guideline was significantly associated with a higher risk of underweight (p &lt; 0.05), and those who only met the moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, or screen time guidelines were significantly associated with a higher risk of overweight/obesity (p &lt; 0.05). Compared with those meeting the dietary guidelines, those who did not meet the soft drink intake guideline had a significantly lower risk of underweight (p &lt; 0.05), those who did not meet the fruit intake guideline had a significantly lower risk of overweight/obesity (p &lt; 0.05), and those who did not meet the milk intake guideline showed a significantly higher risk of overweight/obesity (p &lt; 0.001). These findings indicate a significant association between meeting the 24 h movement and dietary guidelines and weight status among Chinese children and adolescents

Spatial scale changes the relationship between beta diversity, species richness and latitude

The relationship between beta-diversity and latitude still remains to be a core question in ecology because of the lack of consensus between studies. One hypothesis for the lack of consensus between studies is that spatial scale changes the relationship between latitude and beta-diversity. Here, we test this hypothesis using tree data from 15 large-scale forest plots (greater than or equal to 15 ha, diameter at breast height > 1 cm) across a latitudinal gradient (3-30') in the Asia-Pacific region. We found that the observed beta-diversity decreased with increasing latitude when sampling local tree communities at small spatial scale (grain size <= 0.1 ha), but the observed beta-diversity did not change with latitude when sampling at large spatial scales (greater than or equal to 025 ha). Differences in latitudinal (beta-diversity gradients across spatial scales were caused by pooled species richness (gamma-diversity), which influenced observed (beta-diversity values at small spatial scales, but not at large spatial scales. Therefore, spatial scale changes the relationship between beta-diversity, gamma-diversity and latitude, and improving sample representativeness avoids the gamma-dependence of beta-diversity

Species packing and the latitudinal gradient in beta-diversity

Acknowledgements We thank Dingliang Xing, Tak Fung, Fangliang He and Gabriel Arellano for comments on the earlier draft. We thank Alex Karolus for leading the census in the Danum Valley forest plot, and we are grateful to Mike Bernados and Bill McDonald for species identifications, to Fangliang He, Stuart Davies and Shameema Esufali for advice and training, to Qianjiangyuan National Park, the Center for Forest Science at Morton Arboretum, Fushan Research Center, Lienhuachih Research Center and Sri Lankan Forest Department for logistical support and the hundreds of fieldworkers and students who measured and mapped the trees analysed in this study. Funding. This work was financially supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB31000000) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC 31770478). Data collection was funded by many organizations,principally, NSFC 31470490, 31470487, 41475123, 31570426, 31570432, 31570486, 31622014, 31660130, 31670441, 31670628, 31700356, 31760141, 31870404 and 32061123003, the Southeast Asia Rain Forest Research Programme (SEARRP), National Key Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2014CB954100), SEARRP partners especially Yayasan Sabah, HSBC Malaysia, financial project of Heilongjiang Pro- vince (XKLY2018ZR01), National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFC1201102 and 2016YFC0502405), the Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund (CAFYBB2017ZE001), CTFS Forest GEO for funding for Sinharaja forest plot, the Taiwan For- estry Bureau (92-00-2-06 and tfbm960226), the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute (93AS-2.4.2-FI-G1, 94AS-11.1.2-FI-G1, and 97AS- 7.1.1.F1-G1) and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (NSC92-3114-B002-009) for funding the Fushan and Lienhuachih plots, Scientific Research Funds of Heilongjiang Provincial Research Institutes (CZKYF2021B006). J.C.S. considers this work a contribution to his VILLUM Investigator project ‘Biodiversity Dynamics in a Changing World’ funded by VILLUM FONDEN (grant no. 16549).Peer reviewedPostprin

Arbuscular mycorrhizal trees influence the latitudinal beta-diversity gradient of tree communities in forests worldwide.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) and ectomycorrhizal (EcM) associations are critical for host-tree performance. However, how mycorrhizal associations correlate with the latitudinal tree beta-diversity remains untested. Using a global dataset of 45 forest plots representing 2,804,270 trees across 3840 species, we test how AM and EcM trees contribute to total beta-diversity and its components (turnover and nestedness) of all trees. We find AM rather than EcM trees predominantly contribute to decreasing total beta-diversity and turnover and increasing nestedness with increasing latitude, probably because wide distributions of EcM trees do not generate strong compositional differences among localities. Environmental variables, especially temperature and precipitation, are strongly correlated with beta-diversity patterns for both AM trees and all trees rather than EcM trees. Results support our hypotheses that latitudinal beta-diversity patterns and environmental effects on these patterns are highly dependent on mycorrhizal types. Our findings highlight the importance of AM-dominated forests for conserving global forest biodiversity

Arbuscular mycorrhizal trees influence the latitudinal beta-diversity gradient of tree communities in forests worldwide.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) and ectomycorrhizal (EcM) associations are critical for host-tree performance. However, how mycorrhizal associations correlate with the latitudinal tree beta-diversity remains untested. Using a global dataset of 45 forest plots representing 2,804,270 trees across 3840 species, we test how AM and EcM trees contribute to total beta-diversity and its components (turnover and nestedness) of all trees. We find AM rather than EcM trees predominantly contribute to decreasing total beta-diversity and turnover and increasing nestedness with increasing latitude, probably because wide distributions of EcM trees do not generate strong compositional differences among localities. Environmental variables, especially temperature and precipitation, are strongly correlated with beta-diversity patterns for both AM trees and all trees rather than EcM trees. Results support our hypotheses that latitudinal beta-diversity patterns and environmental effects on these patterns are highly dependent on mycorrhizal types. Our findings highlight the importance of AM-dominated forests for conserving global forest biodiversity