Further studies with Melianthus L. : a molecular phylogeny, evolutionary patterns of diversification in the genus and pollinator syndromes

Bibliography: leaves 84-100.A phylogeny was produced for the eight taxa comprising the largely South African genus Melianthus L. based on two plastid markers (trnL-F and psbA-trnH) and one nuclear marker (ITS). Topological comparisons with a tree based on an existing morphological data set revealed significant incongruence leading to a loss of resolution upon combination. Ultimately, the combined three-gene data tree was selected as the strongest phylogenetic estimate for Melianthus based on its better resolution and greater support levels. This tree confirms the monophyly of Melianthus with M. major being resolved as sister to the remainder of the genus. Within the remaining clade, M. villosus is resolved sister to a clade comprising two morphologically distinct subclades, one of these being noted for a western distribution (comprising M. elongatus and the M. pectinatus complex), the other being centred farther east (comprising M. cocomosus and the M dregeanus complex). A molecular clock analysis was employed to date the emergence of specific taxa and clades, while ancestral range and habitat reconstructions were performed to determine historical conditions under which these groups and their morphological novelties arose. A scenario depicting the evolution and diversification of Melianthus is developed against a backdrop of the paleo-history of southern Africa. The genus appears to have originated in the eastern part of South Africa during a mild, mesic Oligocene with subsequent westward expansion into drier habitats of Miocene and Pliocene origins. Observations of bird visitors to a range of Melianthus species indicate that the genus employs a generalist pollination syndrome, thus refuting suggestions of a co-exclusive relationship with sunbirds (Nectariniidae). Nevertheless, the genus is undeniably ornithophilous. Nectar studies reveal interspecific variation in both the volume and concentration of nectar produced as well as in nectar colourition

Floral Interactions in Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx, New York

Van Cortlandt Park is New York City\u27s third-largest park at 464 hectares. Despite 300 years of land-use history, this heavily impacted ecosystem shows surprising resiliency, and can act as a proxy for understanding global issues based on climate change, fragmentation, and anthropogenic impact. A park-wide inventory conducted over six years returned three times the amount of taxa observed in any prior survey suggesting the park has been historically undersampled. At 1102 species, the richness of the park supports the hypothesis that urban regions harbor greater species-richness than historically presumed. Approximately 70.6% of park listings comprise herbaceous plants. Non-natives make up 50% of the total floristic sightings, most of Eurasian or East Asian provenance. With 30 NY state-listed plants, the park represents a refugia for endangered taxa for New York State despite frequent burns, vandalism, and exotic invasion. A parsimony analysis of presence/absence data returns groupings based on species composition responding to environmental factors such as moisture, sun, and forest fragmentation. Partitioning the data set into separate herbaceous versus woody matrices suggests the two components of the flora track different life histories. Findings concur with similar results from non-metric multidimensional (NMS) ordination and unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA). Parsimony analysis of ecological data has use as a monitoring tool since the read-out produces a list of what taxa can be found at each site. Quantitative ecological analyses based on woody frequency data from a quadrat survey shows the three most abundant trees in the park are Prunus serotina (black cherry), Acer platanoides (Norway maple), and Quercus rubra (red oak). Importance Value analyses return the same three taxa but place Quercus rubra in first place position based on its greater diameter-at-breast height (DBH). Alpha diversity indices suggest the park is biodiverse from a woody perspective yet not necessarily even; addition of herbaceous data significantly increases diversity even more. Overall the northern end of the park is more diverse than the southern end. Disturbance specialists in the canopy of the southern park depress richness and evenness. Beta diversity analysis comparing a southern species-poor region versus a northern species-rich region shows turn-over in the park with the woody data having a higher turn-over rate than the herbaceous data. The ecology of a city environment is a suitable proxy for understanding problems putatively predicted for global warming, e.g. the influence of increased temperatures (e.g. city \u27urban island\u27 heat effect) and forest fragmentation on diversity. If so, results from VCP suggest richness may increase following climate warming due to non-native recruitment but long term biodiversity may change if areas are not monitored properly

Strategies for Financing Efficiency in District Energy Systems

Efforts to educate district energy users about energy efficiency have lagged those for electricity users. CSU surveyed district energy users in Cleveland, Ohio to ascertain their knowledge of and interest in energy efficiency programs. Most end users have a general knowledge about the sorts of technologies that are available, however do not understand their value, nor how to go about getting efficiency financed. The survey identified levels of interest that exist for adoption for various energy efficiency strategies as well as the preferred strategies for financing. It also identified where the most education is needed to create interest in adopting new technologies and and participating in programs such as demand response, which are commonly available for electricity end users

Deliverable D2.4. Modelling module for biological diversity and functions in land surface water balance

The WP2 "Soil Functioning and Ecosystem Services", of the EcoFINDERS project, has produced a modelling module linking soil biodiversity and its functioning to hydrological properties of agricultural soil. The scope is of a proof-of-concept, including only earthworm burrows as a proxy for cropping systems. The biodiversity focus is on anecic earthworm burrows, which traverse vertically into the deep soil. At the LTO Lusignan this group of earthworms dominates the cropping systems of permanent grass (T5) and of three years of grass in a sequence with three years of annual crops (T2). In contrast, a cropping system without grass and with frequent tillage (T1) is dominated by the soil dwelling endogeic earthworms. The hydrological modelling starting point was the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), but the soil hydrology module in JULES only considers water-flow through the soil matrix. Hence, we incorporated a representation of the water flow through macropores made by earthworms by adopting representation of macropore soil water flow in the open source soil-plant-atmosphere model, DAISY. The macropore parameters used for this module are: density, diameter, depth, conductivity of the macropore wall and soil water pressure. The approach has enabled the assessment of events of waterlogging and water deficiency in agricultural soils in real case scenarios, identifying the periods of risk in relation to earthworm burrowing. Two metrics were calculated from the simulated soil water contents: trafficability and vegetation soil water stress, corresponding to detrimental effects of water logging and insufficient plant accessible water. The presence of burrows could somewhat mitigate the risks for soil water logging and hence increase trafficability of the land. However, a trade-off was observed in a corresponding increase of the risk for water deficiency, although this may be a model artefact as water uptake related to crop type was not included in the model. A sensitive aspect in our data is the number of hydrologically active earthworm burrows which vary by season. The results of this study should not be extrapolated to other soil types or land uses and management. For extrapolation purposes, further research would be required. The output of the modelling is input to an economic assessment, e.g. by quantitatively assessing the occurrences of soil water deficiency and water logging as risk to farmers’ income stability as a result of reduced yields or loss of entire crops

rosettR: protocol and software for seedling area and growth analysis

Growth is an important parameter to consider when studying the impact of treatments or mutations on plant physiology. Leaf area and growth rates can be estimated efficiently from images of plants, but the experiment setup, image analysis, and statistical evaluation can be laborious, often requiring substantial manual effort and programming skills. Here we present rosettR, a non-destructive and high-throughput phenotyping protocol for the measurement of total rosette area of seedlings grown in plates in sterile conditions. We demonstrate that our protocol can be used to accurately detect growth differences among different genotypes and in response to light regimes and osmotic stress. rosettR is implemented as a package for the statistical computing software R and provides easy to use functions to design an experiment, analyze the images, and generate reports on quality control as well as a final comparison across genotypes and applied treatments. Experiment procedures are included as part of the package documentation. Using rosettR it is straight-forward to perform accurate, reproducible measurements of rosette area and relative growth rate with high-throughput using inexpensive equipment. Suitable applications include screening mutant populations for growth phenotypes visible at early growth stages and profiling different genotypes in a wide variety of treatments

Unimolecular fragmentation and radiative cooling of isolated PAH ions: A quantitative study

Time-resolved spontaneous and laser-induced unimolecular fragmentation of perylene cations (C20H12+) has been measured on timescales up to 2 s in a cryogenic electrostatic ion beam storage ring. We elaborate a quantitative model, which includes fragmentation in competition with radiative cooling via both vibrational and electronic (recurrent fluorescence) de-excitation. Excellent agreement with experimental results is found when sequential fragmentation of daughter ions co-stored with the parent perylene ions is included in the model. Based on the comparison of the model to experiment, we constrain the oscillator strength of the D1 → D0 emissive electronic transition in perylene (fRF = 0.055 ± 0.011), as well as the absolute absorption cross section of the D5 ← D0 excitation transition (σabs > 670 Mb). The former transition is responsible for the laser-induced and recurrent fluorescence of perylene, and the latter is the most prominent in the absorption spectrum. The vibrational cooling rate is found to be consistent with the simple harmonic cascade approximation. Quantitative experimental benchmarks of unimolecular processes in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon ions like perylene are important for refining astrochemical models

Association between oxidized nucleobases and mitochondrial DNA damage with long-term mortality in patients with sepsis

BACKGROUND: Sepsis not only leads to short-term mortality during hospitalization, but is also associated with increased mortality during long-term follow-up after hospital discharge. Metabolic stress during sepsis may cause oxidative damage to both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and RNA, which could affect long-term health and life span. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the association of sepsis with oxidized nucleobases and (mt)DNA damage and long-term all-cause mortality in septic patients. METHODS: 91 patients with sepsis who visited the emergency department (ED) of the University Medical Center Groningen between August 2012 and June 2013 were included. Urine and plasma were collected during the ED visit. Septic patients were matched with 91 healthy controls. Death rate was obtained until June 2020.The degree of oxidation of DNA, RNA and free nucleobases were assessed in urine by mass-spectrometry. Lipid peroxidation was assessed in plasma using a TBAR assay. Additionally, plasma levels of mtDNA and damage to mtDNA were determined by qPCR. RESULTS: Sepsis patients denoted higher levels of oxidated DNA, RNA, free nucleobases and lipid peroxidation than controls (all p < 0.01). Further, sepsis patients displayed an increase in plasma mtDNA with an increase in mtDNA damage compared to matched controls (p < 0.01). Kaplan meier survival analyses revealed that high degrees of RNA- and nucleobase oxidation were associated with higher long-term all-cause mortality after sepsis (p < 0.01 and p = 0.01 respectively). Of these two, high RNA oxidation was associated with long-term all-cause mortality, independent of adjustment for age, medical history and sepsis severity (HR 1.29 [(1.17-1.41, 95% CI] p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Sepsis is accompanied with oxidation of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA and RNA, where RNA oxidation is an independent predictor of long-term all-cause mortality. In addition, sepsis causes mtDNA damage and an increase in cell free mtDNA in plasma