Disturbance and Clonal Reproduction Determine Liana Distribution and Maintain Liana Diversity in a Tropical Forest

Negative density dependence (NDD) and habitat specialization have received strong empirical support as mechanisms that explain tree species diversity maintenance and distribution in tropical forests. In contrast, disturbance appears to play only a minor role. Previous studies have rarely examined the relative strengths of these diversity maintenance mechanisms concurrently, and few studies have included plant groups other than trees. Here we used a large, spatially explicit data set from Barro Colorado Island, Panama (BCI) to test whether liana and tree species distribution patterns are most consistent with NDD, habitat specialization, or disturbance. We found compelling evidence that trees responded to habitat specialization and NDD; however, only disturbance explained the distribution of the majority of liana species and maintained liana diversity. Lianas appear to respond to disturbance with high vegetative (clonal) reproduction, and liana species\u27 ability to produce clonal stems following disturbance results in a clumped spatial distribution. Thus, clonal reproduction following disturbance explains local liana spatial distribution and diversity maintenance on BCI, whereas negative density dependence and habitat specialization, two prominent mechanisms contributing to tree species diversity and distribution, do not

Assessment of trace element pollution and its environmental risk to freshwater sediments influenced by anthropogenic contributions: The case study of Alqueva reservoir (Guadiana Basin)

The Guadiana Basin.(SW Iberian Peninsula) is affected by acid mine drainage (AMD), a consequence of ancient mining activities in the Iberian Pyrite Belt (IPB). Consequently, the sedimerits at the Alqueva reservoir (SE Portugal) in the Guadiana Basin are potentially contaminated by trace elements, which make important: (i) to characterize the status of trace element pollution of the sediments; (ii) to evaluate the mobility and the bioavailability of As, Cd, Cu, Cr, Pb and Zn; and (iii) to assess the environmental risk associated with the total and bioavailable concentrations of trace elements, using the sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) and the risk assessment code (RAC). Metal enrichment factors (EF) and geoaccumulation indexes (I-geo), determined taking into account the regional background levels, revealed that, among the metals analyzed, Cd contributed the highest to pollution levels followed by Pb and As. Despite the trace element contamination of the Alqueva sediments, the sequential extraction showed that Most of them are found in the oxidizable and residual fractions, which indicates that they are sparingly bioavailable, with exception of Cd (acid-labile fraction) and Pb (reducible fraction). Based on the RAC, Cd was the only metal that presented a high risk, while Pb, As and Zn showed a medium risk. Moreover, the SQGs revealed the existence of certain areas of extremely high risk, particularly related to high concentrations of total As and, in less extent, of Pb and Cd, associated with AMD, wastewater discharges and runoff of plant protection products from agricultural fields located near the reservoir. (C) 2015 Elsevier By. All rights reserved.FCT (Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia) [PTDC/AAC-AMB/103547/2008]; FEDER, through POFC (Eixo I - Programa Operacional Fatores de Competitividade) from QREN [COMPETE Re: FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-008582]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Nature and Age of Neighbours Matter : Interspecific Associations among Tree Species Exist and Vary across Life Stages in Tropical Forests

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: This research was funded through a PhD grant from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and support of a FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF Marie-Curie Action.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Foreword

The aim of this volume is not to offer a comprehensive overview of the multifarious aspects of fiction and its implications for early modern philosophy, but to be an invitation, from the standpoint of the history of philosophy, to survey some of the fundamental problems of the field, using six case-studies written by some of the finest international scholars in their respective areas of Renaissance studies. Although perhaps not evident at a first reading, these six studies are linked by common concerns such as the theoretical relationship between (literary) history, rhetoric, poetics, and philosophy; the tensions between res, verba, and imago; and the concept of enargeia. They have been arranged according to the chronology of the corpus each one considers.The aim of this volume is not to offer a comprehensive overview of the multifarious aspects of fiction and its implications for early modern philosophy, but to be an invitation, from the standpoint of the history of philosophy, to survey some of the fundamental problems of the field, using six case-studies written by some of the finest international scholars in their respective areas of Renaissance studies. Although perhaps not evident at a first reading, these six studies are linked by common concerns such as the theoretical relationship between (literary) history, rhetoric, poetics, and philosophy; the tensions between res, verba, and imago; and the concept of enargeia. They have been arranged according to the chronology of the corpus each one considers

Erasmus’ Translations of Plutarch’s Moralia and the Ascensian editio princeps of ca. 1513

[Abstracts] The role of Erasmus as a disseminator of Plutarch’s Moralia has been frequently studied. As far as the editorial history of the Moralia is concerned, Erasmus, who had served as an assistant to Demetrius Ducas on the Aldine edition of 1509, began to translate the opuscula in Cambridge. Until now, these translations were thought to have been published for the first time in a single volume by Johannes Froben in Basel (August 1514). This article proves that not only did Erasmus send his translations to Badius, but that the latter printed them before Froben, in a hitherto unknown editio princep

Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder: Girolamo Fracastoro and His Thought World

The following pages make a case for the important role played by Aristotle’s Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21 in Renaissance poetics and especially in that of Girolamo Fracastoro. As this passage, and Aristotle’s Metaphysics in general, have traditionally been denied a major role in the poetics of the Renaissance, I have been obliged to develop my argument in three sections. [1.] The first focuses on Thomas Aquinas’s roundbreaking reading of the quotation in psychological and epistemological terms, and on how he and his contemporaries were able to harmonize it both with the corpus Aristotelicum and with the development of a place for poetry in the system of the arts. [2.] The second section illustrates how the first humanists used Aristotle’s authority to invert the meaning of the passage, transforming it into an argument in defense of the primacy of poetry over the rest of the arts. This appropriation had two undesiderable effects: either depriving the passage of its theoretical implications or, worse, assimilating Aristotle’s words into a Platonizing vision of poetry. Only with the recovery of the Greek text of Aristotle’s Poetics in the late fifteenth century did the passage escape its new status as a commonplace in humanist defense of poetry, and was briefly again considered as a point of departure for the analysis of concepts such as fabula (fiction) and admiratio (wonder), based on philosophical, poetic, and medical premises. [3] The last section introduces Galeotto Marzio’s and Giovanni Pontano’s pioneering works on these two concepts—fabula and admiratio—, as an introduction to the subsequent synthesis done by Girolamo Fracastoro, who, from the positions held by Marzio and Pontano as well as Aquinas’s original intuition, was able to harmonize natural philosophy and poetry by means of their psychological implications. This is what I have called here the ‘medical poetics of wonder’ or, more simply, mythotherapy. The following pages make a case for the important role played by Aristotle’s Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21 in Renaissance poetics and especially in that of Girolamo Fracastoro. As this passage, and Aristotle’s Metaphysics in general, have traditionally been denied a major role in the poetics of the Renaissance, I have been obliged to develop my argument in three sections. [1.] The first focuses on Thomas Aquinas’s roundbreaking reading of the quotation in psychological and epistemological terms, and on how he and his contemporaries were able to harmonize it both with the corpus Aristotelicum and with the development of a place for poetry in the system of the arts. [2.] The second section illustrates how the first humanists used Aristotle’s authority to invert the meaning of the passage, transforming it into an argument in defense of the primacy of poetry over the rest of the arts. This appropriation had two undesiderable effects: either depriving the passage of its theoretical implications or, worse, assimilating Aristotle’s words into a Platonizing vision of poetry. Only with the recovery of the Greek text of Aristotle’s Poetics in the late fifteenth century did the passage escape its new status as a commonplace in humanist defense of poetry, and was briefly again considered as a point of departure for the analysis of concepts such as fabula (fiction) and admiratio (wonder), based on philosophical, poetic, and medical premises. [3] The last section introduces Galeotto Marzio’s and Giovanni Pontano’s pioneering works on these two concepts—fabula and admiratio—, as an introduction to the subsequent synthesis done by Girolamo Fracastoro, who, from the positions held by Marzio and Pontano as well as Aquinas’s original intuition, was able to harmonize natural philosophy and poetry by means of their psychological implications. This is what I have called here the ‘medical poetics of wonder’ or, more simply, mythotherapy.