Article
Plant Sciences
Tania Bertuzzi, Diego Lopez-Spahr, Carlos A. Gomez, Silvia Suhring, Gisela Malagrina, Carol C. Baskin, Guadalupe Galindez
Summary: The persistence of subtropical seasonally dry forests requires ex situ conservation and restoration programs. Seed traits and dormancy of six native species were studied, showing high variability and species-specific characteristics. These findings have implications for conservation techniques and seed sourcing decisions for restoration.
Article
Engineering, Civil
Pardis Ziaee, Mohammad Javad Abedini
Summary: This study investigates the influence of rainfall variability in time and space, as well as the location of storm center, on catchment outflow hydrograph. The findings demonstrate that the storm center location has a significant impact on the characteristics of the outflow hydrograph, with closer proximity to the outlet resulting in increased peak magnitude and decreased time to peak. The spatiotemporal resolution of the monitoring network also affects the hydrograph characteristics, particularly the peak magnitude, with lower resolutions leading to underestimation of peak and overestimation of time to peak.
WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Nicola Kuhn, Marcus P. Spiegel, Carolina Tovar, Katherine J. Willis, Marc Macias-Fauria
Summary: This study analyzed the relationship between root depth and vegetation sensitivity in drylands, and found a significant negative correlation. Deeper roots provided greater resistance to climate variability and the link between deeper roots and groundwater depth suggested that accessing groundwater resources was key for dryland vegetation's resilience to climate change.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2022)
Article
Plant Sciences
Shrikaar Kambhampati, Jose A. Aznar-Moreno, Sally R. Bailey, Jennifer J. Arp, Kevin L. Chu, Kristin D. Bilyeu, Timothy P. Durrett, Doug K. Allen
Summary: This study investigated the metabolic changes in soybean seeds during development, revealing trends in carbon and nitrogen metabolism and metabolic activity. The results provide insight into modifying final biomass composition of soybeans to increase their value and breaking the negative correlation between seed protein and oil content.
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Xuejing Wang, Mariano Alvarez, Kathleen Donohue, Wenjing Ge, Yueqian Cao, Kun Liu, Guozhen Du, Haiyan Bu
Summary: Seeds play a crucial role in the colonization and community assembly of plants. This study found that seed traits, such as morphology and germination, were influenced by elevation, with seeds at higher elevations being smaller, more elongated, and having shorter germination times. Variations in seed traits within and among species may contribute to the composition of plant communities along elevational gradients.
Article
Plant Sciences
S. J. McInnes, R. Tangney, J. J. Brophy, P. Thordarson, M. K. J. Ooi
Summary: Seed dormancy is crucial for seed germination and population persistence. The composition of seed coat fatty acids may play a key role in controlling dormancy, especially in fire-prone ecosystems. Fire-prone species tend to have longer saturated FA chains and a different FA composition compared to fire-free species, indicating a potential role of fatty acids in dormancy mechanisms.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Lenka Moravcova, Angelino Carta, Petr Pysek, Hana Skalova, Margherita Gioria
Summary: Through an 8-year seed burial experiment, it was found that naturalized herbs have longer seed longevity compared to invasive species, showing significant differences in seed viability, but this is not sufficient to explain the invasiveness of the species.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Plant Sciences
Sergey Rosbakh, Angelino Carta, Eduardo Fernandez-Pascual, Shyam S. Phartyal, Roberta L. C. Dayrell, Efisio Mattana, Arne Saatkamp, Filip Vandelook, Jerry Baskin, Carol Baskin
Summary: Seed dormancy is influenced by climate and environmental conditions. Different types of seed dormancy, such as physiological, morphophysiological, and physical dormancy, are found in different biomes and climates. However, these environmental factors have a relatively low predictive power in explaining the distribution of seed dormancy, indicating that other global drivers are also important.
Article
Plant Sciences
Joao Paulo Ribeiro-Oliveira, Lilian E. D. Silveira, Lilian V. A. Pinto, Edvaldo A. A. Silva, Henk W. M. Hilhorst
Summary: The interaction within a seed-seedling transition system can directly impact early plant development, including interactions between seed-seed, seed-seedling, and seedling-seedling. Factors such as water dynamics in seed germination, information entropy, and intraspecific communication may all play a role in determining embryo growth during germination.
PHYSIOLOGIA PLANTARUM
(2021)
Article
Water Resources
Getasew Derso Eshete, Asmamaw N. Asitatikie, Habtamu Nega Almnewu, Amanuel Zewdu Belew
Summary: This study analyzes the spatial and temporal variability of direct rainfall to Lake Tana and estimates the mean annual and mean monthly direct rainfall amount to the lake using sufficient data and appropriate methodologies. The results show significant spatial and temporal variability of direct rainfall on Lake Tana, with the Isohytal method being slightly better than other interpolation techniques.
APPLIED WATER SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Ecology
Vanessa M. C. Fernandes, Jennifer A. Rudgers, Scott L. Collins, Ferran Garcia-Pichel
Summary: Future climate changes will affect the frequency and size of rainfall events in drylands, leading to potential impacts on soil microbial communities. A study on altered rainfall patterns over 12 years found that increased small rain events promoted microbial diversity and biomass, while large rain events did not consistently have the same effect.
Article
Agriculture, Multidisciplinary
Mina Devkota, Krishna Prasad Devkota, Shiv Kumar
Summary: This study aims to systematically evaluate the agronomic, economic, and soil fertility indicators under conservation agriculture (CA) and conventional tillage (CT) using field experimentation and simulation modeling in the clay soil of a rainfed Mediterranean environment in Morocco.
AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS
(2022)
Article
Plant Sciences
Susanne Kurze, Bettina M. J. Engelbrecht, Mark C. Bilton, Katja Tielboerger, Leonor Alvarez-Cansino
Summary: The study showed that the hypotheses of the plant economics spectrum do not apply to winter annuals, leading to unexpected trait-growth and trait-rainfall relations. Root traits were relevant for species' filtering along rainfall gradients in winter annuals, indicating that different species groups may have unique trait-based responses to global change.
FRONTIERS IN PLANT SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Kritanai Torsri, Zhaohui Lin, Victor Nnamdi Dike, Thippawan Thodsan, Prapaporn Wongsaming
Summary: This study evaluates the performance of different gridded rainfall datasets in reproducing seasonal rainfall features in Thailand. The results show that the performance varies depending on the season and topography, and users should be cautious about the reliability of these datasets.
Article
Plant Sciences
Silvia Del Vecchio, Shivam Kumar Sharma, Mario Pavan, Alicia Teresa Rosario Acosta, Gianluigi Bacchetta, Francesco de Bello, Maike Isermann, Richard Michalet, Gabriella Buffa
Summary: Variability in seed traits can be significant both within and among populations, and may be difficult to predict. Considering seed trait variability in the analysis of ecological processes may help elucidate patterns of species dynamics.
FRONTIERS IN PLANT SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Agronomy
Gabriel de Oliveira, Jing M. Chen, Guilherme A. Mataveli, Michel E. D. Chaves, Jing Rao, Marcelo Sternberg, Thiago dos Santos, Carlos A. C. dos Santos
Article
Plant Sciences
Buzi Raviv, Janardan Khadka, Bupur Swetha, Jeevan R. Singiri, Rohith Grandhi, Eliyahu Shapira, Nurit Novoplansky, Yitzchak Gutterman, Ivan Galis, Marcelo Sternberg, Gideon Grafi
Article
Plant Sciences
Jaime Kigel, Irit Konsens, Udi Segev, Marcelo Sternberg
Summary: The study reveals that biomass stability in annual plant communities in the Mediterranean region is higher due to factors such as increased biomass production, species richness, and evenness. Species asynchrony plays a key role in driving stability at the local spatial scale. Biomass production and richness indirectly affect stability through asynchrony, but with different impacts at each site.
JOURNAL OF VEGETATION SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Ecology
Niv DeMalach, Nadav Shnerb, Tadashi Fukami
Summary: The study investigates how life-history trade-offs among species affect community assembly, finding that the establishment-longevity trade-off is a necessary condition for alternative stable equilibria but not sufficient to achieve this balance. The simulation model demonstrates that alternative stable equilibria are primarily driven by demographic stochasticity in the number of seeds arriving at each establishment site, which is mainly influenced by fecundity.
AMERICAN NATURALIST
(2021)
Article
Geography, Physical
Tarin Paz-Kagan, Jisung Geba Chang, Maxim Shoshany, Marcelo Sternberg, Arnon Karnieli
Summary: This study aimed to develop a comprehensive methodology based on spectral diversity for species distribution and richness mapping along Mediterranean to semi-arid climatic gradients, addressing knowledge gaps in woody species classification accuracy and local species richness estimation. Using an airborne hyperspectral image, machine learning classification achieved an overall accuracy of 86.1% for species distribution mapping. Feature extraction and selection techniques improved classification accuracy, demonstrating higher richness in natural Mediterranean shrubland and guarrigue located in the northern part of the climate gradient.
GISCIENCE & REMOTE SENSING
(2021)
Article
Agronomy
Tianxue Yang, Junda Chen, Xiaoyue Zhong, Xuechen Yang, Gui Wang, Yuan Yao, Marcelo Sternberg, Wei Sun
Summary: The study investigates the effects of increased precipitation amount and decreased precipitation frequency on plant biomass and allocation in different degraded grasslands in northeast China. Results show that lower precipitation frequency promotes belowground biomass but reduces aboveground biomass, while higher precipitation amount enhances aboveground biomass in lightly and moderately degraded grasslands. The interaction between precipitation amount and frequency influences biomass allocation strategies, with adjustments in root distribution observed in moderately degraded grasslands. These findings highlight the importance of considering degradation level when predicting ecosystem responses to changing precipitation regimes.
Article
Ecology
Niv DeMalach, Po-Ju Ke, Tadashi Fukami
Summary: Ecological selection plays a key role in community assembly, with stabilizing selection favoring species with intermediate trait values and directional selection favoring species with extreme trait values. This study suggests that directional selection can lead to lower species diversity compared to stabilizing selection, despite similar effects on trait variance. The research also highlights the importance of seed mass selection in driving species diversity and niche partitioning in different habitats.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Giorgi Kozhoridze, Eyal Ben Dor, Marcelo Sternberg
Summary: Biological invasion has significant impacts on local and global biodiversity loss. This study evaluated the expansion of two invasive plant species, Heterotheca subaxillaris and Acacia saligna, in the Mediterranean coastal plain of Israel. The results showed current and projected future cover expansion of these species, highlighting the need for management strategies to control their spread.
Article
Ecology
Man Qi, Niv DeMalach, Yueping Dong, Hailin Zhang, Tao Sun
Summary: Resource competition theory predicts coexistence and exclusion patterns, but in reality, systems often exhibit preemption exploitation. This study found that under preemption conditions, an R*-preemption trade-off is necessary for species coexistence, and under total preemption, the trade-off alone is sufficient. However, under partial preemption, additional conditions are required for coexistence.
AMERICAN NATURALIST
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Nir Band, Ronen Kadmon, Micha Mandel, Niv DeMalach
Summary: Eutrophication is a major driver of species loss in plant communities worldwide. This study conducted a simultaneous test of three hypotheses related to the underlying mechanisms of eutrophication and found strong support for the nitrogen detriment hypothesis, weaker support for the biomass-driven competition hypothesis, and negligible support for the niche dimension hypothesis. The study concludes that nitrogen-specific mechanisms are more important than biomass or niche dimensionality as drivers of species loss under high levels of soil resources.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2022)
Article
Agriculture, Multidisciplinary
Shay Adar, Marcelo Sternberg, Eli Argaman, Zalmen Henkin, Guy Dovrat, Eli Zaady, Tarin Paz-Kagan
Summary: This article presents a new Pasture Quality Index (PQI) that can evaluate the nutritional quality of pastures and prevent pasture degradation. The authors developed the model using satellite data, plant samples, and pasture quality analysis, and established statistical models using ground truth data and satellite reflectance values. The study found that pasture quality is closely related to seasonality and grazing patterns, with higher quality during mid-growth and in grazed areas.
AGRICULTURE ECOSYSTEMS & ENVIRONMENT
(2023)