氚标记胸腺嘧啶掺入法在土壤细菌生长速率研究中的应用

氚标记胸腺嘧啶掺入法因其原理明确、方法简单易行、重复性好等特点在测定细菌生长速率中发挥着重要的作用。然而,相比较医学和水生生态学领域,该方法在土壤生态学研究中的应用还较少,尤其是我国此方面的研究尚未见报道。就氚标记胸腺嘧啶掺入法的原理、操作流程、影响因素、计算方法及其在土壤生态学中的应用等方面进行了综述,为该方法在我国土壤生态学领域的推广应用提供参考。     

环境DNA metabarcoding及其在生态学研究中的应用

环境DNA metabarcoding(eDNA metabarcoding)是指利用环境样本(如土壤、水、粪便等)中分离的DNA进行高通量的多个物种(或高级分类单元)鉴定的方法。近年来,该方法引起了学者的广泛关注,逐渐应用于生物多样性研究、水生生物监测、珍稀濒危物种和外来入侵物种检测等生态学领域。介绍环境DNA metabarcoding的含义和研究方法;重点介绍环境DNA metabarcoding在物种监测、生物多样性研究和食性分析等生态学领域中的应用;总结环境DNA metabarcoding应用于生态学研究领域面临的挑战并对该方法的发展进行展望。     

生态基因组学研究进展

生态基因组学是一个整合生态学、分子遗传学和进化基因组学的新兴交叉学科。生态基因组学将基因组学的研究手段和方法引入生态学领域,通过将群体基因组学、转录组学、蛋白质组学等手段与方法将个体、种群及群落、生态系统不同层次的生态学相互作用整合起来,确定在生态学响应及相互作用中具有重要意义的关键的基因和遗传途径,阐明这些基因及遗传途径变异的程度及其生态和进化后果的特征,从基因水平探索有机体响应天然环境(包括生物与非生物的环境因子)的遗传学机制。生态基因组学的研究对象可以分为模式生物与非模式生物两大类。拟南芥、酿酒酵母等模式生物在生态基因组学领域发挥了重要作用。随着越来越多基因组学技术的开发与完善,越来越多的非模式生物生态基因组学的研究将为生态学的发展提供重要的理论与实践依据。生态基因组学最核心的方法包括寻找序列变异、研究基因差异表达和分析基因功能等方法。生态基因组学已广泛渗透到生态学的相关领域中,将会在生物对环境的响应、物种间的相互作用、进化生态学、全球变化生态学、入侵生态学、群落生态学等研究领域发挥更大的作用。     

水平扫描技术及其在生态学中的应用前景

水平扫描是一项在计算科学、工程和医学等领域被广泛应用的技术,其原理即是对潜在的新兴事物、威胁、机遇和技术体系进行系统检查。该技术自2008年被引入生态学领域以来,迅速在生物多样性和生态安全监管研究中展现出广阔的应用潜力。水平扫描技术不仅有助于政府决策层与管理机构积极面对各种在未来难以预测的生态环境风险,进而在制定和实施与生态环境检测和保护等相关的政策措施时更加谨慎、全面和有据可依,而且能够提升政府和环保部门应对与生态环境变化密切相关的重大突发性事件的能力。目前,我国在利用水平扫描进行生态环境风险评估、生物多样性保护和生物安全检测等领域的应用研究或报道还处于空白。在全球化导致重大生态环境事件突发风险日益增加的背景下,国内的生态学研究机构和团队可优先在外来物种入侵监管、重大地质灾害、环境生态安全和生物多样性丧失这四个领域进行水平扫描研究,以应对当前日益严峻的生态环境保护形势。     

国内植物数量生态学研究概况

本世纪五十年代起,大量数学分析方法开始引入植物生态学研究领域。六十年代以后,由于电子计算机技术的迅速发展,复杂的数学模型不断克服了实际应用的困难,逐渐形成数量生态学的理论和方法,并且引起了国内外广泛的重视。 国内植物数量生态学研究始于七十年代后期,虽然起步较晚,但短短几年时间内,在数量分类、格局分析、群落演替以及生态资源评价等领域开展了大量的工作,取得了可喜的成绩。1986年5月,在武汉召开的全国第一届数理生态学及其应用学术讨论会上,来自国内植物生态学界的代表交流了近年来植物数量生态学方面的成果,探讨了适合我国特…     

自动化大规模基因组扫描与连锁分析：———遗传病相关基因定位的策略

遗传病相关基因的定位工作是目前世界各国医学遗传学研究的焦点。随着人类基因组计划的发展,许多方法被应用到这一领域中。90年代以来,结合连锁分析在基因组内进行自动化、大规模扫描定位基因的方法逐渐被倒立和发展,目前已成为该领域中应用最广、最有效的手段。     

我国植被数量分析方法的研究概况和发展趋势

植被数量分析是现代植被研究的重要手段,数量分类和排序是现代植被生态学研究最重要的,也是应用最广泛的生态学技术。数量分析方法在20世纪50年代引入植被生态学研究领域,我国学者在70年代后期开始研究植被的数量分类和排序。本文主要从相关资料、应用研究、新方法研究三个方面论述了我国植被数量分析方法的发展,重点阐述了从20世纪70年代后期以来出现的并且被广泛应用的新方法及其应用研究概况,并在此基础上分析了植被数量分析方法未来的发展趋势。     

花背蟾蜍繁殖与食性研究

花背蟾蜍在我国分布广泛,在农业、医学、生态学的科学研究和教学等方面具有重要的应用价值。总结了近年来关于花背蟾蜍繁殖、食性和种群动态等方面的研究现状,并对其生态学意义和经济价值进行了分析。     

稳定性同位素技术在生物科学中的应用

稳定同位素技术是一项相对新兴的技术,其最早主要应用于地质学和地球化学.近些年来,稳定性同位素技术在农业、医学、环境学、海洋学、石油、化工、冶金等方面的应用也日益广泛.利用稳定性同位素技术还可以解决生物科学中一些传统方法难以解决的问题.对稳定性同位素的相关概念进行了介绍,并对其在植物、动物和微生物生理、生态学领域研究中的应用进行了综述,同时对其在环境保护、兴奋剂检测、毒品和炸药的产地辨别等领域的应用作了概述.     

变性梯度凝胶电泳在环境微生物生态学中的应用

PCR-变性梯度凝胶电泳(PCR-DGGE)具有可靠性强、重复性好、方便快捷等优点,已被广泛应用于环境生态学中微生物群落多样性、动态性分析和功能细菌的跟踪。本文综述了PCR-DGGE技术的基本原理,不同DNA提取方法的比较,不同PCR方式的比较及其在环境生态学中研究微生物群落多样性、环境中微生物群落变化的动态监测、硝化菌-反硝化菌和硫酸还原菌(SRB)的动态分析和监测等领域中的应用,并对该技术自身存在的局限性和应用前景进行了评价。     

Learning from clinical medicine to improve the use of surrogates in ecology

Surrogates are used widely in ecology to detect or monitor changes in the environment that are too difficult or costly to assess directly. Yet most work on surrogates to date has been correlative, with little work on their predictive capacity or the circumstances under which they work. Our suggestion is to revisit and learn from research in the clinical medical sciences, including the causal statistical frameworks available to validate relationships between treatments, surrogate variables, and the outcome of interest. We adapt this medical thinking to ecology by providing a new framework that involves specification of the surrogate model, statistical validation, and subsequent evaluation in a range of spatial and temporal contexts. An inter‐disciplinary surrogate concept will allow for a more rigorous approach to validating and evaluating proxy variables, thus advancing the selection and application of surrogates in ecology. Synthesis We draw together ideas from the medical sciences to define an explicit surrogate concept that has not previously been used in ecology. We present a new framework for specifying surrogate models involving validation using a causal framework, and subsequent re‐evaluation in different spatial and temporal contexts – an approach closely aligned with that used by researchers in the clinical medical sciences. This rigorous method can advance the science underpinning the application of surrogates in ecology by shifting the focus away from correlative understanding to one that focuses instead on causation and prediction. An improved use of surrogates is imperative if we are to meet the challenge of properly measuring and understanding the multifarious and complex problems in contemporary ecology.     

The emerging medical ecology of the human gut microbiome

It is increasingly clear that the human gut microbiome has great medical importance, and researchers are beginning to investigate its basic biology and to appreciate the challenges that it presents to medical science. Several striking new empirical results in this area are perplexing within the standard conceptual framework of biomedicine, and this highlights the need for new perspectives from ecology and from dynamical systems theory. Here, we discuss recent results concerning sources of individual variation, temporal variation within individuals, long-term changes after transient perturbations and individualized responses to perturbation within the human gut microbiome.     

Ecology after 100 years: Progress and pseudo-progress

Has the science of ecology fulfilled the promises made by the originators of ecological science at the start of the last century? What should ecology achieve? Have good policies for environmental management flowed out of ecological science? These important questions are rarely discussed by ecologists working on detailed studies of individual systems. Until we decide what we wish to achieve as ecologists we cannot define progress toward those goals. Ecologists desire to achieve an understanding of how the natural world operates, how humans have modified the natural world, and how to alleviate problems arising from human actions. Ecologists have made impressive gains over the past century in achieving these goals, but this progress has been uneven. Some sub-disciplines of ecology are well developed empirically and theoretically, while others languish for reasons that are not always clear. Fundamental problems can be lost to view as ecologists fiddle with unimportant pseudo-problems. Bandwagons develop and disappear with limited success in addressing problems. The public demands progress from all the sciences, and as time moves along and problems get worse, more rapid progress is demanded. The result for ecology has too often been poor, short-term science and poor management decisions. But since the science is rarely repeated and the management results may be a generation or two down the line, it is difficult for the public or for scientists to decide how good or bad the scientific advice has been. In ecology over the past 100 years we have made solid achievements in behavioural ecology, population dynamics, and ecological methods, we have made some progress in understanding community and ecosystem dynamics, but we have made less useful progress in developing theoretical ecology, landscape ecology, and natural resource management. The key to increasing progress is to adopt a systems approach with explicit hypotheses, theoretical models, and field experiments on a scale defined by the problem. With continuous feedback between problems, possible solutions, relevant theory and experimental data we can achieve our scientific goals.     

基因敲除动物的研究和应用

目的基因敲除动物是近十几年来发展起来的在个体水平上研究基因功能的一类实验动物,它以基因敲除技术和胚胎干细胞技术为基础,在生命科学研究的各个领域得到了广泛应用。最近两年发展起来的RNA干扰技术仍然不能代替它。本文综述了基因敲除动物在各医学生物领域的研究与应用、浅谈其与RNA干扰技术的比较及其发展前景。     

BEEtag: A Low-Cost,Image-Based Tracking System for the Study of Animal Behavior and Locomotion

A fundamental challenge common to studies of animal movement, behavior, and ecology is the collection of high-quality datasets on spatial positions of animals as they change through space and time. Recent innovations in tracking technology have allowed researchers to collect large and highly accurate datasets on animal spatiotemporal position while vastly decreasing the time and cost of collecting such data. One technique that is of particular relevance to the study of behavioral ecology involves tracking visual tags that can be uniquely identified in separate images or movie frames. These tags can be located within images that are visually complex, making them particularly well suited for longitudinal studies of animal behavior and movement in naturalistic environments. While several software packages have been developed that use computer vision to identify visual tags, these software packages are either (a) not optimized for identification of single tags, which is generally of the most interest for biologists, or (b) suffer from licensing issues, and therefore their use in the study of animal behavior has been limited. Here, we present BEEtag, an open-source, image-based tracking system in Matlab that allows for unique identification of individual animals or anatomical markers. The primary advantages of this system are that it (a) independently identifies animals or marked points in each frame of a video, limiting error propagation, (b) performs well in images with complex backgrounds, and (c) is low-cost. To validate the use of this tracking system in animal behavior, we mark and track individual bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) and recover individual patterns of space use and activity within the nest. Finally, we discuss the advantages and limitations of this software package and its application to the study of animal movement, behavior, and ecology.     

Landscape ecology development supported by geospatial technologies: A review

Numerous technologies have contributed to the recent development of landscape ecology, especially the geospatial technological advances constitute a revolution in landscape ecology. Extensive applications of geospatial technologies, such as fractal theory, geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) in landscape ecology research, suggest the necessity of such a review of research progress in this field. In this study, a brief introduction to fractal theory, GIS and RS and how they were applied in landscape ecology were provided first. Then, the current state-of-the-art was summarized and analyzed as reference for further promoting the development of landscape ecology science and its applications. Finally, opportunities and challenges of landscape ecology applications using these new technologies were discussed and concluded for future research. It was contended that a combination and integration of these technologies can substantially advance the study of landscape ecology for data acquisition, process modeling, scale transformation, result analysis and visualization. However, as no theoretical framework and application cases of applying an integration of fractal theory, GIS and RS techniques to landscape ecology research have been established, further studies are still much needed.     

FISH技术在微生物生态学中的研究及进展

分子生物学技术在微生物生态学研究中具有灵敏、精确和快速的优势,但不能提供微生物的形态学、数量性状、空间分布等信息。荧光原位杂交技术结合了分子生物学的精确性和显微镜的可视性信息,可以在自然生境中监测和鉴定不同的微生物个体,尤其是对难培养和未被培养的微生物进行检测。荧光原位杂交技术被广泛用于微生物群落结构诊断和评价,现已成为微生物分子生态学研究中的热点技术。对荧光原位杂交技术的发展和在微生物分子生态学中的应用进行了综述,探讨了该技术应用中存在的问题和发展前景。     

多光子激发技术及其在生命科学中的应用

多光子激发技术是20世纪90年代初发展起来的新技术,其研究和应用前景十分广阔。本文对多光子激发的原理,优缺点以及近年来它的应用领域作了简介。     

Ecology of soils: a new science of the biosphere class

The history of a new science, ecology of soils, is described. Its object, subject, and methodology are discussed, with emphasis placed upon the top-priority problems. It has been proved that ecology of soils is among the sciences whose concern is the study of biosphere. Examples are given to illustrate rules and laws of the new science. It is shown in particular that humus components and their ratios are bearing on climate parameters and fall on definite ecological ranges of certain kinds of soils characterized by different ratios of humic acids.