影响江苏省道地药材野马追产量的生态因子分析

野马追是江苏省著名的道地药材之一,全草入药,是祛痰、止咳、治疗慢性支气管炎效果显著的天然药物,在临床上具有很重要的应用价值.市场上该药材的需求量很大,目前主要依靠人工栽培来满足市场的需求.通过对江苏省野马追主要生产地区的生长环境与野马追生物量之间相关性的分析,探讨了土壤氮钾含量、pH、间种等环境因素都对野马追生物量的影响规律.结果显示,野马追适宜在微酸环境中生长,以pH6.0左右为最佳,不适与其他作物间种,土壤中碱解氮含量为28～30 mg/kg,速效钾含量230～240mg/kg时有利于其生物量增加.人工栽培过程中应尽量满足野马追生物量增加的最适条件,提高野马追引种驯化成功率,确保人工栽培野马追的药材品质和产量.     

小城镇土地利用变化的生态效应分析

采用系统生态学方法,尤其是应用了Simpson生物多样性指数法,前后相隔10年为时间跨度,对小城镇发展典型地区浙江省绍兴县某镇土地利用变化导致的生态效应进行了初步定量分析与研究.结果表明,由于土地使用功能的改变,导致了以绿色植物为计数的Simpson指数增加近2倍,而以土壤微生物为参照的工业和居住用地的Simpson指数均高于农业用地,反映该小城镇发展过程中生物多样性明显降低,并出现了局部气候的恶化(表现为镇区内年平均气温上升,而年平均相对湿度下降)等不良生态效应.     

Purification processes, ecological functions, planning and design of riparian buffer zones in agricultural watersheds

Two international meetings on ecological engineering, with a focus on riparian buffer zones, served as the source for selected papers in this special issue: (1) an International Workshop on Efficiency of Purification Processes in Riparian Buffer Zones: Their Design and Planning in Agricultural Watersheds, jointly organised by Hokkaido University, Japan, the National Agricultural Research Center for Hokkaido Region, Japan, Civil Engineering Research Institute of Hokkaido, Japan, and the Institute of Geography, University of Tartu, Estonia, and held from 5 to 9 November 2001 in Kushiro City, Hokkaido, Japan; and (2) an International Conference on Ecological Engineering for Landscape Services and Products, jointly organised by the International Ecological Engineering Society (IEES) and Lincoln University, Christchurch, New Zealand, and held from 25 to 29 November 2001 in Christchurch, New Zealand. At these two meetings, altogether 94 oral presentations (17 from invited speakers) and 15 posters by representatives from 21 countries were presented. The editorial paper highlights trends in investigation of the purification processes in riparian buffer zones as well as planning, design and management aspects of riparian buffers regarding the wide spectrum of their ecological functions; it characterises the two international meetings which served as sources for the selected papers and briefly explains the main aspects of these papers.     

Assessment of ecological risks in weed biocontrol: Input from retrospective ecological analyses

Prediction of the outcomes of natural enemy introductions remains the most fundamental challenge in biological control. Quantitative retrospective analyses of ongoing biocontrol projects provide a systematic strategy to evaluate and further develop ecological risk assessment. In this review, we highlight a crucial assumption underlying a continued reliance on the host specificity paradigm as a quantitative prediction of ecological risk, summarize the status of our retrospective analyses of nontarget effects of two weevils used against exotic thistles in North America, and discuss our prospective assessment of risk to a federally listed, threatened species (Cirsium pitcheri) based on those studies. Our analyses quantify the fact that host range and preference from host specificity tests are not sufficient to predict ecological impact if the introduced natural enemy is not strictly monophagous. The implicit assumption when such use is made of the host specificity data in risk assessment is that population impacts are proportional to relative preference and performance, the key components of host specificity. However, in concert with shifting awareness in the field, our studies demonstrate that the environment influences and can alter host use and population growth, leading to higher than expected direct impacts on the less preferred native host species at several spatial scales. Further, we have found that straightforward, easily anticipated indirect effects, on intraguild foragers as well as on the less preferred native host plant species, can be both widespread and significant. We conclude that intensive retrospective ecological studies provide some guidance for the quantitative prospective studies needed to assess candidate biological control agent dynamics and impacts and, so, contribute to improved rigor in the evaluation of total ecological risk to native species.     

影响食肉目动物能量学的生态因子

在食肉目的62种动物中,体重的变异可以解释基础代谢率86.8%的变化。当栖息基底、食性、生境和纬度等4个因素与体重合起来一起分析,则可以解释基础代谢率98.7%的变化,即这些生态和行为因子可以解释代谢率残差变异的81.1%。身体成分也是影响基础代谢率的另一个因素,可以解释一些大型树栖种类的较低的代谢率。除体重因素外,导致真兽类基础代谢率变异的主要原因是:当生态因素适合时,高水平的能量消耗可以促进动物的高繁殖输出,而动物的某些习性和生存环境则会要求低能量消耗,从而使繁殖率降低。当以科为单元进行分析时,对结果没有影响。生理参数与分类单元之间大多数的相关性反映了生态和行为因素与分类系统之间的一种粗略的相关关系。除非系统学可以反映动物的生态学和行为学,否则系统学不能决定动物适应性特征的状态     

濒危药用植物八角莲生态生物学特征

通过样地调查和相关资料分析,对八角莲(Dysosma versipellis)生态生物学特征的研究表明,八角莲生境群落是以热带和温带植物为主的常绿和落叶阔叶混交疏林灌丛和竹林,上层乔灌木植物多为当地优势种。适宜生长的基质土壤为黄棕壤,pH为5.40-6.59,有机质、有效N、P、K和全N、P、K养分含量高(分别为19.36%、840 mg kg-1、46 mg kg-1、310 mg kg-1和9 970 mg kg-1、1 217 mg kg-1、2 603 mg kg-1)。繁殖障碍、遗传结构不利等自身因素和人类过度采挖、生境破坏等是导致八角莲濒危的主要原因。因此,其保育策略应以迁地保育和就地保育相结合,以迁地保育为主。     

Understory vegetation as an indicator of soil characteristics in the Hyrcanian area,N. Iran

The mesic Caspian (Hyrcanian) forest and ecotone communities provide a marked contrast to the arid and semiarid landscapes associated with most of the territory of Iran. To date, the ecological characteristics of these habitats, threatened and of conservation importance, have been little studied. Accordingly, ecological profiles of some important plant species of these communities have been assessed along two altitudinal gradients (300–2300 m a.s.l.). Vegetation and soils were sampled every 100 m in elevation, with the data subsequently analyzed using TWINSPAN and corrected frequency (CF) analyses. Relationships between soil variables (subdivided into three classes, the lowest, the middle and the upper third of all values) and herbaceous and shrub species (presence/absence data) were analyzed by the polythetic divisive classification method. 379 plant species and eleven soil variables – N, P, K, CaCO₃, EC, pH, organic matter, C/N ratio and percentage of sand, clay and silt – were considered. The ecological profile method was used to evaluate the affinity and significance of associations between the probability of species’ occurrence and topsoil characteristics found by the polythetic method. Five vegetation groups were identified: two groups, with Acer campestre and Quercus macranthera in the tree layer and Veronica mazanderanae and Phuopsis stylosa as herbs, were restricted to forest-steppe ecotones and the upper mountain areas. Three groups, with Acer velutinum, Ruscus hyrcanus, Carpinus betulus, Danae racemosa, Fagus orientalis and Aruncus vulgaris as indicator species, occurred in the forest itself. Of the 42 plant species assessed as being of particular importance, 13 had significant relationships with eight soil factors. Thus, certain species, including endemic plant species of restricted distribution and conservation importance, can be used as indicators of particular soil conditions in the Hyrcanian forest area.     

GENETIC DIFFERENTIATION AND SELECTION AGAINST MIGRANTS IN EVOLUTIONARILY REPLICATED EXTREME ENVIRONMENTS

We investigated mechanisms of reproductive isolation in livebearing fishes (genus Poecilia) inhabiting sulfidic and nonsulfidic habitats in three replicate river drainages. Although sulfide spring fish convergently evolved divergent phenotypes, it was unclear if mechanisms of reproductive isolation also evolved convergently. Using microsatellites, we found strongly reduced gene flow between adjacent populations from different habitat types, suggesting that local adaptation to sulfidic habitats repeatedly caused the emergence of reproductive isolation. Reciprocal translocation experiments indicate strong selection against immigrants into sulfidic waters, but also variation among drainages in the strength of selection against immigrants into nonsulfidic waters. Mate choice experiments revealed the evolution of assortative mating preferences in females from nonsulfidic but not from sulfidic habitats. The inferred strength of sexual selection against immigrants (RI_s) was negatively correlated with the strength of natural selection (RI_m), a pattern that could be attributed to reinforcement, whereby natural selection strengthens behavioral isolation due to reduced hybrid fitness. Overall, reproductive isolation and genetic differentiation appear to be replicated and direct consequences of local adaptation to sulfide spring environments, but the relative contributions of different mechanisms of reproductive isolation vary across these evolutionarily independent replicates, highlighting both convergent and nonconvergent evolutionary trajectories of populations in each drainage.     

The geometry of the Pareto front in biological phenotype space

When organisms perform a single task, selection leads to phenotypes that maximize performance at that task. When organisms need to perform multiple tasks, a trade‐off arises because no phenotype can optimize all tasks. Recent work addressed this question, and assumed that the performance at each task decays with distance in trait space from the best phenotype at that task. Under this assumption, the best‐fitness solutions (termed the Pareto front) lie on simple low‐dimensional shapes in trait space: line segments, triangles and other polygons. The vertices of these polygons are specialists at a single task. Here, we generalize this finding, by considering performance functions of general form, not necessarily functions that decay monotonically with distance from their peak. We find that, except for performance functions with highly eccentric contours, simple shapes in phenotype space are still found, but with mildly curving edges instead of straight ones. In a wide range of systems, complex data on multiple quantitative traits, which might be expected to fill a high‐dimensional phenotype space, is predicted instead to collapse onto low‐dimensional shapes; phenotypes near the vertices of these shapes are predicted to be specialists, and can thus suggest which tasks may be at play.