Chemical Constituents and Biological Properties of Genus Doronicum (Asteraceae)

The genus Doronicum, belonging to tribe Senecioneae (Fam. Asteraceae), is found mainly in the Asia, Europe and North Africa. This genus of plant has always been used in traditional medicinal treatments due to the many biological properties shown such as killing parasitic worms and for relieving constipation, as well as to improve heart health, to alleviate pain and inflammation, to treat insect bites, etc. According to the World Flora the genus Doronicum contains 39 subordinate taxa.^[1–3] The purpose of this article, which covers data published from 1970 to 2021 with more than 110 articles, aims to carry out a complete and critical review of the Doronicum genus, examining traditional uses and reporting the antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory and antitumor activity shown from crude extracts or essential oils, and from single isolated compounds. Furthermore, critical considerations of the published data have been highlighted by comparing them with the results obtained from species of other genus belonging to the Asteraceae family.     

A preliminary biography of Armand de Ricqlès (1938–), the great synthesizer of bone histology

Armand de Ricqlès has had a long, successful career. From his start as an Assistant in the University of Paris in 1961, he defended his doctoral thesis in 1963, became Maître-Assistant (Assistant Professor) in 1970 (tenured 1971), defended his “doctorat d’état” (habilitation thesis) in 1973, was nominated Professor in the University Paris 7, was promoted to first class (Full Professor) in 1987, and was finally nominated to the prestigious chair “Biologie Historique et Évolutionnisme” (Historical and Evolutionary Biology) of the Collège de France in 1996. He lectured on a wide range of topics, especially in comparative and evolutionary biology, and assumed important administrative responsibilities, including responsibility of various master's programs, leadership of the team “Formations squelettiques” (1973–2002; till Professor Jacques Castanet took over leadership of the team), involvement in various committees, and in organizing scientific meetings. He served on several editorial committees and was co-editor of the “Annales des Sciences Naturelles”, as well as co-editor-in-chief of the “Comptes Rendus Palevol”. His scientific research always emphasized bone histology, especially paleohistology, but he also made contributions to systematic paleontology, phylogenetics, history of paleontology, and biological nomenclature, in decreasing order of importance. He has so far published over 100 scientific papers and 120 semi-popular papers.     

Questioning the relevance of shifting cultivation to Neolithic farming in the loess belt of Europe: evidence from the Hambach Forest experiment

Despite widespread criticism, the shifting cultivation model continues to inform discussion of Neolithic farming in Europe, beginning with early Neolithic (Linearbandkeramik or LBK) communities concentrated in the loess belt of western-central Europe. Hundreds of LBK and later Neolithic sites have been excavated in this region and many of them sampled for charred plant remains. Archaeobotanical data on the weed floras harvested with crops provide the most direct archaeological evidence of crop husbandry practices, including the permanence of crop fields, but have played a limited role in the debate over shifting cultivation. The Hambach Forest experiment, conducted in the 1970s-80s near Cologne, Germany, provides valuable comparative data on the weed floras growing in newly cleared cultivation plots in an area of longlived mixed oak woodland on loess-based soil. Correspondence analysis of the Hambach weed survey data suggests that weed floras of fields managed under a shifting cultivation regime would be rich in perennial species, including woodland perennials. Comparison of these results with Neolithic weed assemblages from the loess belt of western-central Europe strongly suggests that Neolithic crop fields were not recently cleared of woodland vegetation but were long-established. Received September 5, 2001 / Accepted February 26, 2002     

Q & A: Till Roenneberg

Till Roenneberg is Professor of Chronobiology at the University of Munich. He studies the circadian clock from its cellular/molecular mechanisms up to the consequences of shift work. He received his education in Munich and London, and worked in the 1980s with Woody Hastings at Harvard. Since then, he has built up the Centre for Chronobiology at the Munich Medical School. For many years, he has coordinated circadian research and education in Germany and in Europe. He is also involved in reforming the University curriculum, incorporating problem-based approaches. He has received international prizes for both his research and his teaching.     

Hunters and Horticulturalists: A Preliminary Report of the 1972–4 Excavations in the Manim Valley,Papua New Guinea

Ole Christensen, a PhD scholar in the Department of Prehistory in the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University, was killed in a car accident on his way to work on 16 December last year. Ole was a Canadian citizen of Danish birth, whose parents settled in rural Alberta. He took his BA(Hons) in 1970 and his MA in 1972, both in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Calgary. His MA thesis, ‘Banff Prehistory: prehistoric subsistence and settlement in Banff National Park, Alberta’, is evidence of an early interest in economically and ecologically oriented archaeology, which he furthered by taking courses and laboratory work in pollen analysis. A visit to South America in 1970 with an archaeological team investigating early farming settlements in the Cauca Valley, Colombia, combined with a long standing interest in Polynesian anthropology to encourage him to seek to do graduate work on tropical agricultural systems somewhere in the Pacific. When he subsequently applied for the ANU scholarship which he took up in early 1972, he seemed a highly suitable person to work in association with the Department of Prehistory's project into New Guinea Highlands' agricultural history then about to start at Kuk in the upper Wahgi valley (see Mankind, 3:177–83). The proposition put to Ole was that he should undertake a study of the hydraulic technology and agrarian organization of one of the large scale agricultural systems operating in drained swamp that still flourish in Irian Jaya at the Paniai (Wissel) Lakes and in the Baliem valley, to supplement the archaeological work in the Wahgi where such systems had once but no longer existed. He felt, however, that his ethnographic background was too slim and he chose instead to do work for which he was better trained, the study of resource utilization over time in a side valley off the Wahgi close to the site of the Department's swamp excavations. The beautifully designed project that he carried out is described in the following article by him. It is based on a seminar he gave at ANU shortly before his death. I should like to make two points about this project that the article does not stress. One is the wealth of plant materials recovered from the excavations by wet sieving every ounce of excavated soil, when the nearest water source was sometimes some hundreds of precipitous yards away. The abundant pandanus seeds found in all levels of the excavated sites and their change over time from thick-walled, allegedly wild, to thin-walled, allegedly cultivated, varieties may hold important evidence for the chronology of horticulture in New Guinea and the question of whether an independent development of plant domestication took place there. The second point I want to make is that against his expectations he found himself to be a born and insatiable ethnographic fieldworker. With his Wurup friends he surveyed and recorded all the resource zones in terms of which his selection of sites for excavation was made and took part in all the activities of food procurement and processing that were responsible for the archaeological evidence that he set out to recover and interpret. A practical man of quiet and simple tastes, he was as settled in his bush house at Wurup as in his rural retreat near Canberra. He was unassertive, tolerant and deeply sympathetic and made undemanding and unobtrusive friendships with people in both homes. He is a loss to them and to his profession. His colleagues at the University of Calgary are establishing an academic prize in his memory. To his colleagues at ANU falls the responsibility of ensuring that the important work of this promising young scholar is brought to completion.     

Flora was His Interest and Prime Course of Study: A Botanical Career for W.E. Ricker Disappears

Synopsis Bill Ricker’s career went through many twists in his academic years. He had taken botany in his senior matriculation year at high school and he had collected over 100 species of flora before commencement of university life. At the conclusion of his first university year, he set out over the summer to collect a much larger sample of species, primarily from the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence ecoregion, to fulfil a requirement for a second year botany course (spermatophytes). He identified about 390 species, and some 254 were collected and pooled with those from previous years to make a final submission of 354 spermatophyte species. Field plant identification continued in each academic year thereafter, in concert with collections and identifications of aquatic invertebrates in his summer projects while under the employment of the Ontario Fisheries Research Laboratory. At the conclusion of his undergraduate years, Bill had taken more courses in botany than in zoology, and it was the summer employment that had really prepared him for postgraduate work in fisheries biology, which was ecologically oriented. When Bill left Ontario in the autumn of 1931 he had identified over 600 species of plants, excluding lower cryptogams, but including many aquatic species of higher plants. In western North America Bill’s botanical career began at Cultus Lake in 1931. He again studied all aspects of the basin while employed with the federal government, and from the work he assembled a Ph.D. thesis. At the time of thesis completion he had identified over 300 species of flora, including alpine plants at timberline, 1500 – 1800 m above lake level, and planktonic algae in its water column. In 1939, after more field fisheries work in the Fraser River basin of British Columbia, Bill accepted a position with the biological staff at Indiana University. In this period which concluded in 1950 he identified another 50 – 110 species of flora, all in the Carolinian ecoregion, and hitherto not seen by him. Considering all floral classes, Bill’s eastern North American repertoire had by then added up to 791 species, representative of more than 112 families of plants. Returning west for the remainder of his life, new identifications elsewhere added to his Cultus Lake list which slowly added up to about 1000 species for the west coastal region of North America. Flora was also identified elsewhere in the mid-continental region of North America, in Eurasia where the Abisko region of Lappland was a highlight, and in South America and New Zealand. Records of his botanical prowess, were kept primarily in his diaries, which began in 1923 and were maintained consistently to the end of 1934, and thereafter intermittently to 1949. The diaries reveal that his career as a budding botanist was subtly hijacked by a wily Professor W.H.K. Harkness in the rival Biology Department who out-manoeuvred Drs. R.B. Thompson and R.A. Sifton in the Botany Department. The former always managed to employ Bill in summer and keep him occupied in the department’s labs during the autumn and winter and spring, tying up any free time when the botanist had approached him on lab work. Certainly, the botany courses taken and which he excelled at were more appropriate for his aquatic ecological pursuits. Salesmanship won the day for the zoologists, but Bill was a life-long botanist regardless of whatever else he studied or managed throughout his professional career. The last days of his life had a botanical conclusion.     

Linnaeus's natural and artificial arrangements of plants

Linnaeus's artificial and natural arrangements of plants are examined using a Spearman rank coefficient (which is explained) on his presentations of his own and others' arrangements in the Classes plantarum and elsewhere. There is little alteration in his successive artificial arrangements. In contrast, between 1751 and 1764 his natural arrangements changed considerably, partly in the sequences of genera within orders but mostly by rearrangement of the orders. Comparison with Cesalpino's and Ray's natural arrangements, using the longest-recognized natural groups as signposts, suggests that Linnaeus in his latest natural arrangement (1764) approximated more closely to Ray's. Examination of Linnaeus's successive treatments of certain groups (palms, Zingiberaceae, Hydrocharis-Stratiotes-Vallisneria) and of Giseke's exposition of Linnaeus's lectures on natural groups (1792) shows that Linnaeus was much influenced by habitus and vegetative characters as well as those of the fructification. He recognized orders consisting of a chain of genera linked successively by overall affinity and without any single diagnostic character. Where possible, he preferred characters of the fructification and his ‘secret’ consulting of the habitus is explained as secondary to such characters. It is suggested that in his latest arrangement he approximated more to a scala naturae, as he probably did in zoology about the same time. Within his artificial arrangements Linnaeus kept to sequences of genera as natural as possible. He realized that some groups in his natural arrangements were still artificial, and his aphorism that all genera and species are natural, classes and orders part natural and part artificial, refers to his and others' practice until the natural system could be completed. It is not a statement of the essential natures of these ranks. Linnaeus's distinction in practice between natural and artificial arrangements was less clear-cut than Sachs believed. Linnaeus's rejection of the ancient tree/herb division was empirical, not a reasoned repudiation of an a priori grouping. The tree/herb division could be upheld in his day as obviously natural, not merely accepted on authority.     

Hooker and islands1

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911), friend and scientific confidant of Charles Darwin, lectured in 1866 on ‘Insular floras’ at the Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. His interest and knowledge of islands had been aroused when he travelled to the Antarctic aboard the Erebus under Sir James Clark Ross from 1839–43. On his return, Darwin passed on to Hooker the botanical collections he had made on the Beagle voyage, including those from the Galapagos. Hooker's conclusions from these and from his own material and experiences were important to Darwin as he developed the ideas that culminated in the publication of the Origin of Species. The 1866 lecture provided a focus for subsequent and informative studies on evolution, and islands continue to provide invaluable natural laboratories for evolutionary biology and genetics. © 2009 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2009, 96 , 462–481.     

Current status and distribution of golden jackals Canis aureus in Europe

• 1 The golden jackal Canis aureus is one of the most widespread canid species with a range covering areas of central, eastern and southern Europe, northern Africa and parts of Asia. Distribution of the golden jackal in Europe has been dynamic, including dramatic declines (until the 1960s), recovery (1960s and 1970s) and expansion (from the early 1980s onwards).
• 2 We present up‐to‐date information on golden jackal status in Europe and range expansion.
• 3 For data collection we reviewed the scientific literature and contacted scientists from the relevant countries. We distinguished between vagrant animals and established populations.
• 4 In the last decade, there has been an increase in jackal records in areas where the species has not been reported before. Increased presence is recorded northwards and westwards of the distribution range of the golden jackal, specifically in Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia. In Austria, the first case of reproduction was confirmed in 2007; reproduction has also recently been reported in Italy.
• 5 Results indicate an ongoing expansion in Europe's jackal population, with a particular spread of the Balkan populations towards central Europe. Although there are numerous reports of sightings, only few originate from confirmed sources and in many areas status is unknown or vague. There is a general lack of ecological data and almost no information on ecological consequences associated with the golden jackal expansion.

     

The Rhaetian flora of Rögla,northern Scania,Sweden

Abstract: Rögla is the northernmost locality yielding Mesozoic plant fossils in Scania, southern Sweden, and is one of the northernmost Rhaetian assemblages in Europe. The assemblage consists of over 500 specimens collected 50–60 years ago, of which 139 yielded identifiable plant remains referable to 15 plant species; another 19 specimens are tentatively assigned to four species because of their fragmentary preservation. The flora includes sphenophytes, ferns, cycads, bennettitaleans, seed ferns of uncertain alliance, conifers and some leaf remains that are tentatively assigned to ginkgophytes based on their epidermal anatomy. The species‐level composition of the assemblage is consistent with a Rhaetian age and is similar to well‐known floras from nearby Höganäs and Bjuv, except for the absence of cycads belonging to Nilssonia, which are very common in most other Scanian floras. The fossil assemblage is interpreted to derive from multi‐storey vegetation occupying moist habitats on a coastal plain. Strong affinities are evident with the coeval floras of Jameson Land, Greenland, reinforcing the concept of a distinctive North Atlantic floristic sub‐province at the close of the Triassic.     

Alfred Newton's contribution to ornithology: a conservative quest for facts rather than grand theories

Alfred Newton (1829–1907) was a founding member of the British Ornithologists’ Union, served as editor of The Ibis, and became one of the best‐known British ornithologists of the nineteenth‐century. Between 1855 and 1864 he travelled in Europe and North America, making a trip to Iceland in 1858 with John Wolley in search of information about the Great Auk Pinguinus impennis. In 1866 Newton obtained the chair of Zoology and Comparative Zoology at the University of Cambridge, where he remained for rest of his career. An unenthusiastic teacher, Newton nevertheless encouraged successive generations of young ornithologists through the soirées he held in his college rooms. Newton published extensively, but his most significant publication was the Dictionary of Birds (1896). Newton's death marked the beginning of the end of a long period in which scientific ornithology comprised little more than taxonomy and nomenclature, although Newton was also instrumental in initiating conservation legislation. Extremely conservative in most aspects of his life, Newton was nevertheless the first ornithologist to appreciate the significance of natural selection. He therefore constitutes an important figure in an era of ornithology that immediately precedes the current interest in field ornithology.     

Species co‐occurrence analysis: pairwise versus matrix‐level approaches

Veech (2013, Global Ecology and Biogeography, 22 , 252–260) introduced a formula to calculate the probability of two species co‐occurring in various sites under the assumption of statistical independence between the two distributional patterns. He presented his model as a new procedure, a ‘pairwise approach’, different from analyses of whole presence–absence matrices to examine patterns of co‐occurrence. Here I show that: (1) Veech's method is identical to Fisher's exact test, a standard procedure for measuring the statistical association between two discrete variables; (2) in a broad sense, the pairwise approach is very similar to early analyses of spatial association, such as the one advanced by Forbes in 1907; (3) implicit in Veech's formula is a sampling scheme that is indistinguishable from well‐known matrix‐level null models that randomize the distribution of species among equiprobable sites; (4) pairwise co‐occurrence patterns can be analysed using any matrix‐level null model, so pairwise comparisons are not limited to using Veech's formula. The methodological distinction that Veech proposed between pairwise and matrix‐level approaches does not in fact exist, although the conceptual distinction between the two approaches is still a debated topic.     

Sizing‐up the Competition: Factors Modulating Male Display Behavior During Mate Competition

When competing for mates, males of many species use cues from their rivals to evaluate their chances of success. Signaling behavior is a vital component of male–male contests and courtship, and may inform males of a rival's quality or intentions. We used eastern fence lizards (Sceloporus undulatus) to investigate how the time a male spent signaling during mate competition is influenced by his quality, his rival's quality relative to his own, and the value of a contested female. Furthermore, we examined how a male's behavioral response to a competitor's signals would be mediated by his relative quality. We simulated natural encounters by allowing two males to compete over a single female in the laboratory. We measured the time males spent performing two types of displays (pushups and shudders) and categorized male behavioral responses to rival pushup and shudder displays. Time spent signaling was not related to a male's absolute quality (body and head size, condition, and badge sizes), or his quality relative to that of his rival, although males did spend more time performing pushups when competing over females in better condition. Male behavior was also influenced by his rival's signals, such that males of relatively lower quality than their opponents were more likely to aggressively respond to rival pushups and shudders. We discuss these results with respect to the evolution and function of signaling behavior in courtship and male–male contests.     

SYSTEMATIC REVISION OF THE SUCKER CREEK AND TROUT CREEK MIOCENE FLORAS OF SOUTHEASTERN OREGON

Graham, Alan. (U. Michigan, Ann Arbor.) Systematic revision of the Sucker Creek and Trout Creek Miocene floras of southeastern Oregon. Amer. Jour. Bot. 50(9): 921–936. Ilus. 1963.—The Sucker Creek flora is preserved in shales of volcanic origin exposed in Malheur County, southeastern Oregon. A study of the flora has been made and the systematic revisions presented. The following new species are described: Osmunda claytonites, Davallia solidités, Shepherdia argen∗∗∗teaites, Magnolia ovulata, Anoda suckerensis, and Platanus youngii. A new combination, Hiraea knowltoni (Berry), is proposed. Additional synonymies, Incertae Sedis, and other taxonomic changes are included. The Trout Creek flora is to the west of Sucker Creek in Harney County, southeastern Oregon. The fossils are preserved in diatomite. Four new species are described: Equisetum miocenicum, Gossypium arnoldii, Urena miocenica, and Spiraea miocenica. New combinations are Pteridium calabazensis (Dorf), and Nymphaea rotunda (Arnold). A revised species list is given for the 2 floras. The Sucker Creek flora contains 47 families, 60 genera, and 69 species, presently identified. The Trout Creek flora contains 29 families, 51 genera, and 75 species. The distributional, ecologic, and geologic interpretations of the 2 floras will be presented in a subsequent publication.     

Early Carboniferous Flora in Southeastern Henan

The fossil plants described and illustrated were collected from the Yangshan Formation in Shangcheng and Gushi districts of southeastern part of Henan Province, namely, Lepidodendron cf. aolungpylukense Sze, L. shanyangense Wu et He, L. . cf. subrhombicum Gu et Zhi, L. sp. a, L. sp. b, Bothrodendron sp. a, B. sp. b, Lepidostrobus ? sp., Stigmaria ficoides (Sternberg) Brongniart, Archaeocalamites scrobiculatus (Schlotheim) Seward, Cardiopteridium spetsbergense Nathorst, Triph yllopteris ? sp., Rhodeopteridium hsianghsiangense (Sze) Zhang, Zhao et Wu, Paripteris cf. pseudogigantea (Potonie) Gothan, P. ? sp., Cordaites schenkii Halle, Cardiocarpus cordai (Geinitz) Gu et Zhi and Carpolithus sp., including 18 species in 11 genera. They belonged to Lycopsida, Sphenopsida, Filices, Pteridospermopsida, Cordaitopsida and Semina Gymnospermarum respectively , in which Lepidophytic plants of Lycopsida were the dominanance. The Yangshan Formation flora contains some typical Early Carboniferous elements, such as Archaeocalamites scrobiculatus, Cardiopteridium spetsbergense and Rhodeopteridium hsianghsiangense, which were fairly common from Visean to early Namurian; however, it also includes certain lepidophytic plants of the Cathaysian type, such as Lepidodendron cf. aolungpylukense, L. shanyangense and L. cf. subrhombicum, etc. On the basis of the floral composition, the geological age of the Yangshan Formation flora belonged to the late Early Carboniferous epoch, corresponding approximately to late Visean to early Namurian A. The present flora could be compared with contemporaneous floras from eastern Gansu, Shanyang of Shaanxi, South China and western Malaysia, which was closest to the Shanyang flora. In addition, the authors also discussed the distribution of late Early Carboniferous floras in other parts of the world.     

Shigeo Yamanouchi (1876–1973): A noted Japanese phycologist

Dr Shigeo Yamanouchi was born in Yamagata Prefecture and completed his secondary education at Tokyo Higher Normal School (THNS) where he was also a professor until 1904. In 1905, he went to the University of Chicago in the USA and earned a PhD in Botany in 1907. He is best noted for his excellent research on the cytology and life histories of the marine algae Polysiphonia, Fucus, Cutleria, Aglaozonia and Zanardinia, published between 1906 and 1921 while he was associated with the University of Chicago. He also described the freshwater green alga Hydrodictyon africanum. In 1910, he returned to THNS as a Professor and wrote several botanical textbooks, receiving his DSc degree in 1911 and traveling in England and the USA as an advisor for the Japanese Ministry of Education during 1911–1913. For much of the time between 1920 and 1942 he remained in the USA, returning to Japan following the advent of World War II, During his later life, he was in obscurity, and sadly there is very little recorded of his activities in the post-war years. He died in Tokyo on 2 February 1973 at the age of 96.     

Compositional similarity among urban floras within and across continents: biogeographical consequences of human-mediated biotic interchange

Anthropogenic activities have weakened biogeographical barriers to dispersal resulting in the global spread and establishment of an increasing number of non‐native species. We examine the broad‐scale consequences of this phenomenon based on an analysis of compositional similarity across urban floras in the northeastern United States and Europe. We test the prediction that homogenization of species composition is uniquely defined within vs. between continents based on the time and place of origin of non‐native species. In this case, for archaeophytes and neophytes in Europe (introduced before and after ad 1500, respectively) and non‐native species originating from within and outside the United States. More species in urban floras were shared within than between continents. Within Europe, archaeophytes shared more species across urban floras compared with neophytes; strong associations were not observed for non‐native species across US urban floras. Between the two continents, non‐native species in the United States that originated from outside the United States shared species primarily with archaeophytes but also with European natives and neophytes. These results suggest that the direction of biotic interchange was unidirectional with species moving primarily from Europe to the United States with archaeophytes playing a primary and non‐native species originating from outside the two continents a secondary role as a homogenizing source. Archaeophytes, based on combination of biogeographical, evolutionary, and ecological factors in association with a long history of anthropogenic influence, appear to have played a prominent role in the continental and intercontinental homogenization of species composition. This suggests that the uniform homogenization of the Earth's biota is not imminent and is presently directed by a combination of biogeographically defined anthropogenic and historical factors.     

Technical note: Chromosomal and mtDNA analysis of Oliver

Oliver is an African ape whose species identity has been debated in the popular media and by various scientists since the early 1970s. Although decisive morphological data has never been adduced on Oliver, many reports indicated that Oliver was morphologically unusual for a chimpanzee, particularly in his habitual bipedal posture. In addition, his diploid chromosome number was reported to be inconsistent with either human or chimpanzee, but instead intermediate between those species. We performed standard chromosomal studies which demonstrated that Oliver had the diploid number expected for a chimpanzee (2N = 48) and that the banding patterns of his chromosomes were typical for a chimpanzee and different from both humans and bonobos. We also sequenced a 312 bp region of his mitochondrial DNA D-loop region. Results indicated a high sequence homology to the Central African variety of chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes troglodytes. The highest percent homology was observed with a previously characterized specimen from Gabon, strongly suggesting that Oliver originated from this region. Am J Phys Anthropol 105:395–403, 1998. © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.