Synecology of Bornean primates. I. A test for interspecific interactions in spatial distribution of five species

In a 15-month study of anthropoid primates in the forest of eastern Borneo, observers made 1230 contacts with groups of five different species within a study area of approximately 3 km². A test of the hypothesis that there is no effect on the presence of one species by the presence of another (using the method of partial correlation) shows that in every pair of species the presence of one has a negative effect on the presence of the other, and that in seven of ten pairs the hypothesis may be rejected at the 97% level of confidence or better. Three cases in which the hypothesis cannot be rejected are found to have biological meaning: behavioral data show that niche separation of the pairs of species is such that their distributions should be independent. In spite of widely divergent feeding and locomotor adaptations, it is apparent that the species are competing for use of the forest.     

Nuclear reassortment between vegetative mycelia in natural populations of the basidiomycete Heterobasidion annosum

Somatic incompatibility is not an absolute block to nuclear exchange between incompatible mycelia of the basidiomycete Heterobasidion annosum in vitro. Under laboratory conditions new heterokaryotic genotypes can be isolated from the gap between incompatible heterokaryons, and nuclear migration between pairs of heterokaryons grown in Petri dishes has been observed. In this study, we test the hypothesis of nuclear transfer and reassortment between heterokaryotic mycelia in natural populations of H. annosum. We developed six microsatellite markers to genotype nuclei populating 21 somatically incompatible mycelia of H. annosum isolated from a single stump of Picea abies, and found that the detected heterokaryons share nuclei; 10 of the nuclear haplotypes were found in more than one mycelium. In one isolate, four nuclear types were found in the same mycelium. These findings indicate that new heterokaryons can be formed as a result of nuclear reassortment between incompatible heterokaryotic mycelia in nature.     

Plant–soil biota interactions and spatial distribution of black cherry in its native and invasive ranges

One explanation for the higher abundance of invasive species in their non‐native than native ranges is the escape from natural enemies. But there are few experimental studies comparing the parallel impact of enemies (or competitors and mutualists) on a plant species in its native and invaded ranges, and release from soil pathogens has been rarely investigated. Here we present evidence showing that the invasion of black cherry (Prunus serotina) into north‐western Europe is facilitated by the soil community. In the native range in the USA, the soil community that develops near black cherry inhibits the establishment of neighbouring conspecifics and reduces seedling performance in the greenhouse. In contrast, in the non‐native range, black cherry readily establishes in close proximity to conspecifics, and the soil community enhances the growth of its seedlings. Understanding the effects of soil organisms on plant abundance will improve our ability to predict and counteract plant invasions.     

Integrating demography,dispersal and interspecific interactions into bird distribution models

Species’ ranges are primarily limited by the physiological (abiotic) tolerance of the species, described by their fundamental niche. Additionally, demographic processes, dispersal, and interspecific interactions with other species are shaping species distributions, resulting in the realised niche. Understanding the complex interplay between these drivers is vital for making robust biodiversity predictions to novel environments. Correlative species distribution models have been widely used to predict biodiversity response but also remain criticised, as they are not able to properly disentangle the abiotic and biotic drivers shaping species’ niches. Recent developments have thus focussed on 1) integrating demography and dispersal into species distribution models, and on 2) integrating interspecific interactions. Here, I review recent demographic and multi‐species modelling approaches and discuss critical aspects of these models that remain underexplored in general and in respect to birds, for example, the complex life histories of birds and other animals as well as the scale dependence of interspecific interactions. I conclude by formulating modelling guidelines for integrating the abiotic and biotic processes that limit species’ ranges, which will help to disentangle the complex roles of demography, dispersal and interspecific interactions in shaping species niches. Throughout, I pinpoint complexities of avian life cycles that are critical for consideration in the models and identify data requirements for operationalizing the different modelling steps.     

长白山落叶阔叶混交林的物种多样性、种群空间分布格局及种间关联性研究

根据在吉林省蛟河实验管理局1 hm²落叶阔叶混交林样地调查结果,对落叶阔叶混交林的群落结构、物种多样性、主要树种的空间分布格局以及树木种群的种间关联进行了研究.结果表明,树木种群优势程度不明显;乔木、灌木、草本的均匀度指数、生态优势度指数都较低.对5个主要乔木种群的空间格局均呈现聚集分布;15个主要树种之间有14个种对存在着显著的种间关联,一个种独立;树种之间正关联的种对少,关联强度低,而负关联多且较高,群落结构组成不稳定,处于软阔叶林向硬阔叶林直至红松阔叶林过渡的阶段.     

筛胸梳爪叩甲幼虫寄主调查及其土壤空间分布

对安吉竹博园内筛胸梳爪叩甲Melanotus cribricolls(Faldermann)的寄主危害进行调查,主要调查竹种隶属于刚竹属(Phyllostachys)、矢竹属(Pseudosasa)、大明竹属(Pleioblastus)、唐竹属(Sinobambusa)、短穗竹属(Brachystachyum)、少穗竹属(Oligostachyum)和箣竹属(Bambusa),共7个属,包括47个竹种,其中41种寄主都不同程度地受到筛胸梳爪叩甲幼虫期的危害,新发现受害寄主30余种。据筛胸梳爪叩甲幼虫在5个竹种林区间的空间分布表明:筛胸梳爪叩甲较大体型的幼虫在竹林土壤中主要为聚集分布。调查过程发现,除筛胸梳爪叩甲幼虫对竹种的危害以外,竹笋夜蛾Apamea spp.也是导致退笋的主要虫害之一,二者一并成为目前竹博园内竹笋退笋的主要害虫。此外,园内竹种也受到浙江栉蝠蛾Bipectilus zhejiangensi、叶甲、白蚁和腐生蝇的侵害。鉴于筛胸梳爪叩甲幼虫危害的竹种范围比以往报道的有扩大的趋势,在竹种移植、土壤改良及敏感品种的选育应考虑到这些方面。     

青藏高原草地管理方式对土壤养分及其空间分布的影响

草地承包制度实施后,青藏高原地区出现了单户与联户两种草地管理方式.本研究以西藏那曲县为研究区域,对两种管理方式的土壤养分及其空间分布进行了对比研究.结果表明: 联户土壤有机碳、全氮和全磷含量分别为84.31、6.87和0.59 g·kg^-1,均显著高于单户(73.57、6.07和0.54 g·kg^-1);垂直空间上,除单户0～15 cm土层土壤全磷的变异系数与15～30 cm土层无显著差异外,单户与联户15～30 cm土层土壤pH、有机碳和全氮的变异系数均显著大于0～15 cm土层;水平空间上,单户土壤有机碳和全氮变异系数分别为25.7%和23.5%,显著大于联户的19.3%和18.6%.与联户相比,单户土壤养分水平空间上的不均匀分布更容易造成土壤养分流失.     

北京暖温带次生林种群分布格局与种间空间关联性

种群分布格局和种间空间关联性研究有助于深入理解物种共存机制.本研究在北京地区5个1 ha典型暖温带森林样地,在0-50 m尺度范围内综合分析了常见种的种群分布格局及成年树种问的空间关联性.研究发现:(1)所有检验的物种都表现了聚集格局,主要发生在较小(0-15 m)的尺度范围内,并且同种聚集强度峰值普遍出现在目标个体周围1 m的距离内;在>15 m的较大尺度上,随着尺度增加,随机和规则格局成为物种分布的主要形式;(2)种间不相关联的比例高(～50%),即使种间存在显著的关联性,也是以隔离和部分重叠为主要的关联形式;很少的物种对(～4%)呈混合分布.种子扩散限制和牛境异质性在某种程度上解释了种群普遍聚集的格局,种群聚集分布又促使种间分布不相关联,或者种间呈现隔离和部分重叠格局,反映了物种分布与生境存在紧密的关联性.另外,种间隔离的格局会阻止种间个体相互竞争.然而,由于同种个体聚集分布,密度制约成为调节种群分布的主要形式.本结果将有助于揭示森林群落物种共存的潜在维持机制.     

氨基酸和霉菌水提物对深层发酵桦褐孔菌菌丝体黄酮积累及其抗氧化活性的影响

黄酮类化合物是桦褐孔菌菌丝体中多酚类化合物的重要组成部分,也是该菌治疗众多疾病的有效成分之一。然而人工培养桦褐孔菌黄酮等酚类化合物积累甚少,导致药理活性的明显下降。为此,我们研究了3种氨基酸和4种霉菌水提物对深层发酵桦褐孔菌黄酮的积累及其抗氧化能力的影响。在所试验的3种氨基酸和4种霉菌水提物中,L-酪氨酸,黄曲霉和毛霉水提物能有效地增加该菌黄酮的积累。人工培养菌体中的黄酮至少由4种黄酮苷组成,苷元分别是槲皮素、柚皮素、山奈酚和异鼠李素。深层发酵菌丝体具有一定的抗氧化能力,并与总黄酮的含量呈正相关。由L-酪氨酸,黄曲霉和毛霉水提物调控生长的桦褐孔菌菌丝体,能有效地清除超氧阴离子、羟基自由基和DPPH自由基。     

Altered activities of extracellular soil enzymes by the interacting global environmental changes

Soil enzymes are crucial in mediating ecosystems' responses to environmental drivers, so that the comprehension of their sensitivity to drivers of global change can help make predictions of future scenarios and design tailored interventions of biomanipulation. Drivers of global change usually act in combination of two or more, and indirect effects of one driver acting through modification of another one often occur, yet most of both manipulative and meta-analysis studies available tend to focus on the direct effect of one single driver on the activity of specific soil enzymes. One of the biggest challenges is, therefore, represented by the difficulty in assessing the interactions between different drivers, due to the complexity of disentangling the single direct effects from the indirect and combined ones. In this review, after elucidating the general mechanisms of soil enzyme production and activity regulation, we display the state-of-the-art knowledge on direct, indirect and combined effects of the main drivers of global change on soil enzyme activities, identify gaps in knowledge and challenges from research, plus we analyse how this can reverberate in the future of biomanipulation techniques for the improvement of ecosystem services. We conclude that qualitative but not quantitative outcomes can be predicted for some interactions such as warming + drought or warming + CO₂, while for other ones, the results are controversial: future basic research will have to center on this holistic approach. A general trend toward the overall increase of soil enzyme activities and acceleration of biogeochemical cycles will persist, until an inflection will be caused by factors such as future shifts in microbial communities and changes in carbon use efficiency. Applied research will develop toward the refinement of “in situ” analytical systems for the study of soil enzyme activities and the support of bioengineering for the better tailoring of interventions of biomanipulation.     

Transmembrane domain interactions affect the stability of the extracellular domain of the human NTPDase 2

Human NTPDase2 and chicken NTPDase8 are cell surface nucleotidases that contain two transmembrane domains (TMD) and five apyrase conserved regions (ACRs). ACR1 is located near the N-terminal TMD whereas ACR5 is located near the C-terminal TMD. The human NTPDase2 activity is decreased by low concentration of NP-40 and at temperatures higher than 37 °C, and undergoes substrate inactivation, whereas the chicken NTPDase8 activity is not. When freed from membrane anchorage, the soluble human NTPDase2 is no longer inactivated by detergents, high temperature, and substrate. These characteristics are retained in the hu-ck ACR1,5 chimera in which the extracellular domain is anchored to the membrane by the two TMDs of the chicken NTPDase8. The hu-ck ACR1,5 chimera is the first chimeric NTPDase reported that shows a resistance to membrane perturbation and substrate inactivation. Our results indicate that the strengths of interaction of the respective TMD pairs of the human NTPDase2 and chicken NTPDase8 determine their different responses to membrane perturbation and substrate.     

Bromeliads affect the interactions and composition of invertebrates on their support tree

Individual species can have profound effects on ecological communities, but, in hyperdiverse systems, it can be challenging to determine the underlying eco     

Lignin-modifying enzymes of the white rot basidiomycete Ganoderma lucidum

Ganoderma lucidum, a white rot basidiomycete widely distributed worldwide, was studied for the production of the lignin-modifying enzymes laccase, manganese-dependent peroxidase (MnP), and lignin peroxidase (LiP). Laccase levels observed in high-nitrogen (HN; 24 mM N) shaken cultures were much greater than those seen in low-nitrogen (2.4 mM N), malt extract, or wood-grown cultures and those reported for most other white rot fungi to date. Laccase production was readily seen in cultures grown with pine or poplar (100-mesh-size ground wood) as the sole carbon and energy source. Cultures containing both pine and poplar showed 5- to 10-fold-higher levels of laccase than cultures containing pine or poplar alone. Since syringyl units are structural components important in poplar lignin and other hardwoods but much less so in pine lignin and other softwoods, pine cultures were supplemented with syringic acid, and this resulted in laccase levels comparable to those seen in pine-plus-poplar cultures. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of concentrated extracellular culture fluid from HN cultures showed two laccase activity bands (M(r) of 40,000 and 66, 000), whereas isoelectric focusing revealed five major laccase activity bands with estimated pIs of 3.0, 4.25, 4.5, 4.8, and 5.1. Low levels of MnP activity ( approximately 100 U/liter) were detected in poplar-grown cultures but not in cultures grown with pine, with pine plus syringic acid, or in HN medium. No LiP activity was seen in any of the media tested; however, probing the genomic DNA with the LiP cDNA (CLG4) from the white rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium showed distinct hybridization bands suggesting the presence of lip-like sequences in G. lucidum.     

Larval dispersal dampens population fluctuation and shapes the interspecific spatial distribution patterns of rocky intertidal gastropods

Many marine benthic invertebrates pass through a planktonic larval stage whereas others spend their entire lifetimes in benthic habitats. Recent studies indicate that non‐planktonic species show relatively greater fine‐scale patchiness than do planktonic species, but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. One hypothesis for such a difference is that larval dispersal enhances the connectivity of populations and buffers population fluctuations and reduces local extinction risk, consequently increasing patch occupancy rate and decreasing spatial patchiness. If this mechanism does indeed play a significant role, then the distribution of non‐planktonic species should be more aggregated – both temporally and spatially – than the distribution of species with a planktonic larval stage. To test this prediction, we compared 1) both the spatial and the temporal abundance–occupancy relationships and 2) both the spatial and the temporal mean–variance relationships of population size across species of rocky intertidal gastropods with differing dispersive traits from the Pacific coast of Japan. We found that, compared to planktonic species, non‐planktonic species exhibited 1) a smaller occupancy rate for any given level of mean population size and 2) greater variations in population size, both spatially and temporally. This suggests that the macroecological patterns observed in this study (i.e. the abundance–occupancy relationships and mean–variance relationships of population size across species) were shaped by the effect of larval dispersal dampening population fluctuation, which works over both space and time. While it has been widely assumed that larval dispersal enhances population fluctuations, larval dispersal may in fact enhance the connectively of populations and buffer population fluctuations and reduce local extinction risks.     

Energy-generating enzymes of Burkholderia cepacia and their interactions with macrophages

We previously demonstrated that several clinical and environmental isolates of Burkholderia cepacia secreted ATP-utilizing enzymes to the medium; the secretion of these enzymes by cystic fibrosis lung isolate strain 38 was shown to be greatly enhanced in the presence of alpha(2)-macroglobulin. Fractionation of the growth medium of cystic fibrosis isolate strain 71 belonging to genomovar I demonstrated the presence of two additional proteins, homologues of Pseudomonas aeruginosa azurin and cytochrome c(551), which are normally involved in electron transfer during denitrification. A Q-Sepharose column flowthrough fraction of the growth medium of B. cepacia strain 71 enriched with the azurin and cytochrome c(551) homologues triggered apoptosis in macrophages and mast cells, leading to their death. Incubation of the Q-Sepharose column flowthrough fraction with antiazurin and anti-cytochrome c(551) antibodies greatly reduced cell death. We cloned and hyperexpressed a gene from B. cepacia strain 71 that encodes the homologue of P. aeruginosa azurin. Such azurin homologues were detected in the growth medium of several strains belonging to genomovars I, III, and VI but not in the growth medium of strains belonging to other genomovars. The growth medium of the strains that elaborated the azurin homologue had high cytotoxicity towards macrophages. Purified azurin homologue was shown to induce apoptosis in macrophages in a caspase-dependent manner and was localized in both the cytosol and nucleus when incubated with or microinjected into macrophages. This is an interesting example of the interaction of a bacterial protein normally involved in cellular energetics with macrophages to effect their cell death.     

Species distribution models contribute to determine the effect of climate and interspecific interactions in moving hybrid zones

Climate is a major factor delimiting species’ distributions. However, biotic interactions may also be prominent in shaping geographical ranges, especially for parapatric species forming hybrid zones. Determining the relative effect of each factor and their interaction of the contact zone location has been difficult due to the lack of broad scale environmental data. Recent developments in species distribution modelling (SDM) now allow disentangling the relative contributions of climate and species’ interactions in hybrid zones and their responses to future climate change. We investigated the moving hybrid zone between the breeding ranges of two parapatric passerines in Europe. We conducted SDMs representing the climatic conditions during the breeding season. Our results show a large mismatch between the realized and potential distributions of the two species, suggesting that interspecific interactions, not climate, account for the present location of the contact zone. The SDM scenarios show that the southerly distributed species, Hippolais polyglotta, might lose large parts of its southern distribution under climate change, but a similar gain of novel habitat along the hybrid zone seems unlikely, because interactions with the other species (H. icterina) constrain its range expansion. Thus, whenever biotic interactions limit range expansion, species may become ‘trapped’ if range loss due to climate change is faster than the movement of the contact zone. An increasing number of moving hybrid zones are being reported, but the proximate causes of movement often remain unclear. In a global context of climate change, we call for more interest in their interactions with climate change.     

Unpreferred plants affect patch choice and spatial distribution of European brown hares

Many herbivore species prefer to forage on patches of intermediate biomass. Plant quality and forage efficiency are predicted to decrease with increasing plant standing crop which explains the lower preference of the herbivore. However, often is ignored that on the long-term, plant species composition is predicted to change with increasing plant standing crop. The amount of low-quality, unpreferred food plants increases with increasing plant standing crop. In the present study the effects of unpreferred plants on patch choice and distribution of European brown hare in a salt-marsh system were studied. In one experiment, unpreferred plants were removed from plots. In the second experiment, plots were planted with different densities of an unpreferred artificial plant. Removal of unpreferred plants increased hare-grazing pressure more than fivefold compared to unmanipulated plots. Planting of unpreferred plants reduced hare-grazing pressure, with a significant reduction of grazing already occurring at low unpreferred plant density. Spatial distribution of hares within this salt-marsh system was related to spatial arrangement of unpreferred plants. Hare-grazing intensity decreased strongly with increasing abundance of unpreferred plants despite a high abundance of principal food plants. The results of this study indicate that plant species replacement is an important factor determining patch choice and spatial distribution of hares next to changing plant quality. Increasing abundance of unpreferred plant species can strengthen the decreasing patch quality with increasing standing crop and can decrease grazing intensity when preferred food plants are still abundantly present.