One hundred and twenty-five years of the Annals of Botany. Part 1: the first 50 years (1887–1936)

Background The Annals of Botany is a peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing papers on a wide range of topics in plant biology. It first appeared in 1887, making it the oldest continuously published botanical title. The present article gives a historical account of events leading to the founding of the Journal and of its development over the first 50 years.Sources of Information Much of the content is drawn from the Journal’s own records and from extensive Minutes, financial accounts, personal letters and notes relating to the Annals of Botany that were repatriated from University College, University of London in 1999. Documents held at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and at the Oxford University Press Museum were also consulted.Content Emphasis is placed on the individuals who instigated, edited and managed the Annals of Botany up to 1937, especially the nine founding members of the Journal and the background that brought them together and motivated them to start the Annals of Botany. A falling out between two of the founders in 1899 is highlighted since not only did this threaten the Journal’s future but also gives much insight into the personalities of those most closely involved in the Journal during its formative years. The article also examines the way the Journal was funded and how it dealt with its publisher (the University of Oxford’s Clarendon Press), turned itself into a registered company (the Annals of Botany Company) and coped with the travails of the First World War, currency inflation and the Great Depression. Plans to re-start the Journal as a New Series, beginning in 1937, are discussed in the context of the competition the Annals of Botany then faced from younger journals.     

A smelling trip into the past: the influence of synthetic materials on the history of perfumery

Contemporary perfumery has its roots in the work of the past, and many of the perfumes from this time have long since disappeared. What follows is a short account of some of the most famous perfumes from the past which have been inspired by the novel synthetic materials of the time. These important creations include, ‘Fougère Royale’ by Houbigant (1884) containing coumarin ( 1 ), ‘Jicky’ by Guerlain (1889) containing vanillin ( 2 ) and linalool ( 3 ), ‘Vera Violetta’ by Roger & Gallet (1892) containing α‐ and β‐ionone ( 4 and 5 , resp.), ‘Trèfle Incarnat’ by Piver (1898) containing isoamyl salicylate ( 6 ), ‘La Rose Jacqueminot’ of Coty (1904) containing Rhodinol ( 7 ), ‘Après l'Ondée’ by Guerlain (1906) containing para‐anisaldehyde ( 8 ), ‘Quelques Fleurs’ by Houbigant (1912) containing hydroxycitronellal ( 9 ), ‘N°5’ by Chanel (1921) containing the aldehydes C‐10 ( 10 ), C‐110 ( 11 ), and C‐12 ( 12 ), ‘Nuit De Noël’ by Caron (1922) containing 6‐isobutylquinoline ( 14 ), and ‘Femme’ by Rochas (1944) containing the so‐called ‘aldehyde C‐14’ ( 15 , γ‐undecalactone). The Osmotheque, the International Conservatory of Perfumes, was launched in 1990 and is regarded as a primary source of knowledge for the history of perfumery. Its vocation is to compile an amazing collection of 1700 perfumes (400 of them almost forgotten fragrances) – jewels of perfumery.     

The life and work of Josef Rudinger.

The life and work of Josef Rudinger (1924- 1975), a key figure in the history of peptide science, are outlined.     

Magic: A Problem in Semantics

Anthropologists, from Tylor to the present, have so defined magic that, although it might shade into or overlap with religion, it is a separate phenomenon distinct from religion. Theorists have made different features the chief means of differentiation, but no matter how defined the distinction cannot be easily or consistently maintained. This paper suggests that the concept of magic as a distinct entity is the factitious result of ethnocentric classification, and that magic should be included within religion as one type of the practices of which religious ritual is composed.     

遗传学第一个十年中的W.贝特森

在遗传学的第一个十年间,贝特森在捍卫、诠释、发展和推广孟德尔理论中作出了杰出贡献。他和孟德尔一样,是超越其时代的人。 Abstract：During the first decade of the history of genetics,B ateson made a notable contribution to the defending,interpreting,developing and spreading of Mendels laws.He,like Mendel,was ahead of his time.     

G. Ledyard Stebbins, Jr. and the evolutionary synthesis (1924-1950)

This is an historical paper examining the scientific background of George Ledyard Stebbins, Jr. (b. 1906), one of the foremost botanists of this century and one of the architects of the evolutionary synthesis, the intellectual event that brought together genetics and selection theory in the interval between 1920 and 1950. It considers his scientific influence and research, beginning with his Harvard education in 1924 and ending in 1950 with the publication of his book Variation and Evolution in Plants. The paper also more broadly assesses the contributions of other botanists to the evolutionary synthesis, including discussion of the work of Edgar Anderson (1897-1967) and others. It also traces the larger historical patterns of American botany, which saw a shift from East Coast botany as exemplified by Harvard botany, to West Coast botany, as exemplified by California botany.     

生态学的发展阶段及其特点

生态学的发展阶段及其特点吴兆录（云南大学生态学与地植物学研究所,昆明６５００９１）Ｄｅｖｅｌｏｐｍｅｎｔｓｔａｇｅｓｏｆｅｃｏｌｏｇｙａｎｄｔｈｅｉｒｃｈａｒａｃｔｅｒｉｓｔｉｃｓ．￥ＷｕＺｈａｏｌｕ（ＩｎｓｔｉｔｕｔｅｏｆＥｃｏｌｏｇｙａｎｄＧｅｏ...     

Patrick Matthew's law of natural selection

Patrick Matthew is the little‐known first originator of macroevolution by natural selection. I review his ideas, and introduce some previously unnoticed writings (catalogued at a new website: http://smarturl.it/patrickmatthew ) that clarify how they differ from Darwin's and Wallace's. Matthew's formulation emphasized natural selection as an axiomatic ‘law’ rather than a ‘theory’, a distinction that could still be of use to us today. © 2015 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2015, ●● , ●●–●●.     

Is titin a ‘winding filament’? A new twist on muscle contraction

Recent studies have demonstrated a role for the elastic protein titin in active muscle, but the mechanisms by which titin plays this role remain to be elucidated. In active muscle, Ca(2+)-binding has been shown to increase titin stiffness, but the observed increase is too small to explain the increased stiffness of parallel elastic elements upon muscle activation. We propose a 'winding filament' mechanism for titin's role in active muscle. First, we hypothesize that Ca(2+)-dependent binding of titin's N2A region to thin filaments increases titin stiffness by preventing low-force straightening of proximal immunoglobulin domains that occurs during passive stretch. This mechanism explains the difference in length dependence of force between skeletal myofibrils and cardiac myocytes. Second, we hypothesize that cross-bridges serve not only as motors that pull thin filaments towards the M-line, but also as rotors that wind titin on the thin filaments, storing elastic potential energy in PEVK during force development and active stretch. Energy stored during force development can be recovered during active shortening. The winding filament hypothesis accounts for force enhancement during stretch and force depression during shortening, and provides testable predictions that will encourage new directions for research on mechanisms of muscle contraction.     

On whose shoulders we stand - the pioneering entomological discoveries of Károly Sajó

The excellence of Károly Sajó as a researcher into Hungary’s natural history has been undeservedly neglected. Yet he did lasting work, especially in entomology, and a number of his discoveries and initiatives were before their time.Born in 1851 in Győr, he received his secondary education there and went to Pest University. He taught in a grammar school in 1877–88 before spending seven years as an entomologist at the National Phylloxera Experimental Station, later the Royal Hungarian State Entomological Station. Pensioned off at his own request in 1895, he moved to Őrszentmiklós, where he continued making entomological observations on his own farm and wrote the bulk of his published materials: almost 500 longer or shorter notes, articles and books, mainly on entomological subjects.Sajó was among the first in the world to publish in 1896 a study of how the weather affects living organisms, entitled Living Barometers. His Sleep in Insects, which appeared in the same year, described his discovery, from 1895 observations of the red turnip beetle, Entomoscelis adonidis (Pallas, 1771), of aestivation in insects – in present-day terms diapause.It was a great loss to universal entomology when Sajó ceased publishing about 25 years before his death. His unpublished notes, with his library and correspondence, were destroyed in the World War II. His surviving insect collection is now kept in the Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest.     

THE DEVELOPMENT AND REPRODUCTIVE MORPHOLOGY OF HALOSACCION AMERICANUM I. K. LEE (RHODOPHYTA,PALMARIALES)1

Halosaccion americanum, a member of Palmariaceae, was grown in culture from spores and the life history was critically examined by the use of scanning EM and light microscopy. A mature tetrasporangium of H. americanum produces four spores that germinate to form two male and two female gametophytes. The male gametophytes grow to maturity in approximately eight months and macroscopically resemble the tetrasporophyte. Following the first division of the tetraspore, the two-celled female gametophyte consists of a vegetative cell and a carpogonium with trichogynes. Fertilization is accomplished by spermatia from male plants of the preceding generation, as male plants of the same season are immature. Spermatia are formed in a continuous layer over the surface of the mature male gametophytes and, when released, are entrained in long strands of mucous. Spermatia adhere to and fuse with trichogynes and, nuclear fusions presumably follow. The carposporophyte is absent; the new tetrasporophyte develops directly from the fertilized carpogonium. Growth of the sporophyte eventually obliterates the female gametophyte, and development into a mature tetrasporophyte proceeds over a period of approximately eight months. The development of H. americanum, with its extremely abbreviated female gametophyte stage and direct development of the tetrasporophyte from the zygote, indicates that this rhodophyte has the same life history as reported for other members of the Palmariales.     

Sexual dimorphism in resource acquisition and deployment: both size and timing matter

Background and Aims

The males and females of many dioecious plant species differ from one another in important life-history traits, such as their size. If male and female reproductive functions draw on different resources, for example, one should expect males and females to display different allocation strategies as they grow. Importantly, these strategies may differ not only between the two sexes, but also between plants of different age and therefore size. Results are presented from an experiment that asks whether males and females of Mercurialis annua, an annual plant with indeterminate growth, differ over time in their allocation of two potentially limiting resources (carbon and nitrogen) to vegetative (below- and above-ground) and reproductive tissues.

Methods

Comparisons were made of the temporal patterns of biomass allocation to shoots, roots and reproduction and the nitrogen content in the leaves between the sexes of M. annua by harvesting plants of each sex after growth over different periods of time.

Key Results and Conclusions

Males and females differed in their temporal patterns of allocation. Males allocated more to reproduction than females at early stages, but this trend was reversed at later stages. Importantly, males allocated proportionally more of their biomass towards roots at later stages, but the roots of females were larger in absolute terms. The study points to the important role played by both the timing of resource deployment and the relative versus absolute sizes of the sinks and sources in sexual dimorphism of an annual plant.     

A chronology of human understanding of the nitrogen cycle

Nitrogen over the ages! It was discovered in the eighteenth century. The following century, its importance in agriculture was documented and the basic components of its cycle were elucidated. In the twentieth century, a process to provide an inexhaustible supply of reactive N (N_r; all N species except N₂) for agricultural, industrial and military uses was invented. This discovery and the extensive burning of fossil fuels meant that by the beginning of the twenty-first century, anthropogenic sources of newly created N_r were two to three times that of natural terrestrial sources. This caused a fundamental change in the nitrogen cycle; for the first time, there was the potential for enough food to sustain growing populations and changing dietary patterns. However, most N_r created by humans is lost to the environment, resulting in a cascade of negative earth systems impacts—including enhanced acid rain, smog, eutrophication, greenhouse effect and stratospheric ozone depletion, with associated impacts on human and ecosystem health. The impacts continue and will be magnified, as N_r is lost to the environment at an even greater rate. Thus, the challenge for the current century is how to optimize the uses of N while minimizing the negative impacts.     

Testing evolutionary models of senescence in a natural population: age and inbreeding effects on fitness components in song sparrows

Mutation accumulation (MA) and antagonistic pleiotropy (AP) have each been hypothesized to explain the evolution of 'senescence' or deteriorating fitness in old age. These hypotheses make contrasting predictions concerning age dependence in inbreeding depression in traits that show senescence. Inbreeding depression is predicted to increase with age under MA but not under AP, suggesting one empirical means by which the two can be distinguished. We use pedigree and life-history data from free-living song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) to test for additive and interactive effects of age and individual inbreeding coefficient (f) on fitness components, and thereby assess the evidence for MA. Annual reproductive success (ARS) and survival (and therefore reproductive value) declined in old age in both sexes, indicating senescence in this short-lived bird. ARS declined with f in both sexes and survival declined with f in males, indicating inbreeding depression in fitness. We observed a significant agexf interaction for male ARS (reflecting increased inbreeding depression as males aged), but not for female ARS or survival in either sex. These analyses therefore provide mixed support for MA. We discuss the strengths and limitations of such analyses and therefore the value of natural pedigreed populations in testing evolutionary models of senescence.     

分子标记技术在昆虫入侵研究中的应用

遗传变异与种群持续性及其进化潜力密切相关,而生物入侵导致种群遗传变异或遗传多样性的改变为研究自然界中各种生态和进化问题提供了理想模式。分子标记技术是调查种群遗传变异的重要工具,揭示了入侵种的入侵过程和结果,并预测未来的发生情况。本综述归纳了分子标记技术在昆虫入侵机制研究中的应用,以典型的研究个案为例,分别综述了分子标记技术在隐蔽入侵的监测应用,分子标记技术在重构入侵历史研究中的推算方式,分子标记技术在探索种群遗传变异与成功入侵机制方面取得的重要进展,并进一步介绍了高分辨率熔解曲线（high-resolution melting, HRM）分析在昆虫入侵研究中的应用前景。