The Introduction of Japanese Plants Into North America

This article describes the history of plant introductions from Japan into North America, from the Perry Expedition in 1854 through the collections of George Rogers Hall of Bristol, Rhode Island and Thomas Hogg of New York City between 1861 and 1875. Both men sent plants to the innovative nurseryman, Samuel Bowne Parsons of Flushing, Long Island, who propagated and sold them to the gardening public. This process, which took more than twenty years from initial collection through commercial distribution, succeeded in adding innumerable Japanese species into the ornamental landscapes of North America, including Japanese maple, kousa dogwood, panicle hydrangea, and Sawara cypress. Unfortunately these early introductions also included a number of species which escaped cultivation and have become infamously invasive, including oriental bittersweet, kudzu, porcelain berry and Japanese honeysuckle. The pioneering work of these three horticulturists--compounded over the past hundred and fifty years--has had a profound impact on both cultivated and wild landscapes across North America.     

SSR marker diversity of soybean aphid resistance sources in North America.

The soybean aphid (Aphis glycines Matsumura) has become a major pest of soybean in North America since 2000. Seven aphid resistance sources, PI 71506, Dowling, Jackson, PI 567541B, PI 567598B, PI 567543C, and PI 567597C, have been identified. Knowledge of genetic relationships among these sources and their ancestral parents will help breeders develop new cultivars with different resistance genes. The objective of this research was to examine the genetic relationships among these resistance sources. Sixty-one lines were tested with 86 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers from 20 linkage groups. Non-hierarchical (VARCLUS) and hierarchical (Ward's) clustering and multidimensional scaling (MDS) were used to determine relationships among the 61 lines. Two hundred and sixty-two alleles of the 86 SSR loci were detected with a mean polymorphism information content of 0.36. The 61 lines were grouped into 4 clusters by both clustering methods and the MDS results consistently corresponded to the assigned clusters. The 7 resistance sources were clustered into 3 different groups corresponding to their geographical origins and known pedigree information, indicating genetic differences among these sources. The largest variation was found among individuals within different clusters by analysis of molecular variance.     

Introduction of Glossostigma (Phrymaceae) to North America: a taxonomic and ecological overview

Field surveys in eastern North America confirm the naturalization of Glossostigma plants at 19 localities in four states: Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. DNA sequence analysis of individuals from 14 sampled populations identifies these nonindigenous plants as Glossostigma cleistanthum, a species native to Australia and New Zealand. These results correct prior misidentifications of North American plants as G. diandrum. The earliest North American record of G. cleistanthum (1992) is from a Ramsar tidal wetland in Connecticut. Morphological analyses demonstrate that G. cleistanthum differs from G. diandrum by its longer leaves and ability to produce both cleistogamous and chasmogamous flowers in response to ecological conditions. Glossostigma cleistanthum has a high reproductive potential and spreads rapidly within and between both artificial and natural habitats. A survey of more than 100 lakes indicated that G. cleistanthum occurs most often in waters with high clarity and low pH, alkalinity, conductivity, and phosphorous. Because of its affinity for oligotrophic conditions, this species is a particular threat to pristine natural aquatic communities, which often contain imperiled plants.     

Introduction of the soybean to Illinois

Events leading to the planting of the first soybeans in Illinois and the subsequent distribution of the seed throughout the United States are documented. In December 1850 theAuckland left Hong Kong for San Francisco. The ship came across a Japanese junk floundering on the sea. The Japanese crew was removed from the junk and placed on board theAuckland, which continued on to San Francisco. In March 1851 Dr. Benjamin Franklin Edwards obtained soybean seeds from the Japanese and brought the seeds to Alton, Illinois. Mr. John H. Lea of Alton planted the soybeans in his garden in summer 1851. These events took place 3 yr prior to the famous introduction of soybeans from Japan into the United States by the Perry Expedition.     

The Right to Survive in North America

Surviving as Indians: The Challenge of Self-Government . Menno Boldt.
"Retained by the People": A History of American Indians and the Bill of Rights . John R. Wunder.     

Archaeoparasitology in North America

The study of prehistoric parasitism through analysis of coprolites, mummies, skeletons, and latrine soils is rapidly growing. Its development in North America is interdisciplinary and is derived from the fields of physical anthropology, parasitology, and archaeology. The various parasite finds from North America are reviewed. The data show that prehistoric peoples in North America suffered from a variety of parasitic diseases. The validity of the findings are then considered. Although most finds of parasites from prehistoric contexts result from human infections, some finds cannot be verified as such. However, in combination with data from South America, it is clear that prehistoric peoples in the Americas were host to a variety of human parasites, some of which were not previously thought to be present before historic times.     

European buckthorn and Asian soybean aphid as components of an extensive invasional meltdown in North America

We consider the possibility of an extensive invasional meltdown occurring in central North America involving eleven Eurasian species. The scenario begins with the potential co-facilitation between the European earthworm Lumbricus terrestris and European buckthorn, Rhamnus cathartica. Once introduced, European buckthorn has served as the overwintering host for two important invasive crop pests, oat crown rust, Puccinea coronata and the soybean aphid, Aphis glycines. The spread of R. cathartica itself may have been aided by seed dispersal by the European starling, Sturnus vulgaris, and the presence of L. terrestris has likely facilitated the invasion of Bipalium adventitium, an Asian predatory flatworm that specializes on earthworms. Beyond this, the soybean aphid is consumed by a number of introduced species, including the lady beetle Harmonia axyridis, the ground beetle Agonum muelleri and the parasitoid Aphelinus certus. We hypothesize that the presence of soybean aphid increases regional abundances of these species. We discuss both the evidence for this multi-species invasional meltdown scenario and potential implications of meltdown dynamics for invasive species management. The particular management issues that we discuss are: (1) opportunities for managing multiple invasive species simultaneously by targeting facilitator species, and (2) implications of meltdown dynamics for biological control introductions against the soybean aphid.     

Cord-Roughened Pottery in North Central North America

Abstract

Basic data are offered on 2 pottery bearing localities in the Souris Basin, North Dakota. Additional data from adjacent areas are introduced to support the assertion that there was a relatively heavy occupation of the Northern Plains by a number of closely related groups which manufactured only slightly differentiated cordroughened pottery. The presence of this pottery reveals that the Woodland occupation of the Northern Plains was far more intensive and extensive than might be suspected from the extant literature.     

Measuring floristic homogenization by non-native plants in North America

Aim To determine if non‐native plant species are homogenizing species composition among widely dispersed plant communities. Location Twenty localities in North America. Methods Species lists among localities were compared to measure the influence of non‐native species richness at each locality on the Jaccard Index (JI) of similarity between localities. Results After removing the effects of distance, because shared native species decreased with distance, three (nonexclusive) lines of evidence indicate that non‐native species promote homogenization. First, pairs of sites with a high combined total of non‐native species tend to have higher similarity than those with a low total of non‐natives. Second, for a given distance, more non‐native than native species tended to be shared among localities. Third, whereas most of the site comparisons with high total non‐native richness have a non‐native/native JI ratio greater than 1 (often much greater), only half of the comparisons with low total non‐native richness have a ratio greater than one. Main conclusions These findings provide quantitative support for the widely held, but rarely tested, notion that non‐native species tend to homogenize biological communities because they are more commonly shared among communities. Such testing is important as non‐native species could theoretically have no impact or even reduce homogenization among communities, if non‐native colonizers consist of different species pools.     

Initial epidemic area is strongly associated with the yearly extent of soybean rust spread in North America

Hosts of soybean rust (Phakopsora pachyrhizi) are sensitive to low temperatures, limiting this obligate parasite in the United States to overwintering sites in a restricted area along the Gulf Coast. This temperature sensitivity of soybean rust hosts allowed us to study spatial spread of epidemic invasions over similar territory for seven sequential years, 2005–2011. The epidemic front expanded slowly from early April through July, with the majority of expansion occurring from August through November. There was a 7.4-fold range of final epidemic extent (0.4–3.0 million km²) from the year of smallest final disease extent (2011) to that of the largest (2007). The final epidemic area of each year was regressed against epidemic areas recorded at one-week intervals to determine the association of final epidemic extent with current epidemic extent. Coefficients of determination for these regressions varied between 0.44 and 0.62 during April and May. The correlation coefficients varied between 0.70 and 0.96 from early June through October, and then increased monotonically to 1.0 by year’s end. Thus, the spatial extent of disease when the epidemics began rapid expansion may have been a crucial contributor to subsequent spread of soybean rust. Our analyses used presence/absence data at the county level to evaluate the spread of the epidemic front only; the subsequent local intensification of disease could be strongly influenced by other factors, including weather.     

Festuca auriculata in North America

Festuca auriculata Drob., published by Alexeev from one place in Alaska and besides known from the Arctic part of Asia, is shown to occur in several localities in Alaska and the north–western part of Yukon, Canada.