The Relationship between Species Richness and Evenness in Plant Communities along a Successional Gradient: A Study from Sub-Alpine Meadows of the Eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau,China

The relationship between species richness and evenness across communities remains an unsettled issue in ecology from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. As a result, we do not know the mechanisms that could generate a relationship between species richness and evenness, and how this responds to spatial scale. Here we examine the relationship between species richness(S) and evenness (Pielou’s J′ evenness) using a chronosequence of successional sub-alpine meadow communities in the eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. These meadows range from natural community (never farmed), to those that have been protected from agricultural exploitation for periods ranging from 1 to 10 years. A total of 30 sampling quadrats with size of 0.5 m×0.5 m were laid out along two transects at each meadow. Using correlation analyses we found a consistent negative correlation between S and J′ in these communities along the successional gradient at the sampling scale of 0.5 m×0.5 m. We also explored the relationship between S and J′ at different sampling scales (from 0.5 m×0.5 m to10 m×10 m) using properly measured ramet-mapped data of a10 m×10 m quadrat in the natural community. We found that S was negatively corrected with J′ at the scales of 0.5 m×0.5 m to 2 m×2 m, but such a relationships disappeared at relative larger scales (≥2 m×4 m). When fitting different species abundance models combined with trait-specific methods, we found that niche preemption may be the determining mechanism of species evenness along the succession gradient. Considering all results together, we can conclude that such niche differentiation and spatial scale effects may help to explain the maintenance of high species richness in sub-alpine meadow communities.     

山黧豆β 腈基丙氨酸合成酶基因LsCAS的原核表达及蛋白聚合状态分析

该研究从山黧豆种子萌发6 d后的幼苗根中扩增到β 腈基丙氨酸合成酶基因(LsCAS)的CDS序列,并构建pGEX2T LsCAS表达载体;经诱导表达后,通过GST亲和层析进行LsCAS蛋白纯化,并利用GST标签抗体和大豆半胱氨酸合成酶(Cysteine synthase,CS)抗体对纯化蛋白进行Western blot验证;纯化后的LsCAS蛋白经凝血酶切除GST标签抗体后,利用凝胶过滤预装柱Superdex 200 Increase 10/300 GL分析判断分子量。结果显示：(1)山黧豆LsCAS基因的CDS序列为1 035 bp,编码344个氨基酸;其编码的蛋白质具有典型的CBS like 蛋白功能结构域胱硫醚β 合酶(CBS)和半胱氨酸合成酶(CS)。(2)成功构建LsCAS基因的原核表达载体pGEX2T LsCAS并进行蛋白纯化;SDS PAGE检测表明,所获融合蛋白条带单一,大小在64 kD左右;Western blot分析发现,诱导后的菌体蛋白和纯化后的重组蛋白中均能检测到特征条带,说明所获融合蛋白为山黧豆LsCAS蛋白。(3)纯化的山黧豆LsCAS蛋白在412 nm的特征吸收峰显示,LsCAS隶属于磷酸吡哆醛(PLP)依赖的半胱氨酸合成酶家族;分子排阻试验证实山黧豆LsCAS为PLP依赖性蛋白酶,可能以四聚体方式发挥作用。研究结果为进一步探讨山黧豆LsCAS的调控及其功能奠定了基础。     

Evaluating the Quality of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation in the Emergency Department by Real-Time Video Recording System

Objectives

To compare cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) quality between manual CPR and miniaturized chest compressor (MCC) CPR. To improve CPR quality through evaluating the quality of our clinical work of resuscitation by real-time video recording system.

Methods

The study was a retrospective observational study of adult patients who experienced CPR at the emergency department of Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital from March 2013 to August 2014. All the performance of CPR were checked back by the record of “digital real-time video recording system”. Average chest compression rate, actual chest compression rate, the percentage of hands-off period, time lag from patient arrival to chest compression, time lag from patient arrival to manual ventilation, time lag from patient arrival to first IV establish were compared. Causes of chest compression hands-off time were also studied.

Results

112 cases of resuscitation attempts were obtained. Average chest compression rate was over 100 compression per minute (cpm) in the majority of cases. However, indicators such as percentage of hands-off periods, time lag from patient arrival to the first manual ventilation and time lag from patient arrival to the first IV establish seemed to be worse in the manual CPR group compared to MCC CPR group. The saving of operators change time seemed to counteract the time spent on MCC equipment. Indicators such as percentage of hands-off periods, time lag between patient arrival to the first chest compression, time lag between patient arrival to the first manual ventilation and time lag from patient arrival to the first IV establish may influence the survival.

Conclusion

Our CPR quality remained to be improved. MCC may have a potentially positive role in CPR.     

Temporal effects of disturbance on community composition in simulated stage‐structured plant communities

In an era of global environmental change, understanding how disturbance affects the dynamics of ecological communities is crucial. However, few studies have theoretically explored the potential influence of disturbance including both intensity and frequency on compositional change over time in communities with stage structure. A spatially explicit, individual‐based model was constructed incorporating the various demographic responses to disturbance of plants at two different growth stages: seedlings and adults. In the model, we assumed that individuals within each stage were demographically equivalent (neutral) but differed between stages. We simulated a common phenomenon that seedlings suffered more from disturbance such as grazing and fire than adults. We showed how stage‐structured communities of seedlings and adults responded to disturbance with various levels of disturbance frequency and intensity. In “undisturbed” simulations, the relationship between average species abundance (defined here as the total number of individuals divided by species richness) and community composition turnover (measured by the Bray–Curtis similarity index) was asymptotic. However, in strongly “disturbed” simulations with the between‐disturbance intervals greater than one, this relationship became unimodal. Stage‐dependent response to disturbance underlay the above discrepancy between undisturbed and disturbed communities.