Emergence and accumulation of novel pathogens suppress an invasive species

Emerging pathogens are a growing threat to human health, agriculture and the diversity of ecological communities but may also help control problematic species. Here we investigated the diversity, distribution and consequences of emerging fungal pathogens infecting an aggressive invasive grass that is rapidly colonising habitats throughout the eastern USA. We document the recent emergence and accumulation over time of diverse pathogens that are members of a single fungal genus and represent multiple, recently described or undescribed species. We also show that experimental suppression of these pathogens increased host performance in the field, demonstrating the negative effects of emerging pathogens on invasive plants. Our results suggest that invasive species can facilitate pathogen emergence and amplification, raising concerns about movement of pathogens among agricultural, horticultural, and wild grasses. However, one possible benefit of pathogen accumulation is suppression of aggressive invaders over the long term, potentially abating their negative impacts on native communities.     

Introducing an algal carbon‐concentrating mechanism into higher plants: location and incorporation of key components

Many eukaryotic green algae possess biophysical carbon‐concentrating mechanisms (CCMs) that enhance photosynthetic efficiency and thus permit high growth rates at low CO₂ concentrations. They are thus an attractive option for improving productivity in higher plants. In this study, the intracellular locations of ten CCM components in the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii were confirmed. When expressed in tobacco, all of these components except chloroplastic carbonic anhydrases CAH3 and CAH6 had the same intracellular locations as in Chlamydomonas. CAH6 could be directed to the chloroplast by fusion to an Arabidopsis chloroplast transit peptide. Similarly, the putative inorganic carbon (Ci) transporter LCI1 was directed to the chloroplast from its native location on the plasma membrane. CCP1 and CCP2 proteins, putative Ci transporters previously reported to be in the chloroplast envelope, localized to mitochondria in both Chlamydomonas and tobacco, suggesting that the algal CCM model requires expansion to include a role for mitochondria. For the Ci transporters LCIA and HLA3, membrane location and Ci transport capacity were confirmed by heterologous expression and H¹⁴CO₃^‐ uptake assays in Xenopus oocytes. Both were expressed in Arabidopsis resulting in growth comparable with that of wild‐type plants. We conclude that CCM components from Chlamydomonas can be expressed both transiently (in tobacco) and stably (in Arabidopsis) and retargeted to appropriate locations in higher plant cells. As expression of individual Ci transporters did not enhance Arabidopsis growth, stacking of further CCM components will probably be required to achieve a significant increase in photosynthetic efficiency in this species.     

Urban living alters moult dynamics in a passerine

Urbanization and habitat fragmentation can alter the timing of life history events, potentially leading to phenological mismatches, carryover effects, and fitness costs. Whereas urbanization and fragmentation are known to alter important aspects of breeding in many bird species, little is known about the effects of urbanization and habitat fragmentation on moult. To investigate the effects of urbanization and fragmentation on the annual moult, we compared the moult dynamics (onset, duration, and intensity) of urban, fragmented forest, and contiguous forest populations of the Carolina chickadee, a North American resident passerine that moults once per year immediately following the breeding season. Over three years, moult dynamics were similar in contiguous and fragmented forest populations, but wing moult started significantly earlier, and onset of moult varied less among years, in urban chickadees than in forest chickadees (fragmented and contiguous habitats pooled). Duration of wing moult did not differ between urban and forest populations, but urban birds moulted significantly fewer feathers simultaneously during peak moult, suggesting that individual feathers grew more rapidly. Our results show that urban living alters critical aspects of moult dynamics in a widespread songbird. Given the importance of moult dynamics for fitness during subsequent life history stages, and the large number of songbird species inhabiting urban areas, these results reveal previously unrecognized and potentially costly carryover effects of urban living on songbirds.     

Twist and Degrade—Impact of Molecular Structure on the Photostability of Nonfullerene Acceptors and Their Photovoltaic Blends

Nonfullerene acceptors (NFAs) dominate organic photovoltaic (OPV) research due to their promising efficiencies and stabilities. However, there is very little investigation into the molecular processes of degradation, which is critical to guiding design of novel NFAs for long‐lived, commercially viable OPVs. Here, the important role of molecular structure and conformation in NFA photostability in air is investigated by comparing structurally similar but conformationally different promising NFAs: planar O‐IDTBR and nonplanar O‐IDFBR. A three‐phase degradation process is identified: i) initial photoinduced conformational change (i.e., torsion about the core–benzothiadiazole dihedral), induced by noncovalent interactions with environmental molecules, ii) followed by photo‐oxidation and fragmentation, leading to chromophore bleaching and degradation product formation, and iii) finally complete chromophore bleaching. Initial conformational change is a critical prerequisite for further degradation, providing fundamental understanding of the relative stability of IDTBR and IDFBR, where the already twisted IDFBR is more prone to degradation. When blended with the donor polymer poly(3‐hexylthiophene), both NFAs exhibit improved photostability while the photostability of the polymer itself is significantly reduced by the more miscible twisted NFA. The findings elucidate the important role of NFA molecular structure in photostability of OPV systems, and provide vital insights into molecular design rules for intrinsically photostable NFAs.     

Suppression of Recombination Losses in Polymer:Nonfullerene Acceptor Organic Solar Cells due to Aggregation Dependence of Acceptor Electron Affinity

Here, it is investigated whether an energetic cascade between mixed and pure regions assists in suppressing recombination losses in non‐fullerene acceptor (NFA)‐based organic solar cells. The impact of polymer‐NFA blend composition upon morphology, energetics, charge carrier recombination kinetics, and photocurrent properties are studied. By changing film composition, morphological structures are varied from consisting of highly intermixed polymer‐NFA phases to consisting of both intermixed and pure phase. Cyclic voltammetry is employed to investigate the impact of blend morphology upon NFA lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) level energetics. Transient absorption spectroscopy reveals the importance of an energetic cascade between mixed and pure phases in the electron–hole dynamics in order to well separate spatially localized electron–hole pairs. Raman spectroscopy is used to investigate the origin of energetic shift of NFA LUMO levels. It appears that the increase in NFA electron affinity in pure phases relative to mixed phases is correlated with a transition from a relatively planar backbone structure of NFA in pure, aggregated phases, to a more twisted structure in molecularly mixed phases. The studies focus on addressing whether aggregation‐dependent acceptor LUMO level energetics are a general design requirement for both fullerene and NFAs, and quantifying the magnitude, origin, and impact of such energetic shifts upon device performance.     

Phylogenomics using low‐depth whole genome sequencing: A case study with the olive tribe

Species trees have traditionally been inferred from a few selected markers, and genome‐wide investigations remain largely restricted to model organisms or small groups of species for which sampling of fresh material is available, leaving out most of the existing and historical species diversity. The genomes of an increasing number of species, including specimens extracted from natural history collections, are being sequenced at low depth. While these data sets are widely used to analyse organelle genomes, the nuclear fraction is generally ignored. Here we evaluate different reference‐based methods to infer phylogenies of large taxonomic groups from such data sets. Using the example of the Oleeae tribe, a worldwide‐distributed group, we build phylogenies based on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) obtained using two reference genomes (the olive and ash trees). The inferred phylogenies are overall congruent, yet present differences that might reflect the effect of distance to the reference on the amount of missing data. To limit this issue, genome complexity was reduced by using pairs of orthologous coding sequences as the reference, thus allowing us to combine SNPs obtained using two distinct references. Concatenated and coalescence trees based on these combined SNPs suggest events of incomplete lineage sorting and/or hybridization during the diversification of this large phylogenetic group. Our results show that genome‐wide phylogenetic trees can be inferred from low‐depth sequence data sets for eukaryote groups with complex genomes, and histories of reticulate evolution. This opens new avenues for large‐scale phylogenomics and biogeographical analyses covering both the extant and the historical diversity stored in museum collections.     

Wildfire refugia in forests: Severe fire weather and drought mute the influence of topography and fuel age

Wildfire refugia (unburnt patches within large wildfires) are important for the persistence of fire‐sensitive species across forested landscapes globally. A key challenge is to identify the factors that determine the distribution of fire refugia across space and time. In particular, determining the relative influence of climatic and landscape factors is important in order to understand likely changes in the distribution of wildfire refugia under future climates. Here, we examine the relative effect of weather (i.e. fire weather, drought severity) and landscape features (i.e. topography, fuel age, vegetation type) on the occurrence of fire refugia across 26 large wildfires in south‐eastern Australia. Fire weather and drought severity were the primary drivers of the occurrence of fire refugia, moderating the effect of landscape attributes. Unburnt patches rarely occurred under ‘severe’ fire weather, irrespective of drought severity, topography, fuels or vegetation community. The influence of drought severity and landscape factors played out most strongly under ‘moderate’ fire weather. In mesic forests, fire refugia were linked to variables that affect fuel moisture, whereby the occurrence of unburnt patches decreased with increasing drought conditions and were associated with more mesic topographic locations (i.e. gullies, pole‐facing aspects) and vegetation communities (i.e. closed‐forest). In dry forest, the occurrence of refugia was responsive to fuel age, being associated with recently burnt areas (<5 years since fire). Overall, these results show that increased severity of fire weather and increased drought conditions, both predicted under future climate scenarios, are likely to lead to a reduction of wildfire refugia across forests of southern Australia. Protection of topographic areas able to provide long‐term fire refugia will be an important step towards maintaining the ecological integrity of forests under future climate change.     

Underestimated ecosystem carbon turnover time and sequestration under the steady state assumption: A perspective from long‐term data assimilation

It is critical to accurately estimate carbon (C) turnover time as it dominates the uncertainty in ecosystem C sinks and their response to future climate change. In the absence of direct observations of ecosystem C losses, C turnover times are commonly estimated under the steady state assumption (SSA), which has been applied across a large range of temporal and spatial scales including many at which the validity of the assumption is likely to be violated. However, the errors associated with improperly applying SSA to estimate C turnover time and its covariance with climate as well as ecosystem C sequestrations have yet to be fully quantified. Here, we developed a novel model‐data fusion framework and systematically analyzed the SSA‐induced biases using time‐series data collected from 10 permanent forest plots in the eastern China monsoon region. The results showed that (a) the SSA significantly underestimated mean turnover times (MTTs) by 29%, thereby leading to a 4.83‐fold underestimation of the net ecosystem productivity (NEP) in these forest ecosystems, a major C sink globally; (b) the SSA‐induced bias in MTT and NEP correlates negatively with forest age, which provides a significant caveat for applying the SSA to young‐aged ecosystems; and (c) the sensitivity of MTT to temperature and precipitation was 22% and 42% lower, respectively, under the SSA. Thus, under the expected climate change, spatiotemporal changes in MTT are likely to be underestimated, thereby resulting in large errors in the variability of predicted global NEP. With the development of observation technology and the accumulation of spatiotemporal data, we suggest estimating MTTs at the disequilibrium state via long‐term data assimilation, thereby effectively reducing the uncertainty in ecosystem C sequestration estimations and providing a better understanding of regional or global C cycle dynamics and C‐climate feedback.     

How are nitrogen availability,fine‐root mass,and nitrogen uptake related empirically? Implications for models and theory

Understanding the effects of global change in terrestrial communities requires an understanding of how limiting resources interact with plant traits to affect productivity. Here, we focus on nitrogen and ask whether plant community nitrogen uptake rate is determined (a) by nitrogen availability alone or (b) by the product of nitrogen availability and fine‐root mass. Surprisingly, this is not empirically resolved. We performed controlled microcosm experiments and reanalyzed published pot experiments and field data to determine the relationship between community‐level nitrogen uptake rate, nitrogen availability, and fine‐root mass for 46 unique combinations of species, nitrogen levels, and growing conditions. We found that plant community nitrogen uptake rate was unaffected by fine‐root mass in 63% of cases and saturated with fine‐root mass in 29% of cases (92% in total). In contrast, plant community nitrogen uptake rate was clearly affected by nitrogen availability. The results support the idea that although plants may over‐proliferate fine roots for individual‐level competition, it comes without an increase in community‐level nitrogen uptake. The results have implications for the mechanisms included in coupled carbon‐nitrogen terrestrial biosphere models (CN‐TBMs) and are consistent with CN‐TBMs that operate above the individual scale and omit fine‐root mass in equations of nitrogen uptake rate but inconsistent with the majority of CN‐TBMs, which operate above the individual scale and include fine‐root mass in equations of nitrogen uptake rate. For the much smaller number of CN‐TBMs that explicitly model individual‐based belowground competition for nitrogen, the results suggest that the relative (not absolute) fine‐root mass of competing individuals should be included in the equations that determine individual‐level nitrogen uptake rates. By providing empirical data to support the assumptions used in CN‐TBMs, we put their global climate change predictions on firmer ground.     

Dynamic measurements of black oystercatcher (Haematopus bachmani) predation on mussels (Mytilus californianus)

Intertidal zone mussels can face threats from a variety of predatory species during high and low tides, and they must balance the threat of predation against other needs such as feeding and aerobic respiration. Black oystercatchers (Haematopus bachmani) on the Pacific coast of North America can depend on the mussel Mytilus californianus for a substantial portion of their diet. Observations suggest that oystercatchers tend to focus on mussels beginning to gape their valves during rising tides, following periods of aerial emersion. We present detailed, autonomous field measurements of the dynamics of three such predation events in the rocky intertidal zone. We measured accelerations of up to 4 g imposed on mussels, with handling times of 115–290 s required to open the shell and remove the majority of tissue. In each case a single oystercatcher attacked a mussel that had gaped the shell valves slightly wider than its neighbors as the rising tide began to splash the mussel bed, but no other obvious characteristic of the mussels, such as body temperature or orientation, could be linked to the oystercatcher's individual prey choice.