Free-living culturable bacteria and protozoa from the rhizoplanes of three floating aquatic plant species

Terrestrial plant roots exude compounds that promote the proliferation of microorganisms, a phenomenon called the rhizosphere effect. However, little is known about the influence of roots of aquatic plants on microbial populations. We compared cultivable bacteria and protozoa from the rhizoplanes of Azolla filiculoides Lam., Lemna gibba L., and Ricciocarpus natans L., collected at the Tecocomulco Lagoon (Hidalgo, Mexico). The functional bacterial groups isolated from A. filiculoides, L. gibba and R. natans, were macro- and microscopically characterized, and phylogenetically identified using the 16S rDNA gen. About 96% of isolates corresponded to Gram-negative bacteria, and potential N-fixing free-living bacteria (diazotrophic bacteria) were the most abundant. Molecular analysis detected 15 bacterial genera in the rhizoplane of R. natans, whereas A. filiculoides and L. gibba only yielded five genera, among which Aeromonas was predominant. Twenty-five genera of flagellated and 20 genera of ciliated protozoa were identified. Bodo was the more abundant flagellated, whereas Halteria was the most frequent ciliate. All three aquatic plants showed the rhizospheric effects. The most abundant and diverse community of protozoa was found in A. filiculoides, which also had the most abundant bacterial community, but the highest bacterial diversity was found in R. natans.     

Fatty acid-related modulations of membrane fluidity in cells: detection and implications

Abstract

Metabolic homeostasis of fatty acids is complex and well-regulated in all organisms. The biosynthesis of saturated fatty acids (SFA) in mammals provides substrates for β-oxidation and ATP production. Monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) are products of desaturases that introduce a methylene group in cis geometry in SFA. Polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-6 and n-3 PUFA) are products of elongation and desaturation of the essential linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid, respectively. The liver processes dietary fatty acids and exports them in lipoproteins for distribution and storage in peripheral tissues. The three types of fatty acids are integrated in membrane phospholipids and determine their biophysical properties and functions. This study was aimed at investigating effects of fatty acids on membrane biophysical properties under varying nutritional and pathological conditions, by integrating lipidomic analysis of membrane phospholipids with functional two-photon microscopy (fTPM) of cellular membranes. This approach was applied to two case studies: first, pancreatic beta-cells, to investigate hormetic and detrimental effects of lipids. Second, red blood cells extracted from a genetic mouse model defective in lipoproteins, to understand the role of lipids in hepatic diseases and metabolic syndrome and their effect on circulating cells.     

Net effects of multiple stressors in freshwater ecosystems: a meta‐analysis

The accelerating rate of global change has focused attention on the cumulative impacts of novel and extreme environmental changes (i.e. stressors), especially in marine ecosystems. As integrators of local catchment and regional processes, freshwater ecosystems are also ranked highly sensitive to the net effects of multiple stressors, yet there has not been a large‐scale quantitative synthesis. We analysed data from 88 papers including 286 responses of freshwater ecosystems to paired stressors and discovered that overall, their cumulative mean effect size was less than the sum of their single effects (i.e. an antagonistic interaction). Net effects of dual stressors on diversity and functional performance response metrics were additive and antagonistic, respectively. Across individual studies, a simple vote‐counting method revealed that the net effects of stressor pairs were frequently more antagonistic (41%) than synergistic (28%), additive (16%) or reversed (15%). Here, we define a reversal as occurring when the net impact of two stressors is in the opposite direction (negative or positive) from that of the sum of their single effects. While warming paired with nutrification resulted in additive net effects, the overall mean net effect of warming combined with a second stressor was antagonistic. Most importantly, the mean net effects across all stressor pairs and response metrics were consistently antagonistic or additive, contrasting the greater prevalence of reported synergies in marine systems. Here, a possible explanation for more antagonistic responses by freshwater biota to stressors is that the inherent greater environmental variability of smaller aquatic ecosystems fosters greater potential for acclimation and co‐adaptation to multiple stressors.     

Global environmental change effects on ecosystems: the importance of land‐use legacies

One of the major challenges in ecology is to predict how multiple global environmental changes will affect future ecosystem patterns (e.g. plant community composition) and processes (e.g. nutrient cycling). Here, we highlight arguments for the necessary inclusion of land‐use legacies in this endeavour. Alterations in resources and conditions engendered by previous land use, together with influences on plant community processes such as dispersal, selection, drift and speciation, have steered communities and ecosystem functions onto trajectories of change. These trajectories may be modulated by contemporary environmental changes such as climate warming and nitrogen deposition. We performed a literature review which suggests that these potential interactions have rarely been investigated. This crucial oversight is potentially due to an assumption that knowledge of the contemporary state allows accurate projection into the future. Lessons from other complex dynamic systems, and the recent recognition of the importance of previous conditions in explaining contemporary and future ecosystem properties, demand the testing of this assumption. Vegetation resurvey databases across gradients of land use and environmental change, complemented by rigorous experiments, offer a means to test for interactions between land‐use legacies and multiple environmental changes. Implementing these tests in the context of a trait‐based framework will allow biologists to synthesize compositional and functional ecosystem responses. This will further our understanding of the importance of land‐use legacies in determining future ecosystem properties, and soundly inform conservation and restoration management actions.     

Contrasting changes in the abundance and diversity of North American bird assemblages from 1971 to 2010

Although it is generally recognized that global biodiversity is declining, few studies have examined long‐term changes in multiple biodiversity dimensions simultaneously. In this study, we quantified and compared temporal changes in the abundance, taxonomic diversity, functional diversity, and phylogenetic diversity of bird assemblages, using roadside monitoring data of the North American Breeding Bird Survey from 1971 to 2010. We calculated 12 abundance and diversity metrics based on 5‐year average abundances of 519 species for each of 768 monitoring routes. We did this for all bird species together as well as for four subgroups based on breeding habitat affinity (grassland, woodland, wetland, and shrubland breeders). The majority of the biodiversity metrics increased or remained constant over the study period, whereas the overall abundance of birds showed a pronounced decrease, primarily driven by declines of the most abundant species. These results highlight how stable or even increasing metrics of taxonomic, functional, or phylogenetic diversity may occur in parallel with substantial losses of individuals. We further found that patterns of change differed among the species subgroups, with both abundance and diversity increasing for woodland birds and decreasing for grassland breeders. The contrasting changes between abundance and diversity and among the breeding habitat groups underscore the relevance of a multifaceted approach to measuring biodiversity change. Our findings further stress the importance of monitoring the overall abundance of individuals in addition to metrics of taxonomic, functional, or phylogenetic diversity, thus confirming the importance of population abundance as an essential biodiversity variable.     

Gene duplications circumvent trade‐offs in enzyme function: Insect adaptation to toxic host plants

Herbivorous insects and their adaptations against plant toxins provide striking opportunities to investigate the genetic basis of traits involved in coevolutionary interactions. Target site insensitivity to cardenolides has evolved convergently across six orders of insects, involving identical substitutions in the Na,K‐ATPase gene and repeated convergent gene duplications. The large milkweed bug, Oncopeltus fasciatus, has three copies of the Na,K‐ATPase α‐subunit gene that bear differing numbers of amino acid substitutions in the binding pocket for cardenolides. To analyze the effect of these substitutions on cardenolide resistance and to infer possible trade‐offs in gene function, we expressed the cardenolide‐sensitive Na,K‐ATPase of Drosophila melanogaster in vitro and introduced four distinct combinations of substitutions observed in the three gene copies of O. fasciatus. With an increasing number of substitutions, the sensitivity of the Na,K‐ATPase to a standard cardenolide decreased in a stepwise manner. At the same time, the enzyme's overall activity decreased significantly with increasing cardenolide resistance and only the least substituted mimic of the Na,K‐ATPase α1C copy maintained activity similar to the wild‐type enzyme. Our results suggest that the Na,K‐ATPase copies in O. fasciatus have diverged in function, enabling specific adaptations to dietary cardenolides while maintaining the functionality of this critical ion carrier.     

Development and ossification of the feeding apparatus in the larvae of two co‐occurring species of kob (Sciaenidae), Argyrosomus japonicus and Argyrosomus inodorus,in South Africa

The teeth of the oral jaws of two sympatric species of Argyrosomus, Argyrosomus japonicus and Argyrosomus inodorus, found along the South African coast developed first on the premaxilla and then on the dentary of the lower jaw. Teeth were observed on the premaxilla of A. inodorus [head length (L_H) = 1·0 mm; notochord length (L_N) = 2·7 mm] at a smaller size than in A. japonicus (L_H = 1·2 mm; L_N = 4·7 mm). The ventral elements of the gill arches (hypo‐ and basibranchials) were not ossified by the end of preflexion. The fifth ceratobranchial began ossifying and possessed pharyngeal teeth by 1·2 mm L_H (L_N = 4·7 mm) in A. japonicus and 1·1 mm L_H (L_N = 3·2 mm) in A. inodorus. To complement the osteological data, stomach contents were also analysed as a proxy for feeding apparatus functionality. Prey were first present in the stomach of A. japonicus at 1·2 mm L_H (L_N = 4·7 mm) and only 22% of the stomachs contained no prey suggesting that A. japonicus is already actively foraging by preflexion. In comparison, 83% of the stomachs of A. inodorus contained no prey and a single prey item was present in the largest examined specimen (L_H = 1·6 mm; L_N = 5·4 mm). Elements of the feeding apparatus begin to ossify early during ontogeny. While the overall pattern of ossification is similar between the two species, A. japonicus may be able to begin feeding at smaller head lengths relative to A. inodorus in their nursery habitats.     

Macromolecular docking of a three-body system: the recognition of human growth hormone by its receptor.

Human growth hormone (hGH) binds to its receptor (hGHr) in a three-body interaction: one molecule of the hormone and two identical monomers of the receptor form a trimer. Curiously, the hormone-receptor interactions in the trimer are not equivalent and the formation of the complex occurs in a specific kinetic order (Cunningham BC, Ultsch M, De Vos AM, Mulkerrin MG, Clauser KR, Wells JA, 1991, Science 254:821-825). In this paper, we model the recognition of hGH to the hGHr using shape complementarity of the three-dimensional structures and macromolecular docking to explore possible binding modes between the receptor and hormone. The method, reported previously (Hendrix DK, Kuntz ID, 1998, Pacific symposium on biocomputing 1998, pp 1234-1244), is based upon matching complementary-shaped strategic sites on the molecular surface. We modify the procedure to examine three-body systems. We find that the order of binding seen experimentally is also essential to our model. We explore the use of mutational data available for hGH to guide our model. In addition to docking hGH to the hGHr, we further test our methodology by successfully reproducing 16 macromolecular complexes from X-ray crystal structures, including enzyme-inhibitor, antibody-antigen, protein dimer, and protein-DNA complexes.     

Plant response to disturbance in a Mediterranean grassland: How many functional groups?

Abstract. Data referring to changes in vegetation composition resulting from cattle exclosure and ploughing in a Portuguese pasture dominated by annuals were used to test hypotheses regarding the biology of species favoured or eliminated by disturbance in semi-natural herbaceous communities. These hypotheses were tested in two ways. First we compared the distribution of six a priori groups – grasses, small rosettes, large rosettes, small species with leafy stems, large species with leafy stems, legumes – across grazed, ploughed and undisturbed plots. In a second set of analyses we examined changes in the frequencies of individual biological attributes in response to grazing and ploughing. These analyses were carried out separately for grasses and dicot forbs. Overall, the species composition showed little response to either grazing or ploughing, though species dominance changed. This lack of responsiveness of species composition was attributed to the long history of intensive land use which has resulted in the loss of disturbance-intolerant species over entire landscapes. When considering a priori groups, small rosettes were indifferent to disturbance. grazing and ploughing showed that dominated. Large rosettes, large species with leafy stems and legumes were generally intolerant to both grazing and ploughing, though individual species may increase in response to disturbance. Small species with leafy stems were the only group favoured by grazing whereas ploughing favoured grasses. As to individual traits, grazing excluded large grass species with heavy seeds and promoted a flat rosette canopy structure and a small size, along with a moderate dormancy and protected inflorescences. In forbs, grazing favoured small species, as expected, while it excluded tall species, and, in contrast to earlier results, a rosette canopy. These attributes were consistent with responses of the a priori groups, though it would not have been possible to reconstruct groups directly from the attribute list. Ploughing had no effect on any of the forb traits. As to grass traits, flat- and short-statured species increased and heavy-seeded species decreased. Our analysis revealed two advantages of establishing plant functional classifications within life forms. Subgroups within forbs had contrasting types of behaviour. For the same trait patterns could differ within the grass group from within the forb group. Finally, this analysis emphasizes the need for plant functional classifications aiming at the identification of syndromes of co-occurring attributes rather than of lists of isolated traits of which actual combinations are not specified.     

Taxonomic sufficiency in ecological studies of terrestrial invertebrates

The concept of taxonomic sufficiency (identifying organisms only to a level of taxonomic resolution sufficient to satisfy the objectives of a study) has received little attention in ecological studies of terrestrial invertebrate assemblages. Here we critically evaluate three approaches to taxonomic sufficiency: the use of morphospecies, genera and functional groups. The objective was to compare estimates of richness (α diversity) and turnover (β diversity) of ant assemblages generated by these data with estimates produced using data for ant species. Ground-active ants were sampled using pitfall trapping within three habitat types: a eucalypt plantation, woodland regrowth patches and the surrounding grassland at a study site in the upper Hunter Valley, New South Wales. Comparisons of assemblage richness and turnover among taxonomic data sets and habitats and after different data transformations used univariate (simple correlation and ANOVA ) and multivariate (Mantel tests, ANOSIM and SSHMDS ) techniques. Our study found: (i) morphospecies and genus richness was highly correlated with species richness over the study area; (ii) ordination scatterplots using species, morphospecies and genus data revealed similar patterns of site separation for the three habitats; (iii) the results were very similar using untransformed, log transformed and binary data; (iv) functional group ordinations separated all three habitat types for untransformed abundance data; and (v) estimates of species turnover were highly correlated with estimates of morphospecies and genus turnover. These results are discussed in relation to future monitoring of ant community structure.