plant geography

Roscoea is an alpine or subalpine genus from the pan-tropical family Zingiberaceae, which consists of two disjunct groups in geography, namely the "Chinese" clade and the "Himalayan" clade. Despite extensive research on the genus, Roscoea species remain poorly defined and relationships between these species are not well resolved. In this study, we used plastid genomes of nine species and one variety to resolve phylogenetic relationships within the "Chinese" clade of Roscoea and as DNA super barcodes for species discrimination...

Bumblebees are important pollinators in natural ecosystems and agriculture, but many species are declining. Temperate-zone bumblebees have host-specific and beneficial gut microbiomes, which may have a role in mediating the effects of stressors. However, there is almost no published information on the gut microbiomes of tropical bumblebees. As temperate and tropical bumblebees encounter different floral resources and environmental conditions, their microbiomes could differ. Here, we characterized the gut microbiomes of four neotropical Bombus species and, for comparison, co-occurring solitary bees (genus Thygater )...

Agricultural insect herbivores show a remarkable ability to adapt to modern agroecosystems, making them ideal for the study of the mechanisms underlying rapid evolution. The mobilization of transposable elements is one mechanism that may help explain this ability. The Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata, is a highly adaptable species, as shown by its wide host range, broad geographic distribution, and tolerance to insecticides. However, beetle populations vary in insecticide tolerance, with Eastern US beetle populations being more adaptable than Western US ones...

One of the major goals of contemporary evolutionary biology is to elucidate the relative roles of allopatric and ecological differentiation and polyploidy in speciation. In this study, we address the taxonomically intricate Sabulina verna group, which has a disjunct Arctic-alpine postglacial range in Europe and occupies a broad range of ecological niches, including substrates toxic to plants. Using genome-wide ddRAD sequencing combined with morphometric analyses based on extensive sampling of 111 natural populations, we aimed to disentangle internal evolutionary relationships and examine their correspondence with the pronounced edaphic and ploidy diversity within the group...

The glassy-winged sharpshooter, Homalodisca vitripennis Germar, is an invasive xylem-feeding leafhopper with a devastating economic impact on California agriculture through transmission of the plant pathogen, Xylella fastidiosa . While studies have focused on X. fastidiosa or known symbionts of H. vitripennis , little work has been done at the scale of the microbiome (the bacterial community) or mycobiome (the fungal community). Here, we characterize the mycobiome and the microbiome of H. vitripennis across Southern California and explore correlations with captivity and host insecticide resistance status...

A full understanding of adaptive genetic variation at the genomic level will help address questions of how organisms adapt to diverse climates. Actinidia eriantha is a shade-tolerant species, widely distributed in the southern tropical region of China, occurring in spatially heterogeneous environments. In the present study we combined population genomic, epigenomic, and environmental association analyses to infer population genetic structure and positive selection across a climatic gradient, and to assess genomic offset to climatic change for A...

BACKGROUND: Goat is an important livestock worldwide, which plays an indispensable role in human life by providing meat, milk, fiber, and pelts. Despite recent significant advances in microbiome studies, a comprehensive survey on the goat microbiomes covering gastrointestinal tract (GIT) sites, developmental stages, feeding styles, and geographical factors is still unavailable. Here, we surveyed its multi-kingdom microbial communities using 497 samples from ten sites along the goat GIT...

The Irano-Turanian region is one of the world's richest floristic regions and the centre of diversity for numerous xerophytic plant lineages. However, we still have limited knowledge on the timing of evolution and biogeographic history of its flora, and potential drivers of diversification remain underexplored. To fill this knowledge gap, we focus on the Eurasian genus Jurinea (ca. 200 species), one of the largest plant radiations that diversified in the region. We applied a macroevolutionary integrative approach to explicitly test diversification hypotheses and investigate the relative roles of geography vs...

Plant response to changing air pollution is a function of various factors including meteorology, type of pollutants, plant species, soil chemistry, and geography. However, the impact of altitude on plant behavior has received little attention to date. A study was therefore conducted to evaluate the impact of altitude on the air pollution tolerance index (APTI), heavy metal accumulation, and deposition in plant species. The results favor the hypothesis of a definite impact of altitude on biochemical and heavy metal accumulation in plants...

BACKGROUND: Soybean gall midge, Resseliella maxima Gagné (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae), is a pest that impacts soybean yield in the Midwest US. While biological control using parasitoids may be a promising approach for managing this pest, it is crucial to have a deep understanding of parasitism dynamics to ensure effective implementation. We investigated R. maxima parasitism using a combination of three methods: rearing of field-collected hosts, dissection, and molecular assays. RESULTS: We confirmed parasitism of R...

Angelica sinensis Radix (ASR) is mainly produced in the southern region of Gansu, China, and is a famous edible and medicinal herb. Noticeably, Aba region in Sichuan, China has similar geographical and climatic conditions to the southern region of Gansu, China, and has the potential to further develop the ASR planting industry chain. This study was the first to use an innovative method that combines GC-MS, HPLC-DAD fingerprints, and stoichiometric analysis to compare and explore the feasibility of using the Aba region as a source of high-quality ASR supplements...

The CGIAR biofortification program, HarvestPlus, was founded with the aim of improving the quality of diets through micronutrient-dense varieties of staple food crops. Implemented in four phases - discovery, development, delivery and scaling - the program was designed to be interdisciplinary, with plant breeding R&D supported by nutrition and socio-economic research. This paper explains the need, use and usefulness of socio-economic research in each phase of the program. Ex ante and ex post benefit-cost analyses facilitated fundraising for initial biofortification R&D and implementation in each subsequent phase, as well as encouraged other public, private, and civil society and non-governmental organizations to take on and mainstream biofortification in their crop R&D, policies, and programs...

Although climate change has been implicated as a major catalyst of diversification, its effects are thought to be inconsistent and much less pervasive than localized climate or the accumulation of species with time. Focused analyses of highly speciose clades are needed in order to disentangle the consequences of climate change, geography, and time. Here, we show that global cooling shapes the biodiversity of terrestrial orchids. Using a phylogeny of 1,475 species of Orchidoideae, the largest terrestrial orchid subfamily, we find that speciation rate is dependent on historic global cooling, not time, tropical distributions, elevation, variation in chromosome number, or other types of historic climate change...

The subtropical climate of Florida allows for a wide range of crops to be grown. With the classification of hemp ( Cannabis sativa L., <0.3% delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) as an agricultural commodity, hemp has become a potential alternative crop in Florida. Hemp cultivars of different geographies (Europe, China, and North America), and uses (fiber, oil and CBD), were evaluated in three field experiments. The field experiments evaluated a total of 26 cultivars and were conducted for two consecutive seasons at three different locations (soil types) in North (sandy loam), Central (fine sand), and South Florida (gravelly loam)...

Persian walnut is a drought-sensitive species with considerable genetic variation in the photosynthesis and water use efficiency of its populations, which is largely unexplored. Here, we aimed to elucidate changes in the efficiency of photosynthesis and water content using a diverse panel of 60 walnut families which were submitted to a progressive drought for 24 days, followed by two weeks of re-watering. Severe water-withholding reduced leaf relative water content (RWC) by 20%, net photosynthetic rate (Pn ) by 50%, stomatal conductance (gs ) by 60%, intercellular CO2 concentration (Ci ) by 30%, and transpiration rate (Tr ) by 50%, but improved water use efficiency (WUE) by 25%...

We review approaches to maize breeding for improved drought tolerance during flowering and grain filling in central and western US corn belt and place our findings in context of results from public breeding. Here we show that after two decades of dedicated breeding efforts, the rate of crop improvement under drought increased from 6.2 to 7.5 g m -2 y -1 closing the genetic gain gap with respect to the 8.6 g m -2 y -1 observed under water sufficient conditions. The improvement relative to the long-term genetic gain was possible by harnessing favorable alleles for physiological traits available in the reference population of genotypes...

INTRODUCTION: Throughout the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, wastewater surveillance has been utilized to monitor the disease in the United States through routine national, statewide, and regional monitoring projects. A significant canon of evidence was produced showing that wastewater surveillance is a credible and effective tool for disease monitoring. Hence, the application of wastewater surveillance can extend beyond monitoring SARS-CoV-2 to encompass a diverse range of emerging diseases...

Continental East Asia has a mild Pleistocene climate and a complex recent geological history. Phylogeographic studies of animals over the last 30 years have produced several distinctive patterns. Glaciation refugia are numerous and are not restricted to any particular regions. Most of them are localized and species-specific, although several large refugia, for example the mountains of SW China, are shared by multiple species and have refugia-within-refugia. Furthermore, postglaciation range expansion events vary greatly in time, scale and direction...

Microbiome diversity and diet composition concomitantly influence species health, fitness, immunity, and digestion. In environments where diet varies spatially and temporally, microbiome plasticity may promote rapid host adaptation to available resources. For northern ungulates in particular, metabarcoding of noninvasively collected fecal pellets presents unprecedented insights into their diverse ecological requirements and niches by clarifying the interrelationships of microbiomes, key to deriving nutrients, in context of altered forage availability in changing climates...

Alternaria is often one on the most abundant fungal genera recovered from a wide array of plant hosts and environmental substrates. Many species within the sub-generic Alternaria section Alternaria are common plant pathogens that cause pre-harvest losses due to reduced productivity and post-harvest losses due to spoilage and contamination with mycotoxins. As certain species of Alternaria may have distinct mycotoxin profiles, and very broad host ranges, understanding the distribution of species by geography and host is critical for disease prediction, toxicological risk assessment, and guiding regulatory decisions...