| 1. |
- Sanders, Dawn, 1958, et al.
(författare)
-
Seeing the green cucumber: Reflections on variation theory and teaching plant identification
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Plants People Planet. - : Wiley. - 2572-2611. ; 4:3, s. 258-268
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Societal Impact Statement Overcoming 'plant blindness' is a critical goal for society and especially for education. In this article, we suggest variation theory can be a useful approach to plant identification training and evaluation in higher education contexts. We discuss an example from Swedish higher education in which we reflect on our teaching. We propose that the conscious use of variation theory may be useful in developing pedagogical tools and processes in the teaching of plant identification. Ett viktigt mal for samhallet, sarskilt for utbildningssystemen, ar att vi manniskor blir battre pa att fa syn pa vaxter och pa deras betydelse i ekosystemen. Vi behover overvinna vad som benamns 'vaxttblindhet'. I denna artikel foreslar vi att variationsteori ar en bra utgangspunkt i utbildning och utvardering av vaxtidentifiering inom hogre utbildning. Vi redovisar exempel fran svensk universitetsutbildning dar vi reflekterar over var egen undervisning pa ett systematiskt satt. Vi foreslar att en avsiktlig utgangspunkt i variationsteorin for larande ar anvandbar for att vidareutveckla pedagogiska verktyg och processer i undervisning om vaxtidentifiering. Given the importance of the ecological functions of plants and current extinction rates, overcoming 'plant blindness', the inability to notice plants in our environment, is a critical goal for society as a whole, and for education in particular. In response to this social challenge, we suggest that a theoretical approach to learning can be a useful lens through which plant identification training and evaluation in higher education contexts can be understood on a deeper level, informed by theoretical tools from the learning sciences. In this article, we discuss an example from Swedish higher education in which we reflect upon our teaching using the principles of the variation theory of learning, which emphasises the ability to discern different features or aspects of what is being learned. We also propose that a deliberate use of learning theories, especially variation theory, may be useful in developing pedagogical tools and processes in botanical education.
|
|
| 2. |
- Kemppinen, J., et al.
(författare)
-
Geomorphological processes shape plant community traits in the Arctic
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Global Ecology and Biogeography. - : Wiley. - 1466-822X .- 1466-8238. ; 31:7, s. 1381-1398
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aim Geomorphological processes profoundly affect plant establishment and distributions, but their influence on functional traits is insufficiently understood. Here, we unveil trait-geomorphology relationships in Arctic plant communities. Location High-Arctic Svalbard, low-Arctic Greenland and sub-Arctic Fennoscandia. Time period 2011-2018. Major taxa studied Vascular plants. Methods We collected field-quantified data on vegetation, geomorphological processes, microclimate and soil properties from 5,280 plots and 200 species across the three Arctic regions. We combined these data with database trait records to relate local plant community trait composition to dominant geomorphological processes of the Arctic, namely cryoturbation, deflation, fluvial processes and solifluction. We investigated the relationship between plant functional traits and geomorphological processes using hierarchical generalized additive modelling. Results Our results demonstrate that community-level traits are related to geomorphological processes, with cryoturbation most strongly influencing both structural and leaf economic traits. These results were consistent across regions, suggesting a coherent biome-level trait response to geomorphological processes. Main conclusions The results indicate that geomorphological processes shape plant community traits in the Arctic. We provide empirical evidence for the existence of generalizable relationships between plant functional traits and geomorphological processes. The results indicate that the relationships are consistent across these three distinct tundra regions and that geomorphological processes should be considered in future investigations of functional traits.
|
|
| 3. |
- Crous, K. Y., et al.
(författare)
-
Temperature responses of photosynthesis and respiration in evergreen trees from boreal to tropical latitudes
- 2022
-
Ingår i: New Phytologist. - : Wiley. - 0028-646X .- 1469-8137. ; 234:2, s. 353-374
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Evergreen species are widespread across the globe, representing two major plant functional forms in terrestrial models. We reviewed and analysed the responses of photosynthesis and respiration to warming in 101 evergreen species from boreal to tropical biomes. Summertime temperatures affected both latitudinal gas exchange rates and the degree of responsiveness to experimental warming. The decrease in net photosynthesis at 25 degrees C (A(net25)) was larger with warming in tropical climates than cooler ones. Respiration at 25 degrees C (R-25) was reduced by 14% in response to warming across species and biomes. Gymnosperms were more sensitive to greater amounts of warming than broadleaved evergreens, with A(net25) and R-25 reduced c. 30-40% with > 10 degrees C warming. While standardised rates of carboxylation (V-cmax25) and electron transport (J(max25)) adjusted to warming, the magnitude of this adjustment was not related to warming amount (range 0.6-16 degrees C). The temperature optimum of photosynthesis (T-optA) increased on average 0.34 degrees C per degrees C warming. The combination of more constrained acclimation of photosynthesis and increasing respiration rates with warming could possibly result in a reduced carbon sink in future warmer climates. The predictable patterns of thermal acclimation across biomes provide a strong basis to improve modelling predictions of the future terrestrial carbon sink with warming.
|
|
| 4. |
- Alatalo, J. M., et al.
(författare)
-
Impact of ambient temperature, precipitation and seven years of experimental warming and nutrient addition on fruit production in an alpine heath and meadow community
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - Amsterdam : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 836
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Alpine and polar regions are predicted to be among the most vulnerable to changes in temperature, precipitation, and nutrient availability. We carried out a seven-year factorial experiment with warming and nutrient addition in two alpine vegetation communities. We analyzed the relationship between fruit production and monthly mean, maximum, and min temperatures during the fall of the pre-fruiting year, the fruiting summer, and the whole fruit production period, and measured the effects of precipitation and growing and thawing degree days (GDD & TDD) on fruit production. Nutrient addition (heath: 27.88 +/- 3.19 fold change at the end of the experiment; meadow: 18.02 +/- 4.07) and combined nutrient addition and warming (heath: 20.63 +/- 29.34 fold change at the end of the experiment; meadow: 18.21 +/- 16.28) increased total fruit production and fruit production of graminoids. Fruit production of evergreen and deciduous shrubs fluctuated among the treatments and years in both the heath and meadow. Pre-maximum temperatures had a negative effect on fruit production in both communities, while current year maximum temperatures had a positive impact on fruit production in the meadow. Pre-minimum, pre-mean, current mean, total minimum, and total mean temperatures were all positively correlated with fruit production in the meadow. The current year and total precipitation had a negative effect on the fruit production of deciduous shrubs in the heath. GDD had a positive effect on fruit production in both communities, while TDD only impacted fruit production in the meadow. Increased nutrient availability increased fruit production over time in the high alpine plant communities, while experimental warming had either no effect or a negative effect. Deciduous shrubs were the most sensitive to climate parameters in both communities, and the meadow was more sensitive than the heath. The difference in importance of TDD for fruit production may be due to differences in snow cover in the two communities.
|
|
| 5. |
- Franzén, Markus, et al.
(författare)
-
Yearly weather variation and surface temperature drives the spatiotemporal dynamics of a threatened butterfly and its host plant
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-701X. ; 10
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It remains unclear to what extent yearly weather variation and spatial variation in microclimate influences the outcome of interacting plant-animal species and whether responses differ between life stages. We collected data over several years on 46 ha on File Hajdar, Gotland, Sweden, and executed a complete mapping of larva nests (n = 776) and imago (n = 5,952) of the marsh fritillary butterfly Euphydryas aurinia and its host plant Succisa pratensis. The phenology of the butterflies and the major nectar plants visited varied among years. The duration of the adult flight period decreased with increasing ambient air temperatures. The density of butterflies, host plants, and host plant leaf size increased between years with increasing precipitation in the preceding year, and decreased with increasing average ambient air temperature in the preceding year. In 2021-2022 we deployed a unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a high-resolution thermal sensor to measure spatial variation in surface temperatures in the study area. We found that survival from the egg to the larva stage increased with increasing surface temperature and host plant density. Host plants and larva nests generally occupied warmer microhabitats compared to imago butterflies. The results further suggested that the relationships linking surface temperature to the densities of imago, larva, host plants, and leaf size differed qualitatively between years. In 2017, larva nests and host plant density increased with increasing surface temperatures, and butterflies showed a non-linear response with a density peak at intermediate temperatures. As a result of the extreme drought in 2018 there was a reduction in maximum leaf size, and in the densities of plants, larvae, and butterflies. Moreover, the slopes of the relationships linking the density of larvae, butterflies, and plants to temperature shifted from linear positive to negative or curvilinear. Our findings demonstrate how yearly weather variation and heterogeneous surface temperatures can drive the spatiotemporal distribution and dynamics of butterflies and their host plants. The context specificity of the responses indicated by our results makes it challenging to project how climate change will affect the dynamics of ecological communities.
|
|
| 6. |
- Cowell, C., et al.
(författare)
-
Uses and benefits of digital sequence information from plant genetic resources: Lessons learnt from botanical collections
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Plants People Planet. - : Wiley. - 2572-2611. ; 4:1, s. 33-43
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Societal Impact Statement Digitized molecular data are vital to numerous aspects of scientific research and genetic resource use. The Convention on Biological Diversity currently refers to this as "Digital Sequence Information" (DSI), a term not widely adopted by science and lacking a clear definition. There are concerns over the access to genetic resources and absence of benefit sharing by provider countries. Open access to DSI might exacerbate this, which is leading to increasing policy interventions and restricted access to genetic resources and DSI. We analyze current international debate and proposed solutions and provide case studies of DSI use producing tangible benefits for the provider countries and scientific research, demonstrating the importance of open access DSI to achieving conservation goals. Substantial advances in DNA sequencing over the last decades hold great potential to enhance food security and sustainable use of global biodiversity, benefiting the world's poorest people. Digital Sequence Information (DSI) plays a crucial role in catalyzing research applications that can contribute to international societal and biodiversity conservation targets. However, benefit sharing relating to DSI is difficult to identify and hindered by the lack of clear international governance and legislation, which in turn has led to a reluctance to make DSI publicly and freely available. Critically, no precise definition exists under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Nagoya Protocol (NP), or the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). The key difference between DSI and biological resources, for which access and use are highly regulated under those frameworks, is that information is nonphysical. Information can be replicated and used without movement of, or access to, physical specimens. Thus, regulating the use of DSI is extremely challenging and remains controversial. Here, we review the regulation of DSI and the possible future steps by the international community, in the context of the benefit-sharing obligations of the CBD, NP, and ITPGRFA. We highlight how multilateral agreements work in practice and are a solution to this impasse. We provide case studies demonstrating how the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and its collaborators address the uncertainty surrounding the use of DSI, illustrating tangible and equitable benefits that have arisen from such use. We conclude that open access to DSI is needed for scientific research and international policy.
|
|
| 7. |
- Al-Handal, Adil Y, 1952, et al.
(författare)
-
Fallacia fawensis sp. nov., a new brackish water diatom (Bacillariophyceae) from Southern Iraq
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Phytotaxa. - : Magnolia Press. - 1179-3155 .- 1179-3163. ; 550:1, s. 71-78
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The diatom genus Fallacia includes species having a conopeum which is a perforated thin sheath of silica lying along the apical axis on the external valve face and a hyaline lateral area in the internal valve face. In surveying the benthic diatoms of Basra, a new small brackish water species, Fallacia fawensis was found associated with fine-grained substrata on the western bank of Shatt Al???Arab River, Southern Iraq. This epipelic species is described based on light and scanning electron microscopy and characterized by having a porous conopeum covering the area between raphe sterna and mantle, narrow elongated marginal striae, and a structure similar to lateral hyaline areas in the valve internal side. The terminal raphe endings on the external valve face, below valve apex, the raphe sternum inner margins come close to each other, blocking raphe canal but leaving a lacuna-like thin groove for connection with the deflected upper part of the open raphe canal. These features separated this species from allied taxa of the genus and also from closely related genera, Pseudofallacia and Germaniella. Notes on the ecology and distribution of the new species as well as the associated diatom taxa are provided.
|
|
| 8. |
- Al-Handal, Adil Y, 1952, et al.
(författare)
-
Revisiting Potter Cove, King George Island, Antarctica, 12 years later: new observations of marine benthic diatoms
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Botanica Marina. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 0006-8055 .- 1437-4323. ; 65:2, s. 81-103
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Continuous observations of Antarctic benthic diatoms are necessary to detect changes in species composition and biodiversity that may result from environmental changes. The present work provides a systematic list of benthic diatoms from Potter Cove (62.03 degrees S 58.35 degrees W) collected during summer 2015. The new findings are compared with observations made 12 years ago (summer 2003). In total, 80 taxa were found, similar to that encountered earlier, but 17 species (21% of the total species number) were not observed in 2003, and 26 species (31%) of those reported in 2003 did not appear in 2015. The dominant species in 2003 and 2015 was the large epipelic and cosmopolitan Gyrosigma fasciola. Most of the species either newly observed in the present study, or absent in the present study but observed previously, occurred either rarely or very rarely. Gyrosigma arcuatum and Pleurosigma diversestriatum were newly observed in 2015 and not previously reported from polar regions. This study provides systematic and ecological information on all taxa encountered and is illustrated with light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. We emphasize that ice-inhabiting and other benthic diatoms should be included when considering the biodiversity of polar diatoms. Thus, we hope that the present study will add a piece to the puzzle of climate change effects on the benthic diatoms in this vulnerable region and will complement earlier published species records in the area.
|
|
| 9. |
- Antonelli, Alexandre, 1978, et al.
(författare)
-
Integrating machine learning, remote sensing and citizen science to create an early warning system for biodiversity
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Plants People Planet. - : Wiley. - 2572-2611. ; 5:3, s. 307-16
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Application of machine learning approaches is aiding biodiversity conservation and research at a time of rapid global change. Two emerging topics and their data requirements are presented. First, to identify areas of priority protection for preventing biodiversity loss, reinforcement learning is used by training models that take into account human disturbance and climate change under recurrent monitoring schemes. Second, neural networks are used to approximate classification of species into Red List categories of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, offering the possibility of real-time re-classification after events such as widespread fires and deforestation. We discuss how the identification of areas and species most at risk could be integrated into an ‘early warning system’ based on climatic monitoring, remotely sensed land-use changes and near-real time biological and threat data from citizen science initiatives. Such system would help guide actions to prevent biodiversity loss at the speed required for effective conservation.
|
|
| 10. |
- Hao, Qian, et al.
(författare)
-
Soil silicon fractions along karst hillslopes of southwestern China
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Journal of Soils and Sediments. - : Springer Nature. - 1439-0108 .- 1614-7480. ; 22, s. 1121-1134
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose The karst region in southwestern China is undergoing soil erosion and rocky desertification. The different silicon (Si) fractions along the hillslopes in this mountainous region could benefit plant growth and alleviate the ecological deterioration. However, extensive distribution of carbonate rocks may lead to limited plant available Si. The mountainous terrain in karst region also leads to more Si output, which seriously affects the biogeochemical cycle of Si in this area. Yet, the soil Si fractions in the karst region have not been fully evaluated. Methods Soil profiles and their corresponding plants were sampled from two typical karst mountains in Guizhou, China. The different fractions of non-crystalline Si in soil, accounting for the most important pool for Si availability to plants, were analyzed by the improved sequential chemical extraction and Si concentrations in plants grown in this region were also measured. Results The concentration and storage of non-crystalline Si were higher at lower slopes (storage was 2.44, 2.73, and 3.25 kg center dot m(-2) for upper, middle, and lower slopes, respectively) than other slope positions. Grasses dominated at lower slopes and contained significantly higher Si (mean +/- SD: 14.42 +/- 6.63 mg center dot g(-1)) than trees and shrubs (1.94 +/- 1.78 and 1.29 +/- 1.00 mg center dot g(-1), respectively), which were primarily distributed on upper slopes. However, Si concentrations of the same plant species in different slope positions had no significant correlation with soil acid Na acetate-Si, the Si regarded as directly available for plants. Conclusions This study suggests that plant species and soil properties have a significant impact on the soil Si distribution of hillslopes in karst region. Soil erosion may decrease non-crystalline Si concentrations in soils and impair Si uptake in grasses, which need to be considered in ecosystem management in this region.
|
|
