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The deep learning techniques have been playing an important role in the identification and classification problems such as diseases in medical science, marketing in the industry, manufacturing in engineering, and identification in plant taxonomy science. Fruit identification and its family classification is among one of the areas that needs more emphasis for the sake of automation. With this inspiration, fruit images for 52 species belonging to four different families (Apiaceae, Brassicaceae, Asteraceae, and Apocynaceae) have been used in this study to build a deep learning analysis dataset. Further, the dataset has been augmented to 3800 images, divided to 2660 images for training and 1440 for testing, and different 14 fruit images belonging to the same families have been used for prediction of the testing module. A novel Convolution Neural Network (CNN) model architecture has been proposed to extract the fruit features, classify each image with its family, and use the trained model to predict that the new fruits belong to the same four families. The maximum accuracy obtained for the training and testing module was 99.82%. The prediction for this module succeeded by 93% since all fruits' success predicted was attained except one from the family number 2 (Brassicaceae). The same dataset was applied to two different models to evaluate our proposed model, the Deep learning model, aka Residual Neural Network, 20 layers (ResNet-20), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). The proposed CNN model achieved higher accuracy and efficiency than the ResNet-20 and SVM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce the database of European vascular plant red lists, a compilation of red list categories designated to taxa during in-country conservation assessments. Version 1.0 of the database is a standalone static dataset with open access in an end-user friendly format. Its aim is to fulfil the objectives of European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action 18201, ConservePlants. The database synthesizes data across 42 red lists from 41 countries, with participation of 39 out of a total of 44 European countries and two additional Mediterranean countries. The database contains 51,109 records representing 21,481 original taxonomic names with 37 different red list categories. During data harmonisation, 20,312 of the original taxonomic names were assigned to 17,873 unique accepted taxonomic names with scientific authorships across 184 families, 1650 genera and 15,593 species; and red list categories were standardised to 13 unique categories. We see this database as a source of information in diverse plant conservation activities and suitable for various stakeholders., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

In wetland ecosystems, small shallow lakes are critical transition zones of land and water, which are usually dominated by aquatic plants with different growth forms. However, the differences and key influencing factors of phytoplankton communities in shallow lakes dominated by different aquatic plants are unclear. On this basis, nine surveys were conducted at five sampling sites of three lakes in Zhangye National Wetland Park from June to November in 2022, which were respectively dominated by the emergent Phragmites australis （LL）, the submerged Potamogeton perfoliatus （CL）, and the floating-leaved Nymphaea tetragona （SL）. During the study period, the three lakes showed obvious habitat differences. A total of 237 species of phytoplankton in seven phyla and 93 genera were identified in the three lakes, including 189 species, 151 species, and 147 species in the LL, CL, and SL lakes, respectively. Among them, Ulnaria acus, Scenedesmus quadricauda, Achnanthidium minutissimum, Nitzschia stagnorum, Navicula radiosa , and Gymnodinium aeruginosum were shared dominant species of all three lakes, indicating that they had strong environmental adaptability, whereas Navicula lanceolala , Encyonopsis cesatii , and Eunotia diodon and Cymbella aequalis were only dominant in the CL, LL, and SL lakes, respectively. Simultaneously, these dominant algae appeared with obviously distinct statuses of niche width, niche overlap, and interspecific correlation among the three lakes. Using principal coordinate analysis （PCoA） and permutational multivariate analysis of variance （PERMANOVA）, significant differences were found in algal community composition among the three lakes （ P <0.001）. Multiple regression on （dis）similarity matrices analysis （MRM） showed that the heterogeneity of phytoplankton communities among the three lakes was positively affected by NO 3 - -N and pH and negatively affected by dissolved oxygen （DO） and was closely positively correlated with the abundance of six dominant species, namely, S. quadricauda , U. acus , N. stagnorum , Pseudoanabaena sp., Merismopedia punctata , and A. minutissimum . These results indicate that aquatic plants with different growth types could affect the composition, structure, and stability of phytoplankton communities in the same habitat with them by shaping their habitat heterogeneity. Therefore, selecting specific growth types of aquatic plants for aquatic ecosystem restoration in wetland construction and management will be conducive to regulate the state of water habitat and phytoplankton community structure effectively.

Islands are renowned as evolutionary laboratories and support many species that are not found elsewhere 1,2 . Islands are also of great conservation concern, with many of their endemic species currently threatened or extinct 3 . Here we present a standardized checklist of all known vascular plants that occur on islands and document their geographical and phylogenetic distribution and conservation risk. Our analyses of 304,103 plant species reveal that 94,052 species (31%) are native to islands, which constitute 5.3% of the global landmass 4 . Of these, 63,280 are island endemic species, which represent 21% of global plant diversity. Three-quarters of these are restricted to large or isolated islands. Compared with the world flora, island endemics are non-randomly distributed within the tree of life, with a total of 1,005 billion years of unique phylogenetic history with 17 families and 1,702 genera being entirely endemic to islands. Of all vascular plants assigned International Union for Conservation of Nature conservation categories 5 , 22% are island endemics. Among these endemic species, 51% are threatened, and 55% of all documented global extinctions have occurred on islands. We find that of all single-island endemic species, only 6% occur on islands meeting the United Nations 30×30 conservation target. Urgent measures including habitat restoration, invasive species removal and ex situ programmes are needed to protect the world's island flora. Our checklist quantifies the uniqueness of island life, provides a basis for future studies of island floras, and highlights the urgent need to take actions for conserving them., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Despite decades of research documenting the consequences of naturalized and invasive plant species on ecosystem functions, our understanding of the functional underpinnings of these changes remains rudimentary. This is partially due to ineffective scaling of trait differences between native and naturalized species to whole plant communities. Working with data from over 75,000 plots and over 5,500 species from across the United States, we show that changes in the functional composition of communities associated with increasing abundance of naturalized species mirror the differences in traits between native and naturalized plants. We find that communities with greater abundance of naturalized species are more resource acquisitive aboveground and belowground, shorter, more shallowly rooted, and increasingly aligned with an independent strategy for belowground resource acquisition via thin fine roots with high specific root length. We observe shifts toward herbaceous-dominated communities but shifts within both woody and herbaceous functional groups follow community-level patterns for most traits. Patterns are remarkably similar across desert, grassland, and forest ecosystems. Our results demonstrate that the establishment and spread of naturalized species, likely in combination with underlying environmental shifts, leads to predictable and consistent changes in community-level traits that can alter ecosystem functions., Competing Interests: Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.

Global change is affecting the distribution and population dynamics of plant species across the planet, leading to trends such as shifts in distribution toward the poles and to higher elevations. Yet, we poorly understand why individual species respond differently to warming and other environmental changes, or how the trait composition of communities responds. Here we ask two questions regarding plant species and community changes over 42 years of global change in a temperate montane forest in Québec, Canada: (1) How did the trait composition, alpha diversity, and beta diversity of understory vascular plant communities change between 1970 and 2010, a period over which the region experienced 1.5°C of warming and changes in nitrogen deposition? (2) Can traits predict shifts in species elevation and abundance over this time period? For 46 understory vascular species, we locally measured six aboveground traits, and for 36 of those (not including shrubs), we also measured five belowground traits. Collectively, they capture leading dimensions of phenotypic variation that are associated with climatic and resource niches. At the community level, the trait composition of high-elevation plots shifted, primarily for two root traits: specific root length decreased and rooting depth increased. The mean trait values of high-elevation plots shifted over time toward values initially associated with low-elevation plots. These changes led to trait homogenization across elevations. The community-level shifts in traits mirrored the taxonomic shifts reported elsewhere for this site. At the species level, two of the three traits predicting changes in species elevation and abundance were belowground traits (low mycorrhizal fraction and shallow rooting). These findings highlight the importance of root traits, which, along with leaf mass fraction, were associated with shifts in distribution and abundance over four decades. Community-level trait changes were largely similar across the elevational and temporal gradients. In contrast, traits typically associated with lower elevations at the community level did not predict differences among species in their shift in abundance or distribution, indicating a decoupling between species- and community-level responses. Overall, changes were consistent with some influence of both climate warming and increased nitrogen availability., (© 2024 The Author(s). Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.)

Globally, numerous ecosystems have been co-invaded by multiple exotic plant species that can have competitive or facilitative interactions with each other and with native plants. Invaded ecosystems often exhibit spatial heterogeneity in soil moisture and nutrient levels, with some habitats having more nutrient-rich and moist soils than others. The stress-gradient hypothesis predicts that plants are likely to engage in facilitative interactions when growing in stressful environments, such as nutrient-deficient or water-deficient soils. In contrast, when resources are abundant, competitive interactions between plants should prevail. The invasional meltdown hypothesis proposes that facilitative interactions between invasive species can enhance their establishment and amplify their ecological impact. Considering both hypotheses can offer insights into the complex interactions among invasive and native plants across environmental gradients. However, experimental tests of the effects of soil moisture and nutrient co-limitation on interactions between invasive and native plants at both interspecific and intraspecific levels in light of these hypotheses are lacking. We performed a greenhouse pot experiment in which we cultivated individual focal plants from five congeneric pairs of invasive and native species. Each focal plant was subjected to one of three levels of plant-plant interactions: (1) intraspecific, in which the focal plant was grown with another individual of the same species; (2) interspecific, involving a native and an invasive plant; and (3) interspecific, involving two native or invasive individuals. These plant-plant interaction treatments were fully crossed with two levels of water availability (drought vs. well-watered) and two levels of nutrient supply (low vs. high). Consistent with the stress-gradient and invasional meltdown hypotheses, our findings show that under low-nutrient conditions, the biomass production of invasive focal plants was facilitated by invasive interspecific neighbors. However, under high-nutrient conditions, the biomass production of invasive focal plants was suppressed by invasive interspecific neighbors. When competing with native interspecific neighbors, high-nutrient conditions similarly enhanced the biomass production of both invasive and native focal plants. Invasive and native focal plants were neither competitively suppressed nor facilitated by conspecific neighbors. Taken together, these results suggest that co-occurring invasive exotic plant species may facilitate each other in low-nutrient habitats but compete in high-nutrient habitats., (© 2024 The Ecological Society of America.)

Plants produce a staggering array of chemicals that are the basis for organismal function and important human nutrients and medicines. However, it is poorly defined how these compounds evolved and are distributed across the plant kingdom, hindering a systematic view and understanding of plant chemical diversity. Recent advances in plant genome/transcriptome sequencing have provided a well-defined molecular phylogeny of plants, on which the presence of diverse natural products can be mapped to systematically determine their phylogenetic distribution. Here, we built a proof-of-concept workflow where previously reported diverse tyrosine-derived plant natural products were mapped onto the plant tree of life. Plant chemical-species associations were mined from literature, filtered, evaluated through manual inspection of over 2500 scientific articles, and mapped onto the plant phylogeny. The resulting "phylochemical" map confirmed several highly lineage-specific compound class distributions, such as betalain pigments and Amaryllidaceae alkaloids. The map also highlighted several lineages enriched in dopamine-derived compounds, including the orders Caryophyllales, Liliales, and Fabales. Additionally, the application of large language models, using our manually curated data as a ground truth set, showed that post-mining processing can largely be automated with a low false-positive rate, critical for generating a reliable phylochemical map. Although a high false-negative rate remains a challenge, our study demonstrates that combining text mining with language model-based processing can generate broader phylochemical maps, which will serve as a valuable community resource to uncover key evolutionary events that underlie plant chemical diversity and enable system-level views of nature's millions of years of chemical experimentation., (© 2024 The Author(s). The Plant Journal published by Society for Experimental Biology and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Plant phenology is influenced by a combined effect of phylogeny and climate, although it is yet unclear how these two variables work together to change phenology. We synthesized 107 previously published studies to examine whether phenological changes were impacted by both phylogeny and climate changes in various geographical settings globally. Phenological observation data from 52,463 plant species at 71 sites worldwide revealed that 90 % of phenological records showed phylogenetic conservation. i.e., closely related species exhibited similar phenology. To explore the significant and non-significant phylogenetic conservation between plant phenophases, our dataset comprises 5,47,000 observation records from the four main phenophases (leaf bud, leaf, flower, and fruit). Three-dimensional geographical distribution (altitude, latitude, and longitude) data analysis revealed that plant phenology may exhibit phylogenetic signals at finer special scales (optimal environmental conditions) that vanish in high altitude and latitude regions. Additionally, climatic sensitivity analysis suggested that phylogenetic signals were associated with plant phenophases and were stronger in the regions of ideal temperature (7-18 °C) and photoperiod (10-14 h) and weaker in harsh climatic conditions. These results show that phylogenetic conservation in plant phenological traits is frequently influenced by the interaction of harsh climatic conditions and geographical ranges. This meta-analysis enhances our knowledge of predicting species responses over geographic gradients under varied climatic conditions., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The use of trait-based approaches to understand ecological communities has increased in the past two decades because of their promise to preserve more information about community structure than taxonomic methods and their potential to connect community responses to subsequent effects of ecosystem functioning. Though trait-based approaches are a powerful tool for describing ecological communities, many important properties of commonly-used trait metrics remain unexamined. Previous work with simulated communities and trait distributions shows sensitivity of functional diversity measures to the number and correlation of traits used to calculate them, but these relationships have yet to be studied in actual plant communities with a realistic distribution of trait values, ecologically meaningful covariation of traits, and a realistic number of traits available for analysis. To address this gap, we used data from six grassland plant communities in Minnesota and New Mexico, USA to test how the number of traits and the correlation between traits used in the calculation of eight functional diversity indices impact the magnitude of functional diversity metrics in real plant communities. We found that most metrics were sensitive to the number of traits used to calculate them, but functional dispersion (FDis), kernel density estimation dispersion (KDE dispersion), and Rao's quadratic entropy (Rao's Q) maintained consistent rankings of communities across the range of trait numbers. Despite sensitivity of metrics to trait correlation, there was no consistent pattern between communities as to how metrics were affected by the correlation of traits used to calculate them. We recommend that future use of evenness metrics include sensitivity analyses to ensure results are robust to the number of traits used to calculate them. In addition, we recommend use of FDis, KDE dispersion, and Rao's Q when ecologically applicable due to their ability to produce consistent rankings among communities across a range of the numbers of traits used to calculate them., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Ohlert et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Prof. Tchen-Ngo Liou is one of the founders of China's botany, geobotany, and forest ecology. Theory of dynamic geobotany, established by Prof. Liou, can track back from his doctoral work in Alps in France, and was developed based on his long-term field works in northeast, southeast, north, northeast parts of China, India, North Korea and other regions. In the short course on dynamics geobotany in 1962, he gave a series of lectures which formed a synthesized system. The key elements of this theory are the comprehensive review and critical thinking on climax theory of vegetation science and community succession. Prof. Liou has applied this theory into the establishment of artificial vegetation, the improvement of natural vegetation, forest harvesting and regeneration, and the prevent and control of desertification in China. Here, we gave a short summary about this theory, and discussed its potential influence on important topics in vegetation ecology and biodiversity science, including mountain biodiversity, natural forest conservation, forest management, global change, and vegetation classification.

Changes in species diversity of different taxa along environmental gradients are usually correlated, resulting in a pattern called cross-taxon congruence. This pattern can be due to functional relationships between taxa, a common response to niche-related processes, or stochastic processes. However, it remains unclear the extent to which they contribute to the association among patterns of changes in species composition, (i.e., beta diversity), and whether these changes are related to species nestedness and turnover. Here we described patterns of change in the taxonomic composition of plant and orthopteran assemblages along an elevational gradient in Cordoba province, central Argentina. We assessed cross-taxon congruence and identified the main environmental variables accounting for such patterns. Mantel correlations showed congruence between the patterns of taxonomic dissimilarity of plants and orthopterans. According Generalized disiimilarity models (GDM) the main environmental variables driving the patterns were temperature for both taxa, and changes in soil nutrient content for plants, spatial effects were also found. Beta diversity was mainly due to species turnover for orthopterans and plants, indicating replacement by species adapted to elevational conditions. Niche-related process, such as environmetal filtering, along with neutral processes may have contributed to cross-taxon congruence in beta diversity., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Anthropogenic habitat destruction and climate change are reshaping the geographic distribution of plants worldwide. However, we are still unable to map species shifts at high spatial, temporal, and taxonomic resolution. Here, we develop a deep learning model trained using remote sensing images from California paired with half a million citizen science observations that can map the distribution of over 2,000 plant species. Our model- Deepbiosphere- not only outperforms many common species distribution modeling approaches (AUC 0.95 vs. 0.88) but can map species at up to a few meters resolution and finely delineate plant communities with high accuracy, including the pristine and clear-cut forests of Redwood National Park. These fine-scale predictions can further be used to map the intensity of habitat fragmentation and sharp ecosystem transitions across human-altered landscapes. In addition, from frequent collections of remote sensing data, Deepbiosphere can detect the rapid effects of severe wildfire on plant community composition across a 2-y time period. These findings demonstrate that integrating public earth observations and citizen science with deep learning can pave the way toward automated systems for monitoring biodiversity change in real-time worldwide., Competing Interests: Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.

Much of what we know about terrestrial life during the Carboniferous Period comes from Middle Pennsylvanian (~315-307 Mya) Coal Measures deposited in low-lying wetland environments 1-5 . We know relatively little about terrestrial ecosystems from the Early Pennsylvanian, which was a critical interval for the diversification of insects, arachnids, tetrapods, and seed plants 6-10 . Here we report a diverse Early Pennsylvanian trace and body fossil Lagerstätte (~320-318 Mya) from the Wamsutta Formation of eastern North America, distinct from coal-bearing deposits, preserved in clastic substrates within basin margin conglomerates. The exceptionally preserved trace fossils and body fossils document a range of vertebrates, invertebrates and plant taxa (n = 131), with 83 distinct foliage morphotypes. Plant-insect interactions include what may be the earliest evidence of insect oviposition. This site expands our knowledge of early terrestrial ecosystems and organismal interactions and provides ground truth for future phylogenetic reconstructions of key plant, arthropod, and vertebrate groups., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Species-rich natural and semi-natural ecosystems are under threat owing to land use change. To conserve the biodiversity associated with these ecosystems, we must identify and target conservation efforts towards functionally important species and supporting habitats that create connections between remnant patches in the landscape. Here, we use a multi-layer network approach to identify species that connect a metanetwork of plant-bee interactions in remnant semi-natural grasslands which are biodiversity hotspots in European landscapes. We investigate how these landscape connecting species, and their interactions, persist in their proposed supporting habitat, road verges, across a landscape with high human impact. We identify 11 plant taxa and nine bee species that connect semi-natural grassland patches. We find the beta diversity of these connector species to be low across road verges, indicating a poor contribution of these habitats to the landscape-scale diversity in semi-natural grasslands. We also find a significant influence of the surrounding landscape on the beta diversity of connector species and their interactions with implications for landscape-scale management. Conservation actions targeted toward species with key functional roles as connectors of fragmented ecosystems can provide cost-effective management of the diversity and functioning of threatened ecosystems.This article is part of the theme issue 'Connected interactions: enriching food web research by spatial and social interactions'.

The unique geographical and climatic conditions in the Three-River Headwaters Region gave birth to distinctive plant species and vegetation types. To reveal the spatial distribution of plant communities and soil habitats along the riparian zone of the Sanjiangyuan Region and their influencing mechanisms, 14 survey plots were set up （ten from the Yangtze River source, two from the Lancang River source, and two from the Yellow River source）, and the effects of soil nutrient characteristics （especially soil phosphorus morphology）, climate factors, and river topography on plant community characteristics were quantitatively analyzed. The results showed that the plant community composition in the riparian zone of the source of the three rivers was dominated by perennial herbs （72.2%）, followed by annual herbs （20.4%） and shrubs （7.4%）. The dominant plants were Stipa purpurea , Polygonum orbiculatum , Carex parvula , Potentilla anserina, and Gentiana straminea . The average plant coverage, Shannon-Wiener index, and Pielou index were （64.4% ±23.6%）, （1.31 ±0.42）, and （0.84 ±0.08）, respectively. The plant community diversity index was the highest in the Yangtze River source, followed by that in the Lancang River source, and the lowest in the Yellow River source. The soil pH of the riparian zone of the Yangtze River source was significantly higher than that of the Lancang River source, whereas the mean contents of organic matter, total nitrogen, and Fe-Al combined phosphorus were significantly lower than those of the Lancang River source. The calcium and magnesium-combined phosphorus was the main form of phosphorus in riparian soil （63.89%）. Temperature, soil organic phosphorus content, and pH had significant effects on plant composition in the riparian zone of the Three-River Headwaters Region, whereas soil calcium and magnesium-combined phosphorus content had significant effects on plant community diversities. These results may deepen the scientific understanding of the evolution trend and genetic mechanism of plant communities in the riparian zone of the Three-River Headwaters Region.

Natural disturbance-based management (NDBM) is hypothesized to maintain managed forest ecosystem integrity by reducing differences between natural and managed forests. The effectiveness of this approach often entails local comparisons of species composition or diversity for a variety of biota from managed and unmanaged forests. Understory vegetation is regularly the focus of such comparison because of its importance in nutrient cycling, forest regeneration, and for wildlife. However, larger scale comparisons between regions with distinct species assemblages may require a trait-based approach to better understand understory responses to disturbance. We compared the long-term effects of retention harvesting on understory vegetation in two large experimental study sites located in eastern and western regions of the Canadian boreal forest. These sites included the Sylviculture en Aménagement Forestier Ecosystémique (SAFE) experiment and the Ecosystem Management Emulating Natural Disturbance (EMEND) experiment, located in the eastern and western regions of Canada, respectively. EMEND and SAFE share common boreal understory species but have distinct tree communities, soils, and climate. Both experiments were designed to evaluate how increasing tree retention after harvest affects biodiversity. Here, we examined taxonomic richness, functional diversity, and functional composition (using community trait mean values) of understory plant communities, and also examine intraspecific trait variability (ITV) for five species common and abundant in both experiments. We observed the limited impacts of retention level on richness, functional diversity, and functional composition of understory plants 20 years postharvest. However, ITV of leaf morphological traits varied between retention levels within each experiment, depending on the species identity. Common species had different functional responses to retention level, showing species-specific reactions to environmental variation. Our result suggests that understory plant communities in the boreal forest achieve resilience to disturbance both in terms of interspecific and intraspecific functional trait diversity. Such diversity may be key to maintaining understory biodiversity in the face of future disturbances and environmental change. Our results reveal the significance of ITV in plant communities for understanding responses to forest harvesting and the importance of choosing appropriate traits when studying species responses to the environment., (© 2024 The Author(s). Ecological Applications published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.)

Mediterranean ecosystems are predicted to undergo longer and more intense summer droughts. The mechanisms underlying the response of herbaceous communities to such drier environments should be investigated to identify the resilience thresholds of Mediterranean rangelands. A 5-year experiment was conducted in deep and shallow soil rangelands of southern France. A rainout shelter for 75 days in summer imposed drier and warmer conditions. Total soil water content was measured monthly to model available daily soil water. Aboveground net primary production (ANPP), forage quality, and the proportion of graminoids in ANPP were measured in spring and autumn. Plant senescence and plant cover were assessed in summer and spring, respectively. The experimental years were among the driest ever recorded at the site. Therefore, manipulated summer droughts were drier than long-term ambient conditions. Interactions between treatment, community type, and experimental year were found for most variables. In shallow soil communities, spring plant cover decreased markedly with time. This legacy effect, driven by summer plant mortality and the loss of perennial graminoids, led to an abrupt loss of resilience when the extreme water stress index exceeded 37 mm 10 day -1 , characterized by a reduction of spring plant cover below 50% and a decreased ANPP in rainy years. Conversely, the ANPP of deep soil communities remained unaffected by increased summer drought, although the presence of graminoids increased and forage nutritive value decreased. This study highlights the role of the soil water reserve of Mediterranean plant communities in modulating ecosystem responses to chronically intensified summer drought. Communities on deep soils were resilient, but communities on shallow soils showed a progressive, rapid, and intense degradation associated with a loss of resilience capacity. Notably, indexes of extreme stress were a better indicator of tipping points than indexes of integrated annual stress. Considering the role of soil water availability in other herbaceous ecosystems should improve the ability to predict the resilience of plant communities under climate change., (© 2024 The Author(s). Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.)

Understanding the drivers of community assembly is critical for predicting the future of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ecological selection ubiquitously shapes communities by selecting for individuals with the most suitable trait combinations. Detecting selection types on key traits across environmental gradients and over time has the potential to reveal the underlying abiotic and biotic drivers of community dynamics. Here, we present a model-based predictive framework to quantify the multidimensional trait distributions of communities (community trait spaces), which we use to identify ecological selection types shaping communities along environmental gradients. We apply the framework to over 3600 boreal forest understory plant communities with results indicating that directional, stabilizing, and divergent selection all modify community trait distributions and that the selection type acting on individual traits may change over time. Our results provide novel and rare empirical evidence for divergent selection within a natural system. Our approach provides a framework for identifying key traits under selection and facilitates the detection of processes underlying community dynamics., (© 2024 The Author(s). Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.)

Glycoside hydrolases are enzymes that break down complex carbohydrates into simple sugars by catalyzing the hydrolysis of glycosidic bonds. There have been multiple instances of adaptive horizontal gene transfer of genes belonging to various glycoside hydrolase families from microbes to insects, as glycoside hydrolases can metabolize constituents of the carbohydrate-rich plant cell wall. In this study, we characterize the horizontal transfer of a gene from the glycoside hydrolase family 26 (GH26) from bacteria to insects of the order Hemiptera. Our phylogenies trace the horizontal gene transfer to the common ancestor of the superfamilies Pentatomoidea and Lygaeoidea, which include stink bugs and seed bugs. After horizontal transfer, the gene was assimilated into the insect genome as indicated by the gain of an intron, and a eukaryotic signal peptide. Subsequently, the gene has undergone independent losses and expansions in copy number in multiple lineages, suggesting an adaptive role of GH26s in some insects. Finally, we measured tissue-level gene expression of multiple stink bugs and the large milkweed bug using publicly available RNA-seq datasets. We found that the GH26 genes are highly expressed in tissues associated with plant digestion, especially in the principal salivary glands of the stink bugs. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that this horizontally transferred GH26 was co-opted by the insect to aid in plant tissue digestion and that this HGT event was likely adaptive., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The southeastward extrusion of Indochina along the Ailao Shan-Red River shear zone (ARSZ) is one of two of the most prominent consequences of the India-Asia collision. This plate-scale extrusion has greatly changed Southeast Asian topography and drainage patterns and effected regional climate and biotic evolution. However, little is known about how Indochina was extruded toward the southeast over time. Here, we sampled 42 plant and animal clades (together encompassing 1,721 species) that are distributed across the ARSZ and are not expected to disperse across long distances. We first assess the possible role of climate on driving the phylogenetic separations observed across the ARSZ. We then investigate the temporal dynamics of the extrusion of Indochina through a multitaxon analysis. We show that the lineage divergences across the ARSZ were most likely associated with the Indochinese extrusion rather than climatic events. The lineage divergences began at ~53 Ma and increased sharply ~35 Ma, with two peaks at ~19 Ma and ~7 Ma, and one valley at ~13 Ma. Our results suggest a two-phase model for the extrusion of Indochina, and in each phase, the extrusion was subject to periods of acceleration and decrease, in agreement with the changes of the India-Asia convergence rate and angle from the early Eocene to the late Miocene. This study highlights that a multitaxon analysis can illuminate the timing of subtle historical events that may be difficult for geological data to pinpoint and can be used to explore other tectonic events., Competing Interests: Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.

More than half of the world's rivers dry up periodically, but our understanding of the biological communities in dry riverbeds remains limited. Specifically, the roles of dispersal, environmental filtering and biotic interactions in driving biodiversity in dry rivers are poorly understood. Here, we conduct a large-scale coordinated survey of patterns and drivers of biodiversity in dry riverbeds. We focus on eight major taxa, including microorganisms, invertebrates and plants: Algae, Archaea, Bacteria, Fungi, Protozoa, Arthropods, Nematodes and Streptophyta. We use environmental DNA metabarcoding to assess biodiversity in dry sediments collected over a 1-year period from 84 non-perennial rivers across 19 countries on four continents. Both direct factors, such as nutrient and carbon availability, and indirect factors such as climate influence the local biodiversity of most taxa. Limited resource availability and prolonged dry phases favor oligotrophic microbial taxa. Co-variation among taxa, particularly Bacteria, Fungi, Algae and Protozoa, explain more spatial variation in community composition than dispersal or environmental gradients. This finding suggests that biotic interactions or unmeasured ecological and evolutionary factors may strongly influence communities during dry phases, altering biodiversity responses to global changes., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Vascular plants are diverse and a major component of terrestrial ecosystems, yet their geographic distributions remain incomplete. Here, I present a global database of vascular plant distributions by integrating species distribution models calibrated to species' dispersal ability and natural habitats to predict native range maps for 201,681 vascular plant species into unsurveyed areas. Using these maps, I uncover unique patterns of native vascular plant diversity, endemism, and phylogenetic diversity revealing hotspots in underdocumented biodiversity-rich regions. These hotspots, based on detailed species-level maps, show a pronounced latitudinal gradient, strongly supporting the theory of increasing diversity toward the equator. I trained random forest models to extrapolate diversity patterns under unbiased global sampling and identify overlaps with modeled estimations but unveiled cryptic hotspots that were not captured by modeled estimations. Only 29% to 36% of extrapolated plant hotspots are inside protected areas, leaving more than 60% outside and vulnerable. However, the unprotected hotspots harbor species with unique attributes that make them good candidates for conservation prioritization., Competing Interests: Competing interests statement:The author declares no competing interest.

Metabolomics, the systematic study of metabolites, is dedicated to a comprehensive analysis of all aspects of plant-based food research and plays a pivotal role in the nutritional composition and quality control of plant-based foods. The diverse chemical compositions of plant-based foods lead to variations in sensory characteristics and nutritional value. This review explores the application of the metabolomics method to plant-based food origin tracing, cultivar identification, and processing methods. It also addresses the challenges encountered and outlines future directions. Typically, when combined with other omics or techniques, synergistic and complementary information is uncovered, enhancing the classification and prediction capabilities of models. Future research should aim to evaluate all factors affecting food quality comprehensively, and this necessitates advanced research into influence mechanisms, metabolic pathways, and gene expression., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors have no conflicts of interest, either real or potential associated with this work., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Understanding plant community characteristics, distributions, and environmental relationships is crucial for sustainable forest management. Thus, this study examined the relationships between plant community composition and topographic and soil variables within the Arjo-Diga forest. Vegetation data were collected from 72 nested plots (30 × 30 m2 and 2 × 2 m2) systematically laid along nine transects spaced 300 to 700 m apart. Environmental variables, including soil properties and anthropogenic disturbance, were recorded within each main plot. Agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) using R software were employed to identify distinct plant community types and examine their relationships with environmental factors. The Shannon‒Wiener diversity index was calculated to quantify and compare species diversity among the identified community types. The analysis revealed five distinct plant community types: 1: Maesa lanceolata-Ehretia cymosa, 2: Trichilia dregeana-Flacourtia indica, 3: Acacia abyssinica-Millettia ferruginea, 4: Combretum collinum-Croton macrostachyus, and 5: Terminalia macroptera-Piliostigma thonningii. The CCA results highlighted the significant influence (p < 0.05) of altitude, CEC, TN, and disturbance on species distribution and plant community formation. The findings indicate that variation in plant communities is closely associated with altitude, TN, and CEC, as well as with disturbance factors such as human interventions, with elevation being the most influential factor. Based on these findings, it is recommended that conservation plans consider the effects of human interventions to address the challenges in conserving forests in the future. Additionally, further research efforts should focus on mitigating disturbance factors and understanding the environmental variables that affect forests to improve their protection., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Berihun Tenaw et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Within communities, species are wrapped in a set of feedbacks with each other and with their environment. When such feedbacks are strong enough they can generate alternative stable states. So far, research on alternative stable states has mostly focused on systems with a small number of species and a limited diversity of interaction types. Here, we analyze a spatial model of plant community dynamics in stressed ecosystems such as drylands, where each species is characterized by a strategy, and the different species interact through facilitation and competition for space and resources, such as water. We identify three different types of multistability emerging from the interplay of competition and facilitation. Under low-stress levels, plant communities organize in small groups of coexisting species, maintained by space, competition and facilitation ("cliques"). Under higher stress levels, positive feedback from facilitation lead to the dominance of a single facilitating species ("mutual exclusion states"). At the highest stress levels, the single facilitating species left in the system coexists with the desert state. By linking community ecology and alternative stable states theory using a spatial plant community model for stressed ecosystems, our study contributes to highlight the importance of positive feedback loops for the stability of ecological communities., (© 2024 The Author(s). Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.)

Accompanying the climate crisis is the more enigmatic biodiversity crisis. Rapid reorganization of biodiversity due to global environmental change has defied prediction and tested the basic tenets of conservation and restoration. Conceptual and practical innovation is needed to support decision making in the face of these unprecedented shifts. Critical questions include: How can we generalize biodiversity change at the community level? When are systems able to reorganize and maintain integrity, and when does abiotic change result in collapse or restructuring? How does this understanding provide a template to guide when and how to intervene in conservation and restoration? To this end, we frame changes in community organization as the modulation of external abiotic drivers on the internal topology of species interactions, using plant-plant interactions in terrestrial communities as a starting point. We then explore how this framing can help translate available data on species abundance and trait distributions to corresponding decisions in management. Given the expectation that community response and reorganization are highly complex, the external-driver internal-topology (EDIT) framework offers a way to capture general patterns of biodiversity that can help guide resilience and adaptation in changing environments., (© 2024 The Ecological Society of America. This article has been contributed to by U.S. Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.)

Earth harbours an extraordinary plant phenotypic diversity 1 that is at risk from ongoing global changes 2,3 . However, it remains unknown how increasing aridity and livestock grazing pressure-two major drivers of global change 4-6 -shape the trait covariation that underlies plant phenotypic diversity 1,7 . Here we assessed how covariation among 20 chemical and morphological traits responds to aridity and grazing pressure within global drylands. Our analysis involved 133,769 trait measurements spanning 1,347 observations of 301 perennial plant species surveyed across 326 plots from 6 continents. Crossing an aridity threshold of approximately 0.7 (close to the transition between semi-arid and arid zones) led to an unexpected 88% increase in trait diversity. This threshold appeared in the presence of grazers, and moved toward lower aridity levels with increasing grazing pressure. Moreover, 57% of observed trait diversity occurred only in the most arid and grazed drylands, highlighting the phenotypic uniqueness of these extreme environments. Our work indicates that drylands act as a global reservoir of plant phenotypic diversity and challenge the pervasive view that harsh environmental conditions reduce plant trait diversity 8-10 . They also highlight that many alternative strategies may enable plants to cope with increases in environmental stress induced by climate change and land-use intensification., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Autopolyploidy is taxonomically defined as the presence of more than two copies of each genome within an organism or species, where the genomes present must all originate within the same species. Alternatively, "genetic" or "cytological" autopolyploidy is defined by polysomic inheritance: random pairing and segregation of the four (or more) homologous chromosomes present, with no preferential pairing partners. In this review, we provide an overview of methods used to categorize species as taxonomic and cytological autopolyploids, including both modern and obsolete cytological methods, marker-segregation-based and genomics methods. Subsequently, we also investigated how frequently polysomic inheritance has been reliably documented in autopolyploids. Pure or predominantly polysomic inheritance was documented in 39 of 43 putative autopolyploid species where inheritance data was available (91%) and in seven of eight synthetic autopolyploids, with several cases of more mixed inheritance within species. We found no clear cases of autopolyploids with disomic inheritance, which was likely a function of our search methodology. Interestingly, we found seven species with purely polysomic inheritance and another five species with partial or predominant polysomic inheritance that appear to be taxonomic allopolyploids. Our results suggest that observations of polysomic inheritance can lead to relabeling of taxonomically allopolyploid species as autopolyploid and highlight the need for further cytogenetic and genomic investigation into polyploid origins and inheritance types., (© 2024 The Authors. American Journal of Botany published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Botanical Society of America.)

Antarctica terrestrial ecosystems are facing the most threats from global climate change, which is altering plant composition greatly. These transformations may cause major reshuffling of soil community composition, including functional traits and diversity, and therefore affect ecosystem processes in Antarctica. We used high-throughput sequencing analysis to investigate soil nematodes under 3 dominant plant functional groups (lichens, mosses, and vascular plants) and bare ground in the Antarctic region. We calculated functional diversity of nematodes based on their diet, life histories, and body mass with kernel density n-dimensional hypervolumes. We also calculated taxonomic and functional beta diversity of the nematode communities based on Jaccard dissimilarity. The presence of plants had no significant effect on the taxonomic richness of nematodes but significantly increased nematode functional richness. The presence of plants also significantly decreased taxonomic beta diversity (homogenization). Only mosses and vascular plants decreased nematode functional beta diversity, which was mostly due to a decreased effect of the richness difference component. The presence of plants also increased the effect of deterministic processes potentially because environmental filtering created conditions favorable to nematodes at low trophic levels with short life histories and small body size. Increasing plant cover in the Antarctic due to climate change may lead to increased diversity of nematode species that can use the scarce resources and nematode taxonomic and functional homogenization. In a future under climate change, community restructuring in the region is possible., (© 2024 Society for Conservation Biology.)

Resolving the position of roots in the whole-plant hierarchy of drought-induced xylem embolism resistance is fundamental for predicting when species become isolated from soil water resources. Published research generally suggests that roots are the most vulnerable organ of the plant vascular system, although estimates vary significantly. However, our knowledge of root embolism excludes the fine roots (< 2 mm diameter) that form the bulk of total absorptive surface area of the root network for water and nutrient uptake. We measured fine root and stem xylem vulnerability in 10 vascular plant species from the major land plant clades (five angiosperms, three conifers, a fern and lycophyte), using standardised in situ methods (Optical Methods and MicroCT). Mean fine root embolism resistance across the network matched or exceeded stems in all study species. In six of these species (one fern, one lycophyte, three conifers and one angiosperm), fine roots were significantly more embolism resistant than stems. No clear relationship was found between root xylem conduit diameter and vulnerability. These results provide insight into the resistance of the plant hydraulic pathway at the site of water and nutrient uptake, and challenge the long-standing assumption that fine roots are more vulnerable than stems., (© 2024 The Author(s). New Phytologist © 2024 New Phytologist Foundation.)

Fire plays a key role in grasslands, determining the distribution and evolution of species and boundaries with neighboring ecosystems. Evidence of community-wide responses to fire is largely based on taxonomic and functional descriptors, while the phylogenetic dimension is overlooked. Here we evaluated how the taxonomic and phylogenetic structure of grassland plant communities responded to a time since fire (TSF) gradient. We sampled 12 communities in Southern Brazil under varying TSF and calculated taxonomic species richness (S) and dominance (D), phylogenetic diversity (PD), and mean phylogenetic distances (MPD). We used Structural Equation Models to test the relationships between the environmental gradient and community descriptors. Communities with longer TSF presented higher PD and MPD but lower species richness and increased taxonomic dominance. These sites were dominated by monocots, specifically C4 grasses, but also presented exclusive clades, whereas recently-burned sites presented lower taxonomic dominance and more species distributed in a wider variety of clades. Our results indicate that these scenarios are interchangeable and dependent on fire management. Fire adaptation was not constrained by phylogenetic relatedness, contrasting with previous findings for tropical savannahs and indicating that temperate and tropical non-forest ecosystems from South America respond differently to fire, possibly due to different evolutionary histories., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

In order to provide a guide for plant selection of ecological restoration at antimony (Sb) mining ecological damaged sites, species composition, importance value, niche, and interspecific associations of tree, shrub, and herb layers were examined at Sb mining site in Nandan City, Guangxi, China. The results showed that 23 vascular plant species were recorded at the Sb mining ecological damaged site, belonging to 22 genera and 13 families, primarily Gramineae, Cyperaceae, Fabaceae, and Asteraceae. The highest importance values for trees, shrubs, and herbs were observed in Rhus chinensis (56.7%), Coriaria nepalensis (56.3%), and Eremochloa ciliaris (44.0%), which were characterized by fairly large niche widths of 1.58, 1.32 and 1.57, respectively. The highest niche overlap values were found between R. chinensis and Triadica sebifera in the tree layer, and between Thysanolaena latifolia and Bidens pilosa in the herb layer, with the value of 0.68 and 0.99, respectively. Shrub layer exhibited a lower range of niche overlap (0.30-0.42), suggesting significant niche differentiation among different species. In the tree and shrub layers, most species showed insignificantly negative associations, the proportion was 83.3% and 66.7%, respectively, indicating that the plant community was not stable. Herb layer generally exhibited significantly positive correlations, with 52.4% of species pairs showing positive correlation, indicating weak resource competition among species. Overall, plant community at Sb mining ecological damaged site was unstable. In the process of ecological restoration, trees and shrubs that can adapt to the conditions and have positive associations should be prioritized in species selection, such as R. chinensis , C. lanceolata , C. nepalensis , and B. nivea . This will promote vegetation positive succession, rehabilitate the ecosystem and ensure sustainable development at Sb mining ecological damaged sites.

In our changing world, understanding plant community responses to global change drivers is critical for predicting future ecosystem composition and function. Plant functional traits promise to be a key predictive tool for many ecosystems, including grasslands; however, their use requires both complete plant community and functional trait data. Yet, representation of these data in global databases is sparse, particularly beyond a handful of most used traits and common species. Here we present the CoRRE Trait Data, spanning 17 traits (9 categorical, 8 continuous) anticipated to predict species' responses to global change for 4,079 vascular plant species across 173 plant families present in 390 grassland experiments from around the world. The dataset contains complete categorical trait records for all 4,079 plant species obtained from a comprehensive literature search, as well as nearly complete coverage (99.97%) of imputed continuous trait values for a subset of 2,927 plant species. These data will shed light on mechanisms underlying population, community, and ecosystem responses to global change in grasslands worldwide., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

We present DiasMorph, a dataset of images and traits of diaspores from 1,442 taxa in 519 genera, and 96 families from Central Europe, totalling 94,214 records. The dataset was constructed following a standardised and reproducible image analysis method. The image dataset consists of diaspores against a high-contrast background, enabling a simple and efficient segmentation process. The quantitative traits records go beyond traditional morphometric measurements, and include colour and contour features, which are made available for the first time in a large dataset. These measurements correspond to individual diaspores, an input currently unavailable in traits databases, and allow for several approaches to explore the morphological traits of these species. Additionally, information regarding the presence and absence of appendages and structures both in the images and diaspores of the assessed taxa is also included. By making these data available, we aim to encourage initiatives to advance on new tools for diaspore identification, further our understanding of morphological traits functions, and provide means for the continuous development of image analyses applications., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Understanding the distribution of the plant species of an unexplored area is the utmost need of the present-day. In order to collect vegetation data, Quadrat method was used having size of 1 m 2 . The composite soil samples from each site were tested for various edaphic properties. PC-ORD v.5 was used for the classification of the vegetation while CANOCO v.5.1 was used for ordination of the data and to find out the complex relationship between plants and environment. Survey was conducted during summer season and a total of 216 herbaceous species were recorded from forty different sites of District Kohat, Pakistan. Cluster Analysis (CA) and Two-Way Cluster Analysis (TWCA) classified the vegetation of forty sites into six major plant groups i.e., 1. Paspalum paspalodes, Alternanthera sessilis, Typha domingensis, 2. Cynodon dactylon, Parthenium hysterophorus, Brachiaria ramosa, 3. Cynodon dactylon, Eragrostis minor, Cymbopogon jwarancusa, 4. Cymbopogon jwarancusa, Aristida adscensionis, Boerhavia procumbens, 5. Cymbopogon jwarancusa, Aristida adscensionis, Pennisetum orientale and 6. Heteropogon contortus, Bothriochloa ischaemum, Chrysopogon serrulatus. They were named after the dominant species based on their Importance Value (IV). The detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) analysis further confirmed the vegetation classification. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) indicated that the species distribution in the area was strongly affected by various environmental factors including status, soil characteristics, topography and altitude., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Exploring the relationship between soil properties and species diversity in typical forest stands in Liaoning Xianrendong National Nature Reserve will help maintain the stability of forest communities in the transition zone between flora in Changbai and North China. Based on the plant-soil feedback theory, community sample data from nine typical forest stands in the study area and experimental test data from 54 soil samples, we selected indexes of soil physical and chemical properties based on the minimum data set (temperature, compactness, capillary pore space, bulk weight, capillary water holding capacity, drainage capacity, soil water storage, conductivity, pH, organic matter, Ca, Fe, K, N and P). We adopt the research method of classical statistical analysis. The soil properties of nine typical stands in Xianrendong National Nature Reserve of Liaoning Province were systematically analyzed. The relationship between soil properties and forest stands' species diversity was quantified using correlation and redundancy analyses. The Pearson correlation analysis results showed significant positive correlations between the Gleason abundance index (arbors) with conductivity, pH, organic matter, Ca, N and P; Pielou's evenness index (arbors) with bulk weight and Fe. Significant negative correlations between the Gleason abundance index (arbors) with capillary pore space, bulk weight, drainage capacity, soil water storage and capillary water holding capacity; Simpson dominance index and Shannon-Wiener diversity index with capillary water holding capacity, drainage capacity and soil water storage; Pielou's evenness index (arbors) with Ca and N. The natural moisture content and clay particles are neutral feedback. The results showed that the feedback mechanism of soil physicochemical properties on stand species diversity was complex, which was conducive to species coexistence and community stability., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Du, Zhang. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

On a global scale, biodiversity is geographically structured into regions of biotic similarity. Delineating these regions has been mostly targeted for tetrapods and plants, but those for hyperdiverse groups such as insects are relatively unknown. Insects may have higher biogeographic congruence with plants than tetrapods due to their tight ecological and evolutionary links with the former, but it remains untested. Here, we develop a global regionalization for a major and widespread insect group, ants, based on the most comprehensive distributional and phylogenetic information to date, and examine its similarity to regionalizations for tetrapods and vascular plants. Our ant regionalization supports the newly proposed Madagascan and Sino-Japanese realms based on tetrapod delineations, and it recovers clusters observed in plants but not in tetrapods, such as the Holarctic and Indo-Pacific realms. Quantitative comparison suggests strong associations among different groups-plants showed a higher congruence with ants than with tetrapods. These results underscore the wide congruence of diverse distribution patterns across the tree of life and the similarities shared by insects and plants that are not captured by tetrapod groups. Our analysis highlights the importance of developing global biogeographic maps for insect groups to obtain a more comprehensive geographic picture of life on Earth., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

A long-standing key issue for examining the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF), such as forest productivity, is whether ecosystem functions are influenced by the total number of species or the properties of a few key species. Compared with controlled ecosystem experiments, the BEF relationships in secondary forest remain unclear, as do the effects of common species richness and rare species richness on the variation in ecosystem functions. To address this issue, we conducted field surveys at five sampling sites (1 ha each) with subtropical secondary evergreen broad-leaved forest vegetation. We found (1) a positive correlation between species richness and standing aboveground biomass (AGB); (2) that common species were primarily responsible for the distribution patterns of species abundance and dominance; although they accounted for approximately 25% of the total species richness on average, they represented 86-91% of species abundance and 88-97% of species dominance; and (3) that common species richness could explain much more of the variation in AGB than total species richness (common species plus rare species) at both the site and plot scales. Because rare species and common species were not equivalent in their ability to predict productivity in the biodiversity-ecosystem productivity model, redundant information should be eliminated to obtain more accurate results. Our study suggested that woody plant species richness and productivity relationship in subtropical forest ecosystem can be explained and predicted by a few common species., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Sun et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Tools for visualizing genomes are essential for investigating genomic features and their interactions. Currently, tools designed originally for animal mitogenomes and plant plastomes are used to visualize the mitogens of plants but cannot accurately display features specific to plant mitogenomes, such as nonlinear exon arrangement for genes, the prevalence of functional noncoding features and complex chromosomal architecture. To address these problems, a software package, plant mitochondrial genome map (PMGmap), was developed using the Python programming language. PMGmap can draw genes at exon levels; draw cis- and trans-splicing gene maps, noncoding features and repetitive sequences; and scale genic regions by using the scaling of the genic regions on the mitogenome (SAGM) algorithm. It can also draw multiple chromosomes simultaneously. Compared with other state-of-the-art tools, PMGmap showed better performance in visualizing 405 plant mitogenomes, showing potential as an invaluable tool for plant mitogenome research. The web and container versions and the source code of PMGmap can be accessed through the following link: http://www.1kmpg.cn/pmgmap., (© 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Plant-Lepidoptera interactions are often studied using the pollination or herbivore networks only. Lepidoptera species are involved in two types of plant-insect interactions because they are herbivores as larvae and pollinators as adults. The study of entangled networks is critical, since the interaction of different networks can affect the overall network and community stability. Here, we studied the interaction of plants and Lepidoptera on the Yongxing Island, South China Sea. A plant-lepidopteran pollination network and a plant-lepidopteran herbivore network were built by using data from flower-pollinator and leaf-herbivore interactions. We then combined the two networks into a single network. We measured plant composition similarity within each sub-network and across sub-networks for Lepidoptera species. Our findings indicate that the plant-Lepidoptera pollination network and the herbivory network share significant proportions of Lepidoptera but small proportions of plant assemblages. The pollination network had higher nestedness and connectance than the herbivore network. Agrius convolvuli was the most specialized species, while Zizina otis had the highest species strength in the pollination network. Most Lepidoptera species were highly specialized in the herbivore network and their importance positively correlated across the two networks. Furthermore, there was no dietary composition similarity between the two networks for most Lepidoptera species. Our findings highlight the visible structural difference between the pollination and the herbivore networks. Adult Lepidoptera selects different plants for oviposition and feeding, a strategy that may benefit their reproduction and survival by sustaining adequate resources for their two life stages and the diversity of both plants and insects in oceanic island communities., (© 2023 International Society of Zoological Sciences, Institute of Zoology/Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Seed rain and the soil seed bank represent the dispersal of seeds in space and time, respectively, and can be important sources of recruitment of new individuals during plant community regeneration. However, the temporal dynamics of seed rain and the mechanisms by which the seed rain and soil seed bank may play a role in plant community regeneration with increased grazing disturbance remain unclear. Seed rain, soil seed bank, aboveground vegetation, and rodent density were sampled along a grazing gradient in an alpine marsh on the eastern Tibetan Plateau. We described the temporal dynamics of seed dispersal using Bayesian generalized mixed models, and nonmetric multidimensional scaling and the structural equation model were used to examine the effects of grazing disturbance on the relative role of seed rain and soil seed bank on aboveground plant community regeneration. The temporal dynamics of seed rain changed from a unimodal to a bimodal pattern with increased grazing disturbance. Both species diversity and seed density of the seed rain and seed bank increased significantly with increased grazing disturbance. Increased grazing disturbance indirectly increased the similarity of composition between seed rain, seed bank, and aboveground plant community by directly increasing species diversity and abundance of aboveground plant community. However, increased grazing disturbance also indirectly decreased the similarity of seed rain, soil seed bank, and aboveground plant community by directly increasing rodent density. The similarity between seed rain and aboveground plant community was greater than that of the soil seed bank and aboveground plant community with increased grazing disturbance. Grazing disturbance spreads the risk of seed germination and seedling establishment by changing the temporal dynamics of seed dispersal. Plants (positive) and rodents (negative) mediated the role of seed rain and soil seed bank in plant community regeneration. The role of seed rain in plant community regeneration is higher than the seed bank in disturbed alpine marshes. Our findings increase our understanding of the regeneration process of the plant community, and they provide valuable information for the conservation and restoration of alpine marsh ecosystems., (© 2024 The Ecological Society of America.)

Broad-scale assessments of plant-frugivore interactions indicate the existence of a latitudinal gradient in interaction specialization. The specificity (i.e. the similarity of the interacting partners) of plant-frugivore interactions could also change latitudinally given that differences in resource availability could favour species to become more or less specific in their interactions across latitudes. Species occurring in the tropics could be more taxonomically, phylogenetically and functionally specific in their interactions because of a wide range of resources that are constantly available in these regions that would allow these species to become more specialized in their resource usage. We used a data set on plant-avian frugivore interactions spanning a wide latitudinal range to examine these predictions, and we evaluated the relationship between latitude and taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional specificity of plant and frugivore interactions. These relationships were assessed using data on population interactions (population level), species means (species level) and community means (community level). We found that the specificity of plant-frugivore interactions is generally not different from null models. Although statistically significant relationships were often observed between latitude and the specificity of plant-frugivore interactions, the direction of these relationships was variable and they also were generally weak and had low explanatory power. These results were consistent across the three specificity measures and levels of organization, suggesting that there might be an interplay between different mechanisms driving the interactions between plants and frugivores across latitudes., (© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.)

The identification of meliponicultural flora is fundamental for the preservation of bees, as well as enabling the development of pollinator management and reforestation programs. In this context, this study aimed to investigate the types of pollen found in the honey and pollen pots of the Melipona fasciculata bee in Arari, State of Maranhão, between August 2022 and July 2023. 40 types of pollen were identified, distributed among 18 botanical families, with Fabaceae standing out (46.15% in pollen pots and 37.86% in honey pots), Myrtaceae (11.53% in pollen and 13.51% in honey) and Rubiaceae (7.69% in pollen and 5.40% in honey). Sapindaceae, in the honey pots, accounted for 5.40%. The other families showed lower percentages, 3.84% in the pollen pots and 2.70% in the honey pots. In terms of similarity, two distinct groups were observed in both the pollen and honey pots. In the pollen pots, group A (May-June ~ 97%) and group B (Feb-Mar ~ 99%) stood out, while in the honey pots, group A (Mar-Apr ~ 98%) and group B (Jun-Jul-Sept ~ 98%) showed the highest percentages. These findings highlight the wide range of resources used by the M. fasciculata species, as well asits preference for Fabaceae and Myrtaceae, due to the diversity and availability of trophic resources. An understanding of the meliponicultural flora is essential to support effective conservation strategies, which aim not only to guarantee the survival of the bees, but also to ensure the continued production of honey, a resource of great importance to local communities.

Global patterns of leaf nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) stoichiometry have been interpreted as reflecting phenotypic plasticity in response to the environment, or as an overriding effect of the distribution of species growing in their biogeochemical niches. Here, we balance these contrasting views. We compile a global dataset of 36,413 paired observations of leaf N and P concentrations, taxonomy and 45 environmental covariates, covering 7,549 sites and 3,700 species, to investigate how species identity and environmental variables control variations in mass-based leaf N and P concentrations, and the N:P ratio. We find within-species variation contributes around half of the total variation, with 29%, 31%, and 22% of leaf N, P, and N:P variation, respectively, explained by environmental variables. Within-species plasticity along environmental gradients varies across species and is highest for leaf N:P and lowest for leaf N. We identified effects of environmental variables on within-species variation using random forest models, whereas effects were largely missed by widely used linear mixed-effect models. Our analysis demonstrates a substantial influence of the environment in driving plastic responses of leaf N, P, and N:P within species, which challenges reports of a fixed biogeochemical niche and the overriding importance of species distributions in shaping global patterns of leaf N and P., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Species phenology - the timing of key life events - is being altered by ongoing climate changes with yet underappreciated consequences for ecosystem stability. While flowering is generally occurring earlier, we know much less about other key processes such as the time of fruit ripening, largely due to the lack of comprehensive long-term datasets. Here we provide information on the exact date and site where seeds of 4,462 taxa were collected for the Index Seminum (seed exchange catalogue) of the Botanic Garden of the University of Coimbra, between 1926 and 2013. Seeds were collected from spontaneous and cultivated individuals across Portugal, including both native and introduced taxa. The database consists of 127,747 curated records with information on the species, or infraspecific taxa (including authority), and the day and site where seeds were collected. All records are georeferenced and provided with a confidence interval for the collection site. Taxonomy was first curated manually by in-house botanists and then harmonized according to the GBIF backbone taxonomy., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Elevational gradients constitute excellent systems for understanding the mechanisms that generate and maintain global biodiversity patterns. Climatic gradients associated with elevation show strong influence on species distribution in mountains. The study of mountains covered by the same habitat type is an ideal scenario to compare alternatives to the energy hypotheses. Our aim was to investigate how changes in climatic conditions along the elevational gradient drive α - and β -diversity of four taxa in a mountain system located within a grassland biome. We sampled ants, spiders, birds and plants, and measured climatic variables at six elevational bands (with 10 sampling sites each) established between 470 and 1,000 masl on a mountain from the Ventania Mountain System, Argentina. Species richness per site and β -diversity (turnover and nestedness) between the lowest band and upper sites were estimated. For most taxa, species richness declined at high elevations and energy, through temperature, was the major driver of species richness for ants, plants and birds, prevailing over productivity and water availability. The major β -diversity component was turnover for plants, spiders and birds, and nestedness for ants. The unique environmental conditions of the upper bands could favour the occurrence of specialist and endemic species., Competing Interests: The authors declare there are no competing interests., (©2024 Santoandré et al.)