The dinoflagellate Noctiluca scintillans is one of the most important and abundant red tide organisms and it is distributed world-wide. It occurs in two forms. Red Noctiluca is heterotrophic and fills the role of one ...The dinoflagellate Noctiluca scintillans is one of the most important and abundant red tide organisms and it is distributed world-wide. It occurs in two forms. Red Noctiluca is heterotrophic and fills the role of one of the microzooplankton grazers in the foodweb. In contrast, green Noctiluca contains a photosynthetic symbiont Pedinomonas noctilucae (a prasinophyte), but it also feeds on other plankton when the food supply is abundant. In this review, we document the global distribution of these two forms and include the first maps of their global distribution. Red Noctiluca occurs widely in the temperate to sub-tropical coastal regions of the world. It occurs over a wide temperature range of about 10℃ to 25℃ and at higher salinities (generally not in estuaries). It is particularly abundant in high productivity areas such as upwelling or eutrophic areas where diatoms dominate since they are its preferred food source. Green Noctiluca is much more restricted to a temperature range of 25℃-30℃ and mainly occurs in tropical waters of Southeast Asia, Bay of Bengal (east coast of India), in the eastern, western and northern Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and recently it has become very abundant in the Gulf of Oman. Red and green Noctiluca do overlap in their distribution in the eastern, northern and western Arabian Sea with a seasonal shift from green Noctiluca in the cooler winter convective mixing, higher productivity season, to red Noctiluca in the more oligotrophic warmer summer season.展开更多
In this paper, processes for producing a food-grade glucose solution through enzymatic hydrolysis of celluloserich solids obtained from rice straws are presented. The rice straws were pretreated by acid-catalyzed stea...In this paper, processes for producing a food-grade glucose solution through enzymatic hydrolysis of celluloserich solids obtained from rice straws are presented. The rice straws were pretreated by acid-catalyzed steam explosion, and the reaction efficiency, toxicity control, and process economic feasibility were studied. Mass transfer resistance to the hydrolysis reaction was reduced by grinding with glass beads. A higher glucose concentration could be obtained by feeding more cellulose in the hydrolysis reaction; however, this also resulted in the production of undesired byproducts. Thus, a soaking process for the cellulose solids in water was developed to effectively reduce the generation of byproducts in the hydrolysis reaction. The resulting food-grade glucose solution can provide 414 kilocalories per liter, and could be used during a food-shortage crisis in the future.The current production cost is estimated to be 0.82 USD·L^(-1).展开更多
Aims Woody plants represent the ancestral growth form in angiosperms with herbs evolving repeatedly from them.While there are a number of hypotheses about drivers of the evolution of the herbaceous habit,the ability t...Aims Woody plants represent the ancestral growth form in angiosperms with herbs evolving repeatedly from them.While there are a number of hypotheses about drivers of the evolution of the herbaceous habit,the ability to avoid frost damage in winter by discarding their aboveground biomass has often been invoked as the main force in their evolution.We propose instead that any unpredictable disturbance might have been much more important than the seasonal frost,as herbs easily survive repeated disturbance.Methods We tested this hypothesis by comparing herbs and woody plants in their ability to deal with three types of simulated disturbances,more predictable winter freezing,less predictable spring freezing and herbivory.Comparison was made in an experimental common garden setup with 20 species differing in woodiness.We evaluated the effects of these disturbances on mortality and regrowth of plants.Important Findings Herbs did not have an advantage over woody plants in survival when exposed to winter freezing.In less predictable conditions of spring freezing herbs survived the treatment better than woody plants and this advantage was even larger in case of the simulated herbivory treatment.The advantage of herbs over woody plants in less predictable conditions suggests that herbaceous growth form might be an adaptation to unpredictable disturbance,which herbs are able to tolerate thanks to their ability to survive loss of aboveground biomass.Consequently,factors such as mammal herbivory or fire might have been the most likely factors in the transition from woody species to herbs.展开更多
In the interaction between plants and herbivores that live in the same ecosystem, understanding the conditions in which co-existence equilibrium occurs answers a major question in Ecology. In this interaction, plants ...In the interaction between plants and herbivores that live in the same ecosystem, understanding the conditions in which co-existence equilibrium occurs answers a major question in Ecology. In this interaction, plants serve as food for herbivores on the food chain. Then the livelihood of herbivores highly depends on the availability of food, in this case the availability of plants. Moreover, the abundance of the plant density alone does not guarantee the non-extinction of the herbivore population as they are assumed to reproduce sexually. With this motivation, in this paper a predator-prey mathematical model is reformulated such that the death rate of the herbivore population is dependent on the plant density and their emergence is also governed by the Allee effect. Using the mathematical theory of dynamical system, threshold conditions are obtained for the non-extinction of the herbivore population and a trapping region is obtained to ensure co-existence of the population. Moreover, it has been shown that the dynamics of the population is significantly sensitive to the feeding rate and the harvest rate of the herbivore population.展开更多
基金the University Grants Council of Hong Kong and its Area of Excellence Program to PJH. KF was supported by a JSPS grant on the ecophysiology of green Noctiluca in the Gulf of Thailand. PMG received funding from NSF (No. OCE-1015980)This is contribution number 4502 from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Studies. KY Acknowledges Support from the CAS/SAFEA International Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams (No. KZCXZYW-T001). DMA received partial funding through the NSF/NIEHS Centers for Oceans and Human Health (No. NIEHS P50 ES012742, NSF OCE- 043072 and OCE-0911031), and through NSF Grant (No. OCE-0850421)+1 种基金 This paper is based on work partially supported by SCOR/LOICZ Working Group 132, supported by the Scientific Committee on Oceanographic Research (SCOR) through grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation (No OCE-0938349 and OCE-0813697) from the Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ) Project and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. We thank A. KANA for assistance with the GIS produced maps and LIU Hao for his assistance with the tables and references.
文摘The dinoflagellate Noctiluca scintillans is one of the most important and abundant red tide organisms and it is distributed world-wide. It occurs in two forms. Red Noctiluca is heterotrophic and fills the role of one of the microzooplankton grazers in the foodweb. In contrast, green Noctiluca contains a photosynthetic symbiont Pedinomonas noctilucae (a prasinophyte), but it also feeds on other plankton when the food supply is abundant. In this review, we document the global distribution of these two forms and include the first maps of their global distribution. Red Noctiluca occurs widely in the temperate to sub-tropical coastal regions of the world. It occurs over a wide temperature range of about 10℃ to 25℃ and at higher salinities (generally not in estuaries). It is particularly abundant in high productivity areas such as upwelling or eutrophic areas where diatoms dominate since they are its preferred food source. Green Noctiluca is much more restricted to a temperature range of 25℃-30℃ and mainly occurs in tropical waters of Southeast Asia, Bay of Bengal (east coast of India), in the eastern, western and northern Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and recently it has become very abundant in the Gulf of Oman. Red and green Noctiluca do overlap in their distribution in the eastern, northern and western Arabian Sea with a seasonal shift from green Noctiluca in the cooler winter convective mixing, higher productivity season, to red Noctiluca in the more oligotrophic warmer summer season.
基金the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan for financially supporting this research under Contract No.NSC-1022623-E-002-012-ET
文摘In this paper, processes for producing a food-grade glucose solution through enzymatic hydrolysis of celluloserich solids obtained from rice straws are presented. The rice straws were pretreated by acid-catalyzed steam explosion, and the reaction efficiency, toxicity control, and process economic feasibility were studied. Mass transfer resistance to the hydrolysis reaction was reduced by grinding with glass beads. A higher glucose concentration could be obtained by feeding more cellulose in the hydrolysis reaction; however, this also resulted in the production of undesired byproducts. Thus, a soaking process for the cellulose solids in water was developed to effectively reduce the generation of byproducts in the hydrolysis reaction. The resulting food-grade glucose solution can provide 414 kilocalories per liter, and could be used during a food-shortage crisis in the future.The current production cost is estimated to be 0.82 USD·L^(-1).
基金This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation(l6-19245S and19-13231S)by Charles University Research Centre program(204069)by long-term research development project no.RVO 67985939 of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
文摘Aims Woody plants represent the ancestral growth form in angiosperms with herbs evolving repeatedly from them.While there are a number of hypotheses about drivers of the evolution of the herbaceous habit,the ability to avoid frost damage in winter by discarding their aboveground biomass has often been invoked as the main force in their evolution.We propose instead that any unpredictable disturbance might have been much more important than the seasonal frost,as herbs easily survive repeated disturbance.Methods We tested this hypothesis by comparing herbs and woody plants in their ability to deal with three types of simulated disturbances,more predictable winter freezing,less predictable spring freezing and herbivory.Comparison was made in an experimental common garden setup with 20 species differing in woodiness.We evaluated the effects of these disturbances on mortality and regrowth of plants.Important Findings Herbs did not have an advantage over woody plants in survival when exposed to winter freezing.In less predictable conditions of spring freezing herbs survived the treatment better than woody plants and this advantage was even larger in case of the simulated herbivory treatment.The advantage of herbs over woody plants in less predictable conditions suggests that herbaceous growth form might be an adaptation to unpredictable disturbance,which herbs are able to tolerate thanks to their ability to survive loss of aboveground biomass.Consequently,factors such as mammal herbivory or fire might have been the most likely factors in the transition from woody species to herbs.
文摘In the interaction between plants and herbivores that live in the same ecosystem, understanding the conditions in which co-existence equilibrium occurs answers a major question in Ecology. In this interaction, plants serve as food for herbivores on the food chain. Then the livelihood of herbivores highly depends on the availability of food, in this case the availability of plants. Moreover, the abundance of the plant density alone does not guarantee the non-extinction of the herbivore population as they are assumed to reproduce sexually. With this motivation, in this paper a predator-prey mathematical model is reformulated such that the death rate of the herbivore population is dependent on the plant density and their emergence is also governed by the Allee effect. Using the mathematical theory of dynamical system, threshold conditions are obtained for the non-extinction of the herbivore population and a trapping region is obtained to ensure co-existence of the population. Moreover, it has been shown that the dynamics of the population is significantly sensitive to the feeding rate and the harvest rate of the herbivore population.