During the last few decades, researchers have been in the search for environmental friendly ways to cope with agricultural pests, instead of using chemical pesticides. The use of essential oils has a high potential to...During the last few decades, researchers have been in the search for environmental friendly ways to cope with agricultural pests, instead of using chemical pesticides. The use of essential oils has a high potential to become an alternative control strategy against plant parasitic nematodes. This study was conducted to determine the toxicity of 10 essential oils (Artemisia absinthium, Citrus bergamia, Eucalyptus citriodora, Hypericum perforatum, Lavandula officinalis, Mentha arvensis, Ocimum basilicum, Piper nigrum, Thymus serpyllum and Zingiber officinale) against the second stage juveniles of the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne incognita. The aqueous solutions of these essential oils have been applied to the second stage juveniles in three different concentrations (1%, 3% and 5%) at four different application time intervals (12, 24, 48 and 72 h). The interactions between the variables have been examined with repeated measure analysis of variance (ANOVA). This showed that the interactions of essential oil-time and essential oil-concentration were statistically significant, and it is concluded that L. officinalis, A. absinthium, P. nigrum, C. bergamia and M. arvensis have the most toxic effect in all concentrations and times, respectively.展开更多
In manned deep-space exploration,extremely isolated environments may adversely affect the mood and cognition of astronauts.Horticultural plants and activities have been proven to be effective in improving their physic...In manned deep-space exploration,extremely isolated environments may adversely affect the mood and cognition of astronauts.Horticultural plants and activities have been proven to be effective in improving their physical,psychological,and cognitive states.To assess the effects of applying horticultural plants and activities in isolated environments,this study investigated the influence of viewing strawberry plants on the mood of people in a laboratory experiment as indicated by heart rate,salivary cortisol,and psychological scales.The results showed that heart rate and salivary cortisol were significantly decreased after viewing strawberry plants for 15 min.“Tension”and“confusion”scored using the Profile of Mood States negative mood subscales,and anxiety levels measured using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory scale were also significantly reduced.This study further explored the impact of viewing strawberry plants on cognition.A notable reduction of the subjects’reaction time after 15-min plant viewing was observed.Based on these findings,a long-duration isolated experiment in a bioregenerative life support system—“Lunar Palace I”—was conducted.A similar trend was obtained that crew members’mood states were improved by viewing the strawberry plants,but no significant change was observed.This study provided some experimental evidence for the benefits of interacting with strawberry plants in isolated environments.展开更多
Excellent thermal insulating materials are highly demanded in various applications including buildings, aerospace and sport equipment. However, in practical applications,the performance of thermal insulating materials...Excellent thermal insulating materials are highly demanded in various applications including buildings, aerospace and sport equipment. However, in practical applications,the performance of thermal insulating materials usually deteriorates under diverse temperature and humidity conditions.Therefore, it is highly essential to construct a bulk material that exhibits outstanding thermal insulation performance under extremely humid and hot environment. In this work, we have conceived a green and effective strategy to fabricate a superhydrophobic and compressible polyvinylidene fluoride/polyimide(PVDF/PI) nanofiber composite aerogel via electrospinning and freeze-drying technique. Interestingly, the PVDF nanofibers and PI nanofibers function as the hydrophobic fibrous framework and mechanical support skeleton,respectively, forming a robust three-dimensional framework with good mechanical flexibility. The PVDF/PI aerogel possesses outstanding superhydrophobic feature(water contact angle of 152°) and low thermal conductivity(31.0 m W m^(-1)K^(-1))at room temperature. Significantly, even at 100% relative humidity(80℃), the PVDF/PI aerogel still exhibits a low thermal conductivity of only 48.6 m W m^(-1)K^(-1), which outperforms the majority of commercial thermal insulating materials. Therefore, the novel PVDF/PI aerogel is promising as an excellent thermal insulating material for the applications in high-temperature and humid environment.展开更多
When incompletely isolated taxa coexist in a patchy environment (e.g. mosaic hybrid zones, host-race complexes), patterns of variation may differ between selected traits/genes and neutral markers. While the genetic ...When incompletely isolated taxa coexist in a patchy environment (e.g. mosaic hybrid zones, host-race complexes), patterns of variation may differ between selected traits/genes and neutral markers. While the genetic structure of selected traits/loci tends to coincide with habitat variables (producing Genetic-Environment Association or GEA), genetic differentiation at neutral loci unlinked to any selected locus rather depends on geographic connectivity at a large scale (e.g. Isolation- By-Distance or IBD), although these loci often display GEA at a small scale. This discrepancy has been repeatedly taken as evi- dence for parallel primary divergence driven by local adaptation. We argue that this interpretation needs to be addressed more thoroughly by considering the alternative hypothesis that speciation was initiated in allopatry and secondary introgression has subsequently erased the signal of past differentiation at neutral loci. We present a model of neutral introgression after secondary contact in a mosaic hybrid zone, which describes how GEAs dissipate with time and how neutral variation self-organizes accord- ing to the environmental and geographic structures. We show that although neutral loci can be affected by environmental selection they are often more affected by history and connectivity: the neutral structure retains the initial geographic separation more than it correlates with the environment during the colonization and introgression phases, and then converges to a migration-drift balance, the most frequent outcome of which is GEA at a local scale but IBD at a large scale. This is the exact pattern usually attributed to parallel ecological speciation. Introgression is heterogeneous in space and depends on the landscape structure (e.g. it is faster in small patches, which are more impacted by immigration). Furthermore, there is no directionality in the association and it is possi- ble to observe reversed GEAs between distant regions. We argue that the history of differentiation should ideally be reconstructed with selected loci or neutral loci linked to them, not neutral ones, and review some case studies for which the hypothesis of a long co-existence of co-adapted genetic backgrounds might have been refuted too hastily [Current Zoology 59 (1): 72-86, 2013].展开更多
There are many situations in which the ability of animals to distinguish between two similar looking objects can have significant selective consequences. For example, the objects that require discrimination may be edi...There are many situations in which the ability of animals to distinguish between two similar looking objects can have significant selective consequences. For example, the objects that require discrimination may be edible versus defended prey, predators versus non-predators, or mates of varying quality. Working from the premise that there are situations in which discrimi- nation may be more or less successful, we hypothesized that individuals find it more difficult to distinguish between stimuli when they encounter them sequentially rather than simultaneously. Our study has wide biological and psychological implications from the perspective of signal perception, signal evolution, and discrimination, and could apply to any system where individuals are making relative judgments or choices between two or more stimuli or signals. While this is a general principle that might seem intuitive, it has not been experimentally tested in this context, and is often not considered in the design of models or experiments, or in the interpretation of a wide range of studies. Our study is different from previous studies in psychology in that a) the level of similarity of stimuli are gradually varied to obtain selection gradients, and b) we discuss the implications of our study for specific areas in ecology, such as the level of perfection of mimicry in predator-prey systems. Our experiments provide evidence that it is indeed more difficult to distinguish between stimuli - and to learn to distinguish between stimuli - when they are encountered sequentially rather than simultaneously, even if the intervening time interval is short .展开更多
Speciation research has seen a renewed interest in ecological speciation, which emphasises divergent ecological se- lection leading to the evolution of reproductive isolation. Selection from divergent ecologies means ...Speciation research has seen a renewed interest in ecological speciation, which emphasises divergent ecological se- lection leading to the evolution of reproductive isolation. Selection from divergent ecologies means that phenotypic plasticity can play an important role in ecological speciation. Phenotypic plasticity involves the induction of phenotypes over the lifetime of an organism and emerging evidence suggests that epigenetic marks such as cytosine and protein (histone) modifications might regu- late such environmental induction. Epigenetic marks play a wide role in a variety of processes including development, sex dif- ferentiation and allocation, sexual conflict, regulation of transposable elements and phenotypic plasticity. Here we describe recent studies that investigate epigenetic mechanisms in a variety of contexts. There is mounting evidence for environmentally induced epigenetic variation and for the stable inheritance of epigenetic marks between generations. Thus, epigenetically-based pheno- typic plasticity may play a role in adaptation and ecological speciation. However, there is less evidence for the inheritance of in- duced epigenetic variation across multiple generations in animals. Currently few studies of ecological speciation incorporate the potential for the involvement of epigenetically-based induction of phenotypes, and we argue that this is an important omission [Current Zoology 59 (5): 686-696, 2013 ].展开更多
It is the first time to document the trilobite Mucronaspis(Songxites) wuningensis and the brachiopod ParomalomenaAegiromenella Assemblage from the Xinkailing Bed(Hirnantian, uppermost Ordovician) in Taoyuan and Cili c...It is the first time to document the trilobite Mucronaspis(Songxites) wuningensis and the brachiopod ParomalomenaAegiromenella Assemblage from the Xinkailing Bed(Hirnantian, uppermost Ordovician) in Taoyuan and Cili counties,northwestern Hunan Province. Synecological analysis shows that this is a deep water shelly fauna of South China during the Hirnantian. It lived on the upper Jiangnan Slope in northwestern Hunan, adjacent to the southeast margin of the Upper Yangtze Region, and belongs to the Hirnantia fauna with cool and deep water, and low diversity affinity, similar to its contemporary shelly faunas from the southern Shaanxi Slope adjacent to the north margin of the Upper Yangtze Region, the northern Chongqing depression(new name), and the Jiangxi-Anhui-Jiangsu gentle slope of the Lower Yangtze Region. Paleoecologically,it could be attributed to the BA 4–5 benthic regime(about 60–150 m deep, and deepest to 200 m), and was significantly different from the trilobite M.(S.) mucronata and the typical Hirnantia fauna while the latters may have habited in BA 2–3 benthic regimes(about 5–60 m deep). A new paleogeographic distribution pattern of the Hirnantian shallow and deep water shelly faunas of South China is herein proposed for the first time. Assuming that the depositional rate was constant in northwestern Hunan during the end Ordovician, the duration of the Xinkailing Bed might be only 12 thousand years according to the thickness of the Wufeng Formation and the absolute age values of those relevant graptolitic biozones. Such a short time interval may indicate that the global environmental change during the crisis was much shorter than previously thought, and its influence on the deep water regime was significantly shorter than that on the shallow water regime.展开更多
Speciation research during the last several decades has confirmed that natural selection frequently drives the genera- tion of new species. But how does this process generally unfold in nature? We argue that answerin...Speciation research during the last several decades has confirmed that natural selection frequently drives the genera- tion of new species. But how does this process generally unfold in nature? We argue that answering this question requires a clearer conceptual framework for understanding selection's role in speciation. We present a unified framework of speciation, pro- viding mechanistic descriptions of fundamentally distinct routes to speciation, and how these may interact during lineage splitting Two major categories are recognized: reproductive isolation resulting from (1) responses to selection, "speciation by selection," or (2) non-selective processes, "speciation without selection." Speciation by selection can occur via three mechanisms: (1) similar selection, (2) divergent selection, and (3) reinforcement selection. Understanding ecology's role in speciation requires uncovering how these three mechanisms contribute to reproductive isolation, and their relative importance compared to non-selective proce- sses, because all three mechanisms can occur side-by-side during speciation. To accomplish this, we highlight examination of groups of organisms inhabiting replicated environmental gradients. This scenario is common in nature, and a large literature illus- trates that both parallel and non-parallel responses to similar environments are widespread, and each can result in speciation. This recognition reveals four general pathways of speciation by similar or divergent selection--parallel and nonparallel responses to similar and divergent selection. Altogether, we present a more precise framework for speciation research, draw attention to some under-recognized features of speciation, emphasize the multidimensionality of speciation, reveal limitations of some previous tests and descriptions of speciation mechanisms, and point to a number of directions for future investigation [Current Zoology 59 (1): 31-52, 2013].展开更多
文摘During the last few decades, researchers have been in the search for environmental friendly ways to cope with agricultural pests, instead of using chemical pesticides. The use of essential oils has a high potential to become an alternative control strategy against plant parasitic nematodes. This study was conducted to determine the toxicity of 10 essential oils (Artemisia absinthium, Citrus bergamia, Eucalyptus citriodora, Hypericum perforatum, Lavandula officinalis, Mentha arvensis, Ocimum basilicum, Piper nigrum, Thymus serpyllum and Zingiber officinale) against the second stage juveniles of the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne incognita. The aqueous solutions of these essential oils have been applied to the second stage juveniles in three different concentrations (1%, 3% and 5%) at four different application time intervals (12, 24, 48 and 72 h). The interactions between the variables have been examined with repeated measure analysis of variance (ANOVA). This showed that the interactions of essential oil-time and essential oil-concentration were statistically significant, and it is concluded that L. officinalis, A. absinthium, P. nigrum, C. bergamia and M. arvensis have the most toxic effect in all concentrations and times, respectively.
基金Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.81871520)the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation(No.230210513)
文摘In manned deep-space exploration,extremely isolated environments may adversely affect the mood and cognition of astronauts.Horticultural plants and activities have been proven to be effective in improving their physical,psychological,and cognitive states.To assess the effects of applying horticultural plants and activities in isolated environments,this study investigated the influence of viewing strawberry plants on the mood of people in a laboratory experiment as indicated by heart rate,salivary cortisol,and psychological scales.The results showed that heart rate and salivary cortisol were significantly decreased after viewing strawberry plants for 15 min.“Tension”and“confusion”scored using the Profile of Mood States negative mood subscales,and anxiety levels measured using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory scale were also significantly reduced.This study further explored the impact of viewing strawberry plants on cognition.A notable reduction of the subjects’reaction time after 15-min plant viewing was observed.Based on these findings,a long-duration isolated experiment in a bioregenerative life support system—“Lunar Palace I”—was conducted.A similar trend was obtained that crew members’mood states were improved by viewing the strawberry plants,but no significant change was observed.This study provided some experimental evidence for the benefits of interacting with strawberry plants in isolated environments.
基金the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21674019 and 21704014)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(2232019A3-03)+3 种基金the Graduate Student Innovation Fund of Donghua University (CUSF-DH-D-2019006)Shanghai Sailing Program(17YF1400200)Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (17CG33)the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China(6141A0202202)。
文摘Excellent thermal insulating materials are highly demanded in various applications including buildings, aerospace and sport equipment. However, in practical applications,the performance of thermal insulating materials usually deteriorates under diverse temperature and humidity conditions.Therefore, it is highly essential to construct a bulk material that exhibits outstanding thermal insulation performance under extremely humid and hot environment. In this work, we have conceived a green and effective strategy to fabricate a superhydrophobic and compressible polyvinylidene fluoride/polyimide(PVDF/PI) nanofiber composite aerogel via electrospinning and freeze-drying technique. Interestingly, the PVDF nanofibers and PI nanofibers function as the hydrophobic fibrous framework and mechanical support skeleton,respectively, forming a robust three-dimensional framework with good mechanical flexibility. The PVDF/PI aerogel possesses outstanding superhydrophobic feature(water contact angle of 152°) and low thermal conductivity(31.0 m W m^(-1)K^(-1))at room temperature. Significantly, even at 100% relative humidity(80℃), the PVDF/PI aerogel still exhibits a low thermal conductivity of only 48.6 m W m^(-1)K^(-1), which outperforms the majority of commercial thermal insulating materials. Therefore, the novel PVDF/PI aerogel is promising as an excellent thermal insulating material for the applications in high-temperature and humid environment.
文摘When incompletely isolated taxa coexist in a patchy environment (e.g. mosaic hybrid zones, host-race complexes), patterns of variation may differ between selected traits/genes and neutral markers. While the genetic structure of selected traits/loci tends to coincide with habitat variables (producing Genetic-Environment Association or GEA), genetic differentiation at neutral loci unlinked to any selected locus rather depends on geographic connectivity at a large scale (e.g. Isolation- By-Distance or IBD), although these loci often display GEA at a small scale. This discrepancy has been repeatedly taken as evi- dence for parallel primary divergence driven by local adaptation. We argue that this interpretation needs to be addressed more thoroughly by considering the alternative hypothesis that speciation was initiated in allopatry and secondary introgression has subsequently erased the signal of past differentiation at neutral loci. We present a model of neutral introgression after secondary contact in a mosaic hybrid zone, which describes how GEAs dissipate with time and how neutral variation self-organizes accord- ing to the environmental and geographic structures. We show that although neutral loci can be affected by environmental selection they are often more affected by history and connectivity: the neutral structure retains the initial geographic separation more than it correlates with the environment during the colonization and introgression phases, and then converges to a migration-drift balance, the most frequent outcome of which is GEA at a local scale but IBD at a large scale. This is the exact pattern usually attributed to parallel ecological speciation. Introgression is heterogeneous in space and depends on the landscape structure (e.g. it is faster in small patches, which are more impacted by immigration). Furthermore, there is no directionality in the association and it is possi- ble to observe reversed GEAs between distant regions. We argue that the history of differentiation should ideally be reconstructed with selected loci or neutral loci linked to them, not neutral ones, and review some case studies for which the hypothesis of a long co-existence of co-adapted genetic backgrounds might have been refuted too hastily [Current Zoology 59 (1): 72-86, 2013].
文摘There are many situations in which the ability of animals to distinguish between two similar looking objects can have significant selective consequences. For example, the objects that require discrimination may be edible versus defended prey, predators versus non-predators, or mates of varying quality. Working from the premise that there are situations in which discrimi- nation may be more or less successful, we hypothesized that individuals find it more difficult to distinguish between stimuli when they encounter them sequentially rather than simultaneously. Our study has wide biological and psychological implications from the perspective of signal perception, signal evolution, and discrimination, and could apply to any system where individuals are making relative judgments or choices between two or more stimuli or signals. While this is a general principle that might seem intuitive, it has not been experimentally tested in this context, and is often not considered in the design of models or experiments, or in the interpretation of a wide range of studies. Our study is different from previous studies in psychology in that a) the level of similarity of stimuli are gradually varied to obtain selection gradients, and b) we discuss the implications of our study for specific areas in ecology, such as the level of perfection of mimicry in predator-prey systems. Our experiments provide evidence that it is indeed more difficult to distinguish between stimuli - and to learn to distinguish between stimuli - when they are encountered sequentially rather than simultaneously, even if the intervening time interval is short .
文摘Speciation research has seen a renewed interest in ecological speciation, which emphasises divergent ecological se- lection leading to the evolution of reproductive isolation. Selection from divergent ecologies means that phenotypic plasticity can play an important role in ecological speciation. Phenotypic plasticity involves the induction of phenotypes over the lifetime of an organism and emerging evidence suggests that epigenetic marks such as cytosine and protein (histone) modifications might regu- late such environmental induction. Epigenetic marks play a wide role in a variety of processes including development, sex dif- ferentiation and allocation, sexual conflict, regulation of transposable elements and phenotypic plasticity. Here we describe recent studies that investigate epigenetic mechanisms in a variety of contexts. There is mounting evidence for environmentally induced epigenetic variation and for the stable inheritance of epigenetic marks between generations. Thus, epigenetically-based pheno- typic plasticity may play a role in adaptation and ecological speciation. However, there is less evidence for the inheritance of in- duced epigenetic variation across multiple generations in animals. Currently few studies of ecological speciation incorporate the potential for the involvement of epigenetically-based induction of phenotypes, and we argue that this is an important omission [Current Zoology 59 (5): 686-696, 2013 ].
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.41290260,41521061,41530103)Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant No.XDPB05)
文摘It is the first time to document the trilobite Mucronaspis(Songxites) wuningensis and the brachiopod ParomalomenaAegiromenella Assemblage from the Xinkailing Bed(Hirnantian, uppermost Ordovician) in Taoyuan and Cili counties,northwestern Hunan Province. Synecological analysis shows that this is a deep water shelly fauna of South China during the Hirnantian. It lived on the upper Jiangnan Slope in northwestern Hunan, adjacent to the southeast margin of the Upper Yangtze Region, and belongs to the Hirnantia fauna with cool and deep water, and low diversity affinity, similar to its contemporary shelly faunas from the southern Shaanxi Slope adjacent to the north margin of the Upper Yangtze Region, the northern Chongqing depression(new name), and the Jiangxi-Anhui-Jiangsu gentle slope of the Lower Yangtze Region. Paleoecologically,it could be attributed to the BA 4–5 benthic regime(about 60–150 m deep, and deepest to 200 m), and was significantly different from the trilobite M.(S.) mucronata and the typical Hirnantia fauna while the latters may have habited in BA 2–3 benthic regimes(about 5–60 m deep). A new paleogeographic distribution pattern of the Hirnantian shallow and deep water shelly faunas of South China is herein proposed for the first time. Assuming that the depositional rate was constant in northwestern Hunan during the end Ordovician, the duration of the Xinkailing Bed might be only 12 thousand years according to the thickness of the Wufeng Formation and the absolute age values of those relevant graptolitic biozones. Such a short time interval may indicate that the global environmental change during the crisis was much shorter than previously thought, and its influence on the deep water regime was significantly shorter than that on the shallow water regime.
文摘Speciation research during the last several decades has confirmed that natural selection frequently drives the genera- tion of new species. But how does this process generally unfold in nature? We argue that answering this question requires a clearer conceptual framework for understanding selection's role in speciation. We present a unified framework of speciation, pro- viding mechanistic descriptions of fundamentally distinct routes to speciation, and how these may interact during lineage splitting Two major categories are recognized: reproductive isolation resulting from (1) responses to selection, "speciation by selection," or (2) non-selective processes, "speciation without selection." Speciation by selection can occur via three mechanisms: (1) similar selection, (2) divergent selection, and (3) reinforcement selection. Understanding ecology's role in speciation requires uncovering how these three mechanisms contribute to reproductive isolation, and their relative importance compared to non-selective proce- sses, because all three mechanisms can occur side-by-side during speciation. To accomplish this, we highlight examination of groups of organisms inhabiting replicated environmental gradients. This scenario is common in nature, and a large literature illus- trates that both parallel and non-parallel responses to similar environments are widespread, and each can result in speciation. This recognition reveals four general pathways of speciation by similar or divergent selection--parallel and nonparallel responses to similar and divergent selection. Altogether, we present a more precise framework for speciation research, draw attention to some under-recognized features of speciation, emphasize the multidimensionality of speciation, reveal limitations of some previous tests and descriptions of speciation mechanisms, and point to a number of directions for future investigation [Current Zoology 59 (1): 31-52, 2013].