Woody Climbing Plants and Their Landscaping Application in Chongqing City

There are a variety of woody climbing plants distributed widely in Chongqing City, and they are loved by landscape designers due to their special form and saving space. In respect of actual application,there is a big difference between various species of woody climbing plants in terms of proportion. In this paper, woody climbing plants in Chongqing City were investigated. The results show that there are74 species of woody climbing plants suitable for landscape in Chongqing City. The research can provide reference for the application of woody climbing plants in landscape greening in Chongqing City in future.

Tendril-Based Climbing Plants to Model, Simulate and Create Bio-Inspired Robotic Systems

Bioinspiration can be considered one of the keys for future smart and versatile robotic systems. Plants could be an im- portant source of ideas despite the fact that they have not yet been deeply observed and considered. In this paper, climbing tendril-bearer plants that, by means of irritable filiform organs called tendrils, search for a support, grasp it and climb to gain height, have been used to study and develop an effective climbing robot. The study aimed first to evaluate the main movements and behaviors of the tendril from a biomimetic point of view. The tendril complexity was then simplified, a robotic model was developed and a kinematic simulator was designed and implemented to visualize and evaluate the chosen system. Finally, based on the biological, technical and numerical evaluations, the main tendril behaviors were replicated by proof of concept devices made of smart materials to move towards a practical realization and to replicate the simulated results. The designed proof of concept prototypes showed food repeatability and feasibility.

Functional strategies and distribution of climbing plant communities in different vegetation patches in a subtropical dry forest, central Argentina

Aims In the context of global change,the impacts of forest structure alter-ation on climbing plants in extra-tropical ecosystems are poorly understood.It also remains little explored,the functional strategies among climbing plant species and its relationship with the local-scale distribution of climbing plant communities.Here,we aimed at three goals:(i)we studied how climbing plant community com-position responds to the modification of the original forest structure in a subtropical dry forest;(ii)we characterized climbing plant spe-cies according to functional traits related to the acquisition and use of resources;and(iii)we examined whether functional strategies at the community level are also responding to vegetation structure change,a much less addressed topic in the ecology of climbing plants.Methods The study was carried out in the Chaco forest of Córdoba Mountains,central Argentina.We selected 18 patches of‘native forests’,‘shrublands’and‘Ligustrum lucidum forests’.We counted and identified climbing plant individuals in each patch,including woody and herbaceous species.For each spe-cies,we measured 10 functional traits:leaf area,leaf area ratio,leaf dry matter content,leaf tensile strength,specific leaf area,stem density,wood saturated water content,inter-node length,petiole length and plant cover.We compared climbing plant composition,richness and abundance among the three vegeta-tion types.Then,we assessed trends of functional variation of climbing plant species by performing a principal component analysis.Finally,we investigated whether simple mean,weighted mean and Functional Richness index of principal component analysis(PCA)axes differed among the climbing plant communi-ties of the three vegetation types.Important Findings Multivariate analysis revealed that climbing plant composition of native forests significantly differed from that of shrublands and L.lucidum forests.Also,L.lucidum forests had the lowest climb-ing plant species richness.Functional variation of climbers was explained by three PCA axes:axis 1 represented the resource-use strategy,axis 2 was associated with light-foraging strategy,and axis 3 related to plant size.The most abundant species in native forests presented a more acquisitive functional strategy and larger sizes than those of shrublands and L.lucidum forest.Furthermore,the most abundant species in shrublands had shorter internodes and petioles than the most abundant climbers of the other vegeta-tion types.Finally,the climbing plant community in the native forests had the highest Functional Richness index regarding the resource-use and the size strategies.Here,we demonstrated that there are floristic and functional differences among climb-ing plant communities in patches of three vegetation types in a subtropical dry forest biome.Particularly,we found climbers spreading along three functional axes which were directly related to climbing plant community distribution among the different patches,highlighting their ecological importance and the need of further research.