Description of Telamoptilia grewiae sp. n. and the consequences for the definition of the genera Telamoptilia and Spulerina (Lepidoptera, Gracillariidae, Gracillariinae)

Adult, host plant and mines of Telamoptilia grewiae sp. n. 1 Adult in habitus, paratype 2 Live adult 3 Host plant 4 Linear mines by early instar larvae 5 Blotch mine by later instar larva 6 Seriously damaged leaves found in September. Credit: Zookeys

The genus Telamoptilia Kumata & Kuroko, 1988 is globally represented by five species that may be found in the Oriental and African regions. The type species T. cathedraea (Meyrick, 1908) is geographically shared by the Oriental Region and Madagascar (De Prins and De Prins 2014). Three species are currently known from China, including T. cathedraea, T. hemistacta (Meyrick, 1924), and T. prosacta (Meyrick, 1918).

The larvae of Telamoptilia species are leaf miners. Three plant families are known as hosts for Telamoptilia: Malvaceae, Amaranthaceae and Convolvulaceae (De Prins and De Prins 2014). Vári (1961) briefly described the biology of T. geyeri (Vári, 1961). Kumata et al. (1988) described the biology and the larval body chaetotaxy of three species: T. cathedraea, T. prosacta and T. tiliae (Kumata & Ermolaev, 1988). However, no larval head chaetotaxy and pupal features of Telamoptilia have been described so far.

Telamoptilia grewiae sp. n. is associated with Malvaceae and is described in the present paper from adult external characters, male and female genitalia, wing venation and immature stages. The larval head and pupal features are described for the first time in Telamoptilia.

Methods

Field investigations were carried out in Mt. Baxian National Nature Reserves (40°11'N, 117°32'E), 300−600 m, Tianjin, China, from May to September in 2013 and June 2014. Leaves containing mines with larvae were placed in sealed plastic bags, or rearing containers with moist cotton. Larvae removed from mines were immersed in nearly boiling water for 30 seconds, and then were kept in 75% ethanol for morphological examination. Last instar larval skins, pupae, and exuviae were kept in 75% ethanol. Pupae in rearing containers were placed outdoors to overwinter, and were transferred into the laboratory at 20 °C on February 6, 2014. Emergence successively occurred from March 9 to early-April 2014. Adults were collected chiefly by rearing from immature stages, and occasionally by light trap.

Adult photographs were taken with a Leica M250A stereo microscope. Genitalia and wings were dissected and mounted according to the methods introduced by Li (2002), but stained with Eosin Y and/or Chlorazol Black, and the illustrations were prepared by using a Leica DM750 microscope, and refined in Photoshop® CS4 software. For scanning electron microscopy, larvae and pupae were dehydrated in gradient ethanol, dried in vacuum and coated with gold in a SCD 005 Sputter Coater (BAL-TEC), then operated with a voltage of 15 kV using Quanta 200 environmental scanning electron microscope (SEM) (FEI, Oregon). Line drawings were outlined from the photos taken by the Leica M250A stereo microscope, using path tool in Adobe Photoshop® CS4 software. Photographs of host plant, mines and a live adult were taken in the field using Canon PowerShot G10 digital camera.

Terminology of immature stages follows Davis and De Prins (2011) and De Prins et al. (2013), and that of adults follows Kumata et al. (1988). Thoracic segments I−III and abdominal segments 1−10 are abbreviated as TI−TIII and A1−A10, respectively.

All the specimens studied, including the types of the new species and the vouchered larvae and pupae, are deposited in the Insect Collection, Nankai University, Tianjin, China.

Taxonomy

Adults (Figs 1–2) with wing span 6.0−8.0 mm. Head silvery white, tinged with gray on face. Labial palpus grayish white, colored blackish gray on outer surface of distal half of second segment and before apex of third segment. Maxillary palpus white, with middle or distal half blackish fuscous. Antenna with scape white on posterior half, blackish gray on anterior half and distal portion, flap blackish gray tinged with white, as wide as scape in frontal view; flagellum silvery grayish fuscous, with each unit blackish distally. Thorax and tegula blackish gray mixed with white. Legs mostly white; foreleg with coxa blackish fuscous basally and distally, femur and tibia blackish fuscous, tarsus blackish gray distally on each except last segment; midleg with coxa blackish fuscous distally, femur blackish fuscous, except white medially and distally on dorsal surface, with ventral scale expansion blackish fuscous, tibia blackish fuscous basally and distally, white medially, tarsus white, each except last segment dotted blackish fuscous distally; hindleg with coxa blackish fuscous distally, femur blackish fuscous distally on outer surface, tibia blackish fuscous basally and distally, tarsus with basal three segments blackish fuscous distally, fourth segment dotted blackish fuscous dorso-distally. Forewing grayish fuscous to blackish fuscous; costal margin with a white spot basally at about 1/10 and one before apex, the former sometimes touching fold posteriorly, with white stria at distal 3/10 and 1/6 obliquely outward, reaching middle of wing and near termen respectively; transverse white fascia from costal 1/3 and 1/2 obliquely outward, reaching dorsal 1/2 and before end of fold respectively, edged with blackish fuscous to black scales, inner fascia wider than outer one, widened on posterior half; small white dot on distal end of M3, two or three small white dots along termen; apex blackish fuscous; cilia mostly blackish fuscous basally, gray distally, white adjacent to white markings, white on basal 1/4, black on median part, gray distally at apex, gray along dorsal margin. Hindwing and cilia uniformly gray.

Source: Read Full Artical at - ZOOKEYS

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Together, humans and computers can figure out plant world

A Web-based system was built for palynologists to interact with stored data and search for pollen images. This screen shows search capabilities by morphology semantics. From Han et al., part of the special issue 'Bioinformatic and Biometric Methods in Plant Morphology' in Applications in Plant Sciences. Credit: Image credit Han et al. Han, J. G., H. Cao, A. Barb, S. W. Punyasena, C. Jaramillo, and C.-R. Shyu. 2014. A neotropical Miocene pollen database employing image-based search and semantic modeling. Applications in Plant Sciences 2(8): 1400030. doi:10.3732/apps.1400030.

As technology advances, science has become increasingly about data -- how to gather it, organize it, and analyze it. The creation of key databases to analyze and share data lies at the heart of bioinformatics, or the collection, classification, storage, and analysis of biochemical and biological information using computers and software. The tools and methods used in bioinformatics have been instrumental in the development of fields such as molecular genetics and genomics. But, in the plant sciences, bioinformatics and biometrics are employed in all fields -- not just genomics -- to enable researchers to grapple with the rich and varied data sources at their disposal.

In July 2013, Surangi Punyasena of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Selena Smith of the University of Michigan organized a special session at Botany 2013, the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in New Orleans, Louisiana. They invited plant morphologists, systematists, and paleobotanists, as well as computer scientists, applied mathematicians, and informaticians -- all of whom were united in their interest in developing or applying novel biometric or bioinformatic methods to the form and function of plants. The goal: to provide a forum for a cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas and methods on the theme of the quantitative analysis of plant morphology.

As Punyasena explains, "The quantitative analysis of morphology is the next frontier of bioinformatics. Humans are very good at learning to recognize shape and texture, but there are many problems where accuracy and consistency are difficult to achieve with only expert-derived, qualitative data, and in many fields there are often a limited number of experts trained in these visual assessments."

The results of that session, along with invited papers, are published in the August issue of Applications in Plant Sciences as a special issue on Bioinformatic and Biometric Methods in Plant Morphology. Morphology is, of course, the study of form, and form as represented in this collection of articles has a broad scope -- from microscopic pollen grains and charcoal particles, to macroscopic leaves and whole root systems. The methods presented in the issue, both recent and emerging, are varied as well, including automated classification and identification, geometric morphometrics, and skeleton networks, as well as tests of the limits of human assessment.

Three articles in the issue look at the application of biometric and bioinformatic methods in palynology: Han et al. (2014) introduce an online Miocene pollen database with semantic image search capabilities; Holt and Bebbington (2014) test the applications of an automated pollen classifier; and Mander et al. (2014) analyze differences in human and automated classification of grass pollen based on surface textures. Other papers highlight how biometric and bioinformatic methods apply to plants more broadly, including using skeleton networks to examine plant morphology such as roots (Bucksch, 2014), improving the quantification of geometric leaf shape metrics with a new protocol to measure leaf circularity (Krieger, 2014), comparing human and automated methods of quantifying aspects of leaf venation (Green et al., 2014), and applying morphometrics to charcoalified plant remains (Crawford and Belcher, 2014).

Taken as a whole, the issue presents a compelling argument for the importance of both computational and morphometric approaches.

"I think that there's been a renaissance in morphometric approaches," notes Punyasena. 

"New techniques are using easy access to high-quality digital imaging, powerful computers, and advances in computational analyses like machine learning to rethink the way we gather and analyze morphological data."

As advances in technology allow researchers to gather more and more morphological and image-based data, it has become increasingly important to be able to analyze and interpret those data quickly, accurately, consistently, and objectively. Biometric and bioinformatic methods make this possible, and reveal the potential of data collected from the shape and form of plants to be as rich of a data source as genetic data.

Access to specific articles can be found online at: http://www.bioone.org/toc/apps/2/8

Source: American Journal of Botany

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Plants return to Earth after growing in space

Astronaut Reid Wiseman injected a fixative solution onto the seedlings. Credit: NASA

Researchers at Simon Gilroy's lab in the Department of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this afternoon greeted a truck carrying small containers holding more than 1,000 frozen plants that germinated and grew aboard the International Space Station.

On Tuesday, when Gilroy's team inspected the plants at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, they saw exactly what they wanted: Petri dishes holding seedlings that sprouted and grew in weightlessness.

After their arrival in Madison, the plants went directly into a deep freeze. After being thawed in a few months, they will donate their RNA to an instrument that will measure the activity of all of their approximately 30,000 genes.

Half of the plants will become subjects in Gilroy's longstanding exploration of the genetic control of the proteins that enable plants to grow in zero gravity. "Gravity is a fantastically pervasive force that affects all biology," says Gilroy. "One astronaut observed that plants get lazy in a weightless environment; they grow long and thin, and don't lay down strong material, just like people lose bone mass in space because it isn't needed for supporting weight."

The other half of the experiment represents a departure for Gilroy, and for NASA, the agency supporting this area of space research. After these plants undergo a similar genetic analysis at UW-Madison's Biotech Center, the data will get an initial check-over from Gilroy's group. And then a treasure trove of digital data on plant genetic activity in microgravity will be made available to any researcher interested in mining it.

"Access to space is very rare," Gilroy says. "Traditionally, a research group will put an experiment in space, get the results and publish. But NASA is trying a new mode, called geneLAB, where the research group will put organisms in space, then, as soon as possible, release the raw data to anyone who wants to analyze it. They hope it will speed up major advances on these tiny samples that we can afford to place in space. I see this as open-source science."

Through the process called transcription, genes produce RNA that becomes the template for proteins, and in both sets of experiments, the RNA data will show which genes become more or less active in microgravity, when compared to an identical set of plants grown on Earth.

While Gilroy plans to focus on structural proteins, the geneLAB experiment compares four variants of Arabidopsis called ecotypes. "This data should provide a broad field of investigation -- far more than one lab can handle," Gilroy says. "We are going to end up with an enormous amount of transcription data. We will do some initial work to check the major genes which go up or down, but there's tremendous potential for further analysis by other labs around the world."

But while the geneLab approach sounds promising, Gilroy concedes that it carries no guarantees. "This may be a path forward in crowd-sourcing science. At the least, as a single lab we could never analyze this data as fully as many labs around the world all working with it."

The "Biological Research in Canister" containers that held these experiments on board the space station were designed, tested and operated according to NASA's rigorous approach, Gilroy says. "Each project represents an enormous investment, and you really want everything to go perfectly. You become one of the most careful scientists in the world. You test everything, make duplicates, and are always considering what may go wrong so you can do another test."

NASA is an unfamiliar world to most botanists, but Gilroy seems to be enjoying every step of the way, and has even learned the organization's peculiar parlance. "At first, talking in acronyms is very strange," he says, "and you can't understand anything when NASA people start going into NASA-speak. But once you get into it, you catch yourself doing the exact same thing."

In the microgravity experiments, Gilroy is exploring the genetic basis of a phenomenon known to gardeners and horticulturalists for many years. Plants that grow up without mechanical stresses -- due to wind, rain or other disturbances -- "are much more susceptible to pests, are not as robust," Gilroy says, "but if you go into a greenhouse and shake the plants, they grow up more compact, strong, and resistant to stress. They are even more resistant to plant diseases."

It turns out that the same signaling system used to detect mechanical stresses like gravity is also used to defend against pathogens. That may explain why plants in space appear more susceptible to disease.

That overlap raises the stakes for understanding the impact of gravity on plants beyond the notion of building stronger crops that can stand up in the field. Understanding the signals could help in the never ending battle against plant disease.

Likewise, NASA has its own practical interest in the research: Plants will supply food and oxygen for long-distance space travel, and keeping them healthy will be a matter of life and death. "If you are growing plants as part of a human life support system," Gilroy says, "you'd rather not have them suddenly die."

Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison

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High milk intake linked with higher fractures and mortality, research suggests

Women who drank more than three glasses of milk a day had a higher risk of death than women who drank less than one glass of milk a day. Credit: © Africa Studio / Fotolia

A high milk intake in women and men is not accompanied by a lower risk of fracture and instead may be associated with a higher rate of death, suggests observational research published in The BMJ this week.

This may be explained by the high levels of lactose and galactose (types of sugar) in milk, that have been shown to increase oxidative stress and chronic inflammation in animal studies, say the researchers.

However, they point out that their study can only show an association and cannot prove cause and effect. They say the results "should be interpreted cautiously" and further studies are needed before any firm conclusions or dietary recommendations can be made.

A diet rich in milk products is promoted to reduce the likelihood of osteoporotic fractures, but previous research looking at the importance of milk for the prevention of fractures and the influence on mortality rates show conflicting results.

So a research team in Sweden, led by Professor Karl Michaëlsson, set out to examine whether high milk intake may increase oxidative stress, which, in turn, affects the risk of mortality and fracture.

Two large groups of 61,433 women (aged 39-74 years in 1987-1990) and 45,339 men (aged 45-79 years in 1997) in Sweden completed food frequency questionnaires for 96 common foods including milk, yoghurt and cheese.

Lifestyle information, weight and height were collated and factors such as education level and marital status were also taken into account. National registers were used to track fracture and mortality rates.

Women were tracked for an average of 20 years, during which time 15,541 died and 17,252 had a fracture, of whom 4,259 had a hip fracture.

In women, no reduction in fracture risk with higher milk consumption was observed. Furthermore, women who drank more than three glasses of milk a day (average 680 ml) had a higher risk of death than women who drank less than one glass of milk a day (average 60 ml).

Men were tracked for an average of 11 years, during which time 10,112 died and 5,066 had a fracture, with 1,166 hip fracture cases. Men also had a higher risk of death with higher milk consumption, although this was less pronounced than in women.

Further analysis showed a positive association between milk intake and biomarkers of oxidative stress and inflammation.

In contrast, a high intake of fermented milk products with a low lactose content (including yoghurt and cheese) was associated with reduced rates of mortality and fracture, particularly in women.

They conclude that a higher consumption of milk in women and men is not accompanied by a lower risk of fracture and instead may be associated with a higher rate of death. 

Consequently, there may be a link between the lactose and galactose content of milk and risk, although causality needs be tested.

"Our results may question the validity of recommendations to consume high amounts of milk to prevent fragility fractures," they write. "The results should, however, be interpreted cautiously given the observational design of our study. The findings merit independent replication before they can be used for dietary recommendations."

Michaëlsson and colleagues raise a fascinating possibility about the potential harms of milk, says Professor Mary Schooling at City University of New York in an accompanying editorial. However, she stresses that diet is difficult to assess precisely and she reinforces the message that these findings should be interpreted cautiously.

"As milk consumption may rise globally with economic development and increasing consumption of animal source foods, the role of milk and mortality needs to be established definitively now," she concludes.

Source: BMJ-British Medical Journal

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Father-son research team discovers cheatgrass seeds survive wash cycle

Professor Hugh Lefcort and son Caleb examine the cheatgrass in Spokane, Washington. Credit: Gonzaga University

Not many sixth-graders can say they have been published in an academic journal, but Caleb Lefcort can cross that distinction off his list. Caleb got into a discussion with his father, Hugh Lefcort, professor of biology at Gonzaga University, as to whether the seed burrs from cheatgrass would survive the laundry cycle. Hugh believed the seeds would not survive. Instead of simply taking his father's word for it, Caleb -- who was in fourth grade at the time -- suggested the scientific method: an experiment.

The father and son duo set out to determine whether the seeds would survive the wash.
The experiment

Finding cheatgrass seeds was easy. Bromus tectorum (the scientific name for cheatgrass) is nearly ubiquitous in the Inland Northwest and has become an increasing concern throughout North America -- spreading rapidly through the western United States both through natural means and unintended ways, like getting stuck in people's socks and shoes.

"We hypothesized that laundering would impact water potential, and we, therefore, predicted that seeds would exhibit poorer germination and emergence after being laundered," said Hugh. "We also predicted that the effect of laundering would be stronger if bleach was used."

To collect the cheatgrass seeds, Hugh and Caleb walked through a nearby field wearing only socks on their feet. They divided the socks into three different treatments: 1. Not washed or dried; 2. Washed with detergent but not bleach and subsequently dried; and 3. Washed with detergent and bleach and then dried.

The socks that were to be laundered were divided into three different washing machines/detergent/dryer combinations:
1. A Whirlpool washing machine using All brand detergent and Whirlpool dryer;
2. A Samsung washer using Tide brand detergent and a General Electric dryer; and
3. A Maytag machine using Era brand detergent and a Maytag dryer.

Findings

The results of the experiment surprised both Hugh and Caleb.

"There was no significant effect of the different washing machines and their associated laundry detergents and dryers on the number of seeds that sprouted, nor did we find a significant effect of laundry treatments in the number of seeds that germinated," said Hugh.

There was, however, an effect on the seeds that were treated with bleach; they germinated at a slightly slower rate than the other seeds that were tested without bleach. The height of the plants that sprouted from these bleached seeds differed from the height of the plants that experienced the no-bleach-wash treatment.

The research that Hugh and Caleb conducted revealed that cheatgrass seeds and their germination processes are sturdy enough to survive the soaking, soap and agitation of washing machines, the heat of dryers, and often even bleach. Though they designed the study to make it difficult for cheatgrass seeds to germinate, they were surprised at how easily the treated seeds sprouted into plants. Government agencies may consider adding these findings to their public service announcements.

Caleb Lefcort is now a sixth-grader Moran Prairie Elementary School.

Source: Gonzaga University

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'Probiotics' for plants boost detox abilities; untreated plants overdose and die

The Doty lab conducts work to see how plants treated with naturally occurring endophytes might handle soils contaminated with a variety of pollutants. Graduate student Robert Tournay, for example, is interested in how the plants handle arsenic. Credit: M Levin/U of Washington

Scientists using a microbe that occurs naturally in eastern cottonwood trees have boosted the ability of two other plants -- willow and lawn grass -- to withstand the withering effects of the nasty industrial pollutant phenanthrene and take up 25 to 40 percent more of the pollutant than untreated plants.

The approach could avoid the regulatory hurdles imposed on transgenic plants -- plants with genes inserted from or exchanged with other plant or animal species -- that have shown promise in phytoremediation, the process of using plants to remove toxins from contaminated sites, according to Sharon Doty, associate professor of environmental and forestry sciences and corresponding author on a paper about the new work in Environmental Science & Technology.

"Our approach is much like when humans take probiotic pills or eat yogurt with probiotics to supplement the 'good' microbes in their guts," she said.

The microbe from the cottonwood was encouraged to colonize the roots of willows simply by dipping rooted and trimmed cuttings in solutions with the microbe. Grasses were treated with microbes in solution as seeds sprouted in soil. Once integrated into the plants, the microbe supplemented their own microbial defenses.

Microbes that take up residence in the inner tissue of plants and don't cause negative symptoms are called endophytes. In nature, endophytes have a welcomed, symbiotic relationship with plants. In polluted soil, for instance, if the right endophytes are present they consume toxins coming up through plant roots. The endophytes get fed and the plant gets help neutralizing pollutants that could kill it.

That's been one challenge of phytoremediation: plants removing pollutants can, all too quickly, succumb to the toxins.

"When the endophyte in these experiments was given to willow and grasses, it reduced the phytotoxic effects of phenanthrene compared to the control plants that did not receive the endophyte and died," said lead author Zareen Khan, a UW research scientist in environmental and forest sciences.

Phenanthrene is carcinogenic, on the Environmental Protection Agency's priority pollutants list and belongs to a class of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that get deposited into the environment via fossil fuel combustion, waste incineration or as byproducts of industrial processes. Soils that become contaminated can be capped with layers of uncontaminated soil or dug up and removed for cleaning at soil remediation facilities or storage at waste disposal facilities.

In their search, UW researchers tested six different endophytes from cottonwood and willow varieties and found one -- lab name PD1 -- from the eastern cottonwood to be superior at breaking down phenanthrene.

They introduced this endophyte into willow cuttings and lawn grass. Willows were chosen because some varieties have already proven adept at removing toxins and the shrubs have extensive root systems, take up a lot of water and grow rapidly. Lawn grass was included because it also grows fast and could be useful in parks and open-space areas.

In lab experiments, the willow cuttings with added endophyte protection continued to grow, kept their leaves and had denser root systems. Untreated plants wilted, lost leaves and their roots turned brown. When soils were analyzed, the treated willows took up 65 percent of the phenanthrene compared with untreated plants that removed 40 percent, an improvement of 25 percent.

Grass seed planted in contaminated soils and watered with solutions containing the PD1 endophyte germinated five days quicker, grew taller and had 100 more tillers, or new offshoots, after 13 days. Treated grass removed 50 percent of the phenanthrene from the soil, compared with untreated grass that removed 10 percent, an improvement of 40 percent.

In phytoremediation, plants that take up pollutants but don't degrade them have to be removed and treated as hazardous waste or otherwise disposed of safely. The willows treated in the UW experiment appear to have degraded some 90 percent of the phenanthrene to harmless components. The researchers said they'd like to determine if that promising finding holds up in mass-balance studies and want to examine the possible effects on bugs or animals that might bite the plants processing the toxins and other environmental considerations. Interestingly, other studies have shown that bugs can smell similar semi-volatile pollutants and avoid eating the plants containing them, Doty said.

The work was funded by a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and by funds provided through the Byron and Alice Lockwood Endowed Professorship that Doty holds. The other four co-authors on the paper were undergraduate volunteers: David Roman and Trent Kintz have since graduated while May delas Alas and Raymond Yap are still working on their bachelor's degrees.
Just down the road from UW is Seattle's Gas Works Park, a site Doty thinks is a prime candidate for the approach her lab reported. Contaminants in the soil, including phenanthrene, are from a now-dismantled gasification plant. Soils have been covered with uncontaminated soil.

"The idea of leaving a known carcinogen in a public place is not right," she said. "What about problems of erosion? We should do what we can to remove it. We spend so much money treating cancer, I'd like us to take steps to prevent it instead."

Source: University of Washington

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Potential biological control for avocado-ravaging disease

University of Florida scientists think they’ve found the first potential biological control strategy against laurel wilt, a disease that threatens Florida’s avocado industry. The redbay ambrosia beetle, see here, bores holes into avocado trees, bringing the disease that causes laurel wilt. Credit: Lyle Buss, UF/IFAS

University of Florida scientists believe they've found what could be the first biological control strategy against laurel wilt, a disease that threatens the state's $54 million-a-year avocado industry.

Red ambrosia beetles bore holes into healthy avocado trees, bringing with them the pathogen that causes laurel wilt. Growers control the beetles that carry and spread laurel wilt by spraying insecticides on the trees, said Daniel Carrillo, an entomology research assistant professor at the Tropical Research and Education Center in Homestead.

But a team of researchers from the Tropical REC and the Indian River Research and Education Center in Fort Pierce have identified a potential biological control to use against redbay ambrosia beetles that could help growers use less insecticide.

First, they exposed beetles to three commercially available fungi, and all of the beetles died. Then they sprayed the fungi on avocado tree trunks, and beetles got infected while boring into the trunk. About 75 percent of those beetles died, said Carrillo, an Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences faculty member.

Ideally, the fungal treatments could prevent beetles from boring into the trees, eliminating the risk that the pathogen would enter the trees, the study said. But tests showed female beetles bored into the trees and built tunnels regardless of the treatment. Still, researchers say their treatment can prevent the female beetles from laying eggs.

UF/IFAS scientists don't know yet how much less chemical spray will be needed to control the redbay ambrosia beetle. But Carrillo sees this study as the first step toward controlling the beetle in a sustainable way.

"When you want to manage a pest, you want an integrated pest management approach," Carrillo said. "This provides an alternative that we would use in combination with chemical control."

The redbay ambrosia beetle -- native to India, Japan, Myanmar and Taiwan -- was first detected in 2002 in southeast Georgia. It was presumably introduced in wood crates and pallets, and its rapid spread has killed 6,000 avocado trees in Florida, or about 1 percent of the 655,000 commercial trees in Florida. The beetle was first discovered in South Florida in 2010.

Most American-grown avocados come from California, with the rest coming from Florida and Hawaii. The domestic avocado market is worth $429 million, according to Edward Evans, a UF associate professor of food and resource economics, also at the Tropical REC. Florida's avocados are valued at about $23 million, or about 5 percent of the national market.

The redbay ambrosia beetle is not an issue with California avocados, so the new tactic found by Florida scientists wouldn't apply to this pest in the Golden State, said Mark Hoddle, a biological control Extension specialist with the University of California-Riverside. Hoddle studies biological pest control for California avocados. Scientists there are exploring ways to control a different ambrosia beetle, he said, and bug-killing fungi may be useful for the new California pest.

More than 95 percent of Florida's commercial avocados grow in Miami-Dade County, although many Floridians have avocado trees in their yard.
The redbay ambrosia beetle feeds and reproduces on a very wide variety of host plants, native oaks, sycamores, and of course it is very detrimental to avocados.

Source:University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

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Three new ornamental dogwoods introduced

'Empire', one of the new dogwood varieties, is shown in the photo at 20 years old. 'Empire' features brilliant white bracts and exfoliated bark. Credit: Phillip Wadl

In the nursery and landscape industries, flowering dogwood (Cornus florida), kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa), and their hybrids are the most popular and economically significant members of the genus Cornus. The deciduous trees are highly valued for their spring display of pink, red, or white bracts, brilliant red fall foliage, and exfoliating bark. In the United States alone, retail and wholesale sales of dogwoods account for more than $30 million dollars annually.

In the past, flowering dogwoods were severely affected by dogwood anthracnose and powdery mildew. A program initiated more than 20 years ago at the University of Tennessee resulted in the release of 'Appalachian Spring', the first flowering dogwood cultivar with resistance to dogwood anthracnose, and four powdery mildew resistant cultivars. "We have found that Cornus kousa is more tolerant to anthracnose and powdery mildew than Cornus florida," explained Phillip Wadl, lead author of report published in HortScience. "Hybrids between these two species are generally more vigorous than typical plants of either parent species, and have resistance or tolerance to dogwood anthracnose and powdery mildew."

Wadl and colleagues Mark Windham, Richard Evans, and Robert Trigiano evaluated 400 seedlings of C. kousa for disease resistance and traits such as color, degree of overlap, size of bracts, tree form, and bark and leaf characteristics. The scientists selected three cultivars they named 'Empire', 'Pam's Mountain Bouquet' and 'Red Steeple' for development and eventual release. 'Empire' is a brilliant, white-bracted kousa dogwood that has a columnar form and exfoliating bark. 'Pam's Mountain Bouquet' (patent pending) is a kousa dogwood with a spreading form that features a prolific fused bract display. 'Red Steeple' is a kousa dogwood that features a columnar-shaped canopy with red foliage that fades to green with high temperature and white bracts that have a red tint along the margins.

The authors noted that dogwood anthracnose and powdery mildew were not observed on any of these trees. Analyses showed that 'Empire', 'Pam's Mountain Bouquet', and 'Red Steeple' are genetically distinct from the 26 cultivars and unnamed accessions of Cornus kousa that are maintained in the University of Tennessee's kousa dogwood collection.

The program has applied for a plant patent for 'Pam's Mountain Bouquet'. A limited quantity of budwood has been distributed to wholesale nurseries in Tennessee and Japan, and selected nurseries have been identified to propagate the cultivars.

Source: American Society for Horticultural Science

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Deforestation threatens species richness in streams

In the catchment area of the river Yangtzekiang in Southern China deforestation takes place in order to gain arable land and build tea plantations. Credit: © M. Kuemmerlen

With a population of 1.3 billion, China is under immense pressure to convert suitable areas into arable land in order to ensure a continued food supply for its people. Accordingly, China is among the top countries in the world in terms of the extent and intensity of land use change. As shown in a new study by a team of scientists led by Dr. Britta Schmalz (Kiel University), in cooperation with Dr. Mathias Kuemmerlen, LOEWE Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F) and Dr. Sonja Jähnig, Leibniz-Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), deforestation may change the water surface runoff conditions, leading to a negative impact on the occurrence of microorganisms in rivers and streams.

Studies in a sub-basin of China's longest river

As part of this study, funded by the German Research Association (DFG), the team examined an area of about 1,700 square kilometers located in the Yangtzekiang River watershed, namely a tributary of the Poyang lake in Southern China. By using an ecohydrological model, it was possible to show how different land use types and intensity levels can influence the hydrological regime. The five scenarios that were studied encompassed three different deforestation and two afforestation scenarios. A medium deforestation rate, in which 53 percent of the forest is preserved (of the original 70 percent) and the remainder is used as agricultural land and for tea plantations, most closely approximates the ongoing expansion rate of agricultural areas in this Chinese region. This scenario was used to model the potential impact of these changes on the distribution of 72 species of invertebrates, known as stream macroinvertebrates.

Considerable range decreases for freshwater biota

Species rich stream reaches could become less frequent as a consequence of deforestation. Especially in areas where land use changes are expected to be most severe, is where insect larvae, snails, worms and leeches might become endangered. "As an example, we highlighted the distribution range of the stonefly Topoperla sp., based on a moderate rate of deforestation. As a result of the projected changes, its distribution range would decrease to a mere 15 percent of its current range," explains Mathias Kuemmerlen, BiK-F. Topoperla sp., as many other invertebrate microorganisms, is regarded as a water quality indicator. This leads to the conclusion that deforestation has a negative impact on the overall water quality.

Conversion to arable land changes the hydrological regime

In the present study, the cause for the decrease in species diversity is the changing hydrological regime resulting from the conversion of forest to arable land. According to the study, increasing deforestation causes, increased surface runoff, especially during the rainy season, which later flows on into streams and rivers. "In forested areas, surface water drains more slowly and in lower quantities; a significant percentage of the rain water is absorbed by the soil and by trees. Higher runoff rates may only be seen in floodplain forests, if at all. If forests are cut down and converted into fields, the surface runoff increases." says Kuemmerlen. If areas are afforested, the opposite trend occurs, allowing soils to store larger amounts of water again.

Land use change should be sustainable

The research team points out that the study's results offer a scientific basis for a sustainable landscape planning and management which takes into account the water cycle of the respective regions. The ultimate goal should be to use the limited resource "land" in a way that it ensures food security. . However, there must be room for the necessary adaptation measures in the face of global climate change. To certain degree this is supported by the preservation of forests in their role as runoff regulators and water reservoirs. Further modeling studies are being carried out elsewhere, also in Germany, in order to continue improving our knowledge on similar processes.

Source: Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum

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Expect higher grass pollen, allergen exposure in coming century

A study provides the first evidence that pollen production is significantly stimulated by elevated carbon dioxide in a grass species as a result of climate change, which may have significant impact on human health. Credit: UMass Amherst

Results of a new study by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst strongly suggest that there will be notable increases in grass pollen production and allergen exposure up to 202 percent in the next 100 years, leading to a significant, worldwide impact on human health due to predicted rises in carbon dioxide (CO2) and ozone (O3) due to climate change.

While CO2 stimulates reproduction and growth in plants, ozone has a negative impact on plant growth, the authors point out. In this study in Timothy grass, researchers led by environmental health scientist Christine Rogers of the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences (SPHHS) determined the interactive effects of CO2 and ozone at projected higher levels on pollen production and concentrations of a Timothy grass pollen protein that is a major human allergen. Findings are reported in the current issue of PLOS ONE.

Rogers and plant science colleagues at UMass Amherst, with postdoctoral researcher and first author Jennifer Albertine, write, "The implications of increasing CO2 for human health are clear. Stimulation of grass pollen production by elevated CO2 will increase airborne concentrations and increase exposure and suffering in grass pollen-allergic individuals."

Rogers notes that, "This is the first evidence that pollen production is significantly stimulated by elevated carbon dioxide in a grass species and has worldwide implications due to the ubiquitous presence of grasses in all biomes and high prevalence of grass pollen allergy. These results are similar to our other studies performed in other highly allergenic taxa such as ragweed but with more extreme outcomes and wider impacts."

For these experiments, the researchers exposed grass plants in specially designed continuously stirred tank reactor chambers that allow researchers to expose plants to different atmospheric gas concentrations. They established four experimental atmospheric treatments:

• control, current atmosphere (30 ppb O3 and 400 ppm CO2)
• elevated O3, current CO2 (80 ppb O3, 400 ppm CO2)
• current O3, elevated CO2 (30 ppb O3, 800 ppm CO2)
• elevated O3, elevated CO2 (80 ppb O3, 800ppm CO2)

At the appropriate plant development stage, Albertine and colleagues bagged flowers, captured and measured pollen amounts and extracted the allergen protein Phl p 5 from pollen samples for measurement by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).

They found that elevated CO2 of 800 ppm, increased pollen production per flower by 53 percent while the different ozone levels had no effect on the amount of pollen produced. There was also a trend of increased number of plants flowering in response to elevated CO2 further increasing pollen production up to 200 percent. While elevated ozone did decrease the Phl p 5 allergen content in pollen, "the strong CO2-stimulation of pollen production suggests increased exposure to Timothy grass allergen overall," even if O3 projections are realized, the authors note.

They add that the health implications of increased ozone are "more complex" because higher levels of this greenhouse gas irritate mucous membranes and worsen the allergic airway response. Projected ozone increases "would likely elicit negative respiratory health effects independent of any health effects as a result of increased pollen by elevated CO2."

Source:  University of Massachusetts at Amherst

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Drugs in the environment affect plant growth

Lettuce plants (stock image). The potential for some chemicals to influence plants is becoming increasingly relevant, particularly as waste management systems are unable to remove many compounds from our sewage. Drugs for human use make their way into soil through a number of routes, including the use of sewage sludge as fertilizer and waste water for irrigation.
Credit: © riderfoot / Fotolia

By assessing the impacts of a range of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, the research has shown that the growth of edible crops can be affected by these chemicals -- even at the very low concentrations found in the environment.

Published in the Journal of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, the research focused its analysis on lettuce and radish plants and tested the effects of several commonly prescribed drugs, including diclofenac and ibuprofen. These drugs are among the most common and widely used group of pharmaceuticals, with more than 30 million prescribed across the world every day.

The potential for these chemicals to influence plants is becoming increasingly relevant, particularly as waste management systems are unable to remove many compounds from our sewage. Drugs for human use make their way into soil through a number of routes, including the use of sewage sludge as fertilizer and waste water for irrigation.

This study looked for a number of changes in edible plants, assessing factors such as water content, root and shoot length, overall size and how effectively the plants photosynthesised.

Each drug was shown to affect the plants in very specific ways, with marked differences between drugs that are closely related. For example, drugs from the fenamic acid class affected the growth of radish roots, whilst ibuprofen had a significant influence on the early root development of lettuce plants.

Dr Clare Redshaw, one of the scientists leading the project at the Medical School's European Centre for Environment & Human Health, said: "The huge amounts of pharmaceuticals we use ultimately end up in the environment, yet we know very little about their effects on flora and fauna. As populations age and generic medicines become readily available, pharmaceutical use will rise dramatically and it's essential we take steps towards limiting environmental contamination. We haven't considered the impact on human health in this study, but we need to improve our understanding quickly so that appropriate testing and controls can be put in place."

There have been growing concerns about the presence of pharmaceuticals in the environment, particularly as evidence emerges of the effects they can have on the development of animals and antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Yet their ability to affect plant growth is poorly understood.

This study marks an important step in an emerging research field attempting to assess how very low concentrations of drugs can affect the growth of crucial crop plants. It specifically considered the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs tolfenamic acid, meclofenamic acid, mefenamic acid, diclofenac, naproxen and ibuprofen.

Source: University of Exeter

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NASA study shows 13-year record of drying Amazon caused vegetation declines

Change in Amazon greenness from 2000 to 2012, measured as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Greener colors represent increased greenness, gray is no change, and yellow represents decreased greenness over the 13-year record.
Credit: Hilker et al.

13-year decline in vegetation in the eastern and southeastern Amazon has been linked to a decade-long rainfall decline in the region, a new NASA-funded study finds.

With global climate models projecting further drying over the Amazon in the future, the potential loss of vegetation and the associated loss of carbon storage may speed up global climate change.

The study was based on a new way to measure the "greenness" of plants and trees using satellites. While one NASA satellite measured up to 25 percent decline in rainfall across two thirds of the Amazon from 2000 to 2012, a set of different satellite instruments observed a 0.8 percent decline in greenness over the Amazon. The study was published on Nov. 11 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

While the decline of green vegetation was small, the area affected was not: 2.1 million square miles (5.4 million square kilometers), equivalent to over half the area of the continental United States. The Amazon's tropical forests are one of the largest sinks for atmospheric carbon dioxide on the planet.

"In other words, if greenness declines, this is an indication that less carbon will be removed from the atmosphere. The carbon storage of the Amazon basin is huge, and losing the ability to take up as much carbon could have global implications for climate change," said lead author Thomas Hilker, remote sensing specialist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon.

Plants absorb carbon dioxide as part of photosynthesis, the process by which green plants harvest sunlight. The healthier the plants, the greener the forest.

The Amazon basin stores an estimated 120 billion tons of Earth's carbon -- that's about 3 times more carbon than humans release into the atmosphere each year. If vegetation becomes less green, it would absorb less of that carbon dioxide. As a result, more of human emissions would remain in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect that contributes to global warming and alters Earth's climate.

Can't See the Forest for the Clouds

Teasing out changes in vegetation greenness over the Amazon is one of the most challenging problems for satellite remote sensors because there's no tougher place on Earth to observe the surface.

"The wet season has typically 85 to over 95 percent cloudiness from late morning to early afternoon, when NASA satellites make measurements," said co-author and remote sensing specialist Alexei Lyapustin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Even during the dry season the average cloudiness can be on the order of 50 to 70 percent." Add other atmospheric effects, soot and other particles released from fires during the dryer months, and it's very difficult for the satellite to pick up a clear signal of the surface, Lyapustin added.

Using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, instruments aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, Hilker, Lyapustin and their colleagues developed a new method to detect and remove clouds and other sources of error in the data. It looks at the same location on Earth's surface day after day over time and analysts pick out a pattern that is stable in contrast to the ever-changing clouds and aerosols. This knowledge of what the surface should look like from earlier observations is used later to detect and remove the atmospheric noise caused by clouds and aerosols. It's as if the signal from the ground were a song on a static-y radio station, and by listening to it over and over again for long enough, the new method detects and removes the static. By reducing those errors, they increased the accuracy of the greenness measurements over the Amazon.

"We're much more confident that this is a gap between clouds where we can measure greenness, but standard algorithms would call it a cloud," said Lyapustin. "We can get more data about the surface, and we can start seeing more subtle changes."

One of the subtle changes visible in the new data-set is how the Amazon's greenness corresponds to one of the long-known causes of rainfall or drought to the Amazon basin: changes in sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean, called the El Nino Southern Oscillation. During warmer and dryer El Nino years, the Amazon appears browner. During cooler La Nina wet years, the Amazon appears greener.

In the past, with greenness data, "it's been hard to tell an El Nino year from a non-El Nino year," said Lyapustin.

The effects of large and more frequent droughts may have lasting impacts that contribute to the long-term decline in vegetation, especially in an increasingly water stressed ecosystem. Many climate models project that in the future, El Nino and La Nina events will become more intense. They also project a northward shift of the main rain belt that provides 

moisture to the Amazon rainforest, which could further reduce rainfall to the region.

"Our observations are too short to link drying to human causes," Hilker said. "But if, as global circulation models suggest, drying continues, our results provide evidence that this could degrade the Amazonian forest canopies, which would have cascading effects on global carbon and climate dynamics."

Limits of Light vs. Water

The researchers found another subtlety in the Amazon's response to rainfall, which has led to new insights on a question under debate: Are seasonal changes in plant growth more limited by lack of sunlight or lack of water?

The Amazon basin, which consists of grasslands, evergreen forest, and deciduous forest where trees lose their leaves annually, has a wet season and a dry season. Past measurements from satellites have shown either no changes in greening between seasons or increased greening through the end of the dry season, attributed to fewer clouds blocking sunlight from reaching the ground. Measurements from a handful of field stations across the basin, however, indicated the vegetation greenness due to increased sunlight in the dry season would decline once the water in the soils was used up -- especially in drought years.

"Our study has helped confirm field-based results across large areas from space," Hilker said. "With our work, we have shown that there is a dry season greening but that under extended drought we get a decline in vegetation greenness."

During the dry season of an average year, the evergreen plants tap into groundwater, bask in the sunlight, and become greener.

"They're deeply rooted so they have plenty of water and they have lots of leaves," said Compton Tucker, a senior research scientist at Goddard who also contributed to the paper. "However, when you come up to one of these really dry periods, [like the drought of 2005 or 2010], then there isn't enough water to take advantage of all the light during the dry season." Water becomes the limiting factor whose effects can carry over from one year into the next if trees and vegetation die off.

Source:  NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

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Maize and bacteria: A one-two punch knocks copper out of stamp sand

Maize plants grown in stamp sand inoculated with bacteria, left, were considerably more robust than those grown in stamp sand alone, right. This research could lead to new remediation techniques for soils contaminated by copper and other heavy metals.
Credit: Image courtesy of Michigan Technological University

Scientists have known for years that together, bacteria and plants can remediate contaminated sites. Ramakrishna Wusirika, of Michigan Technological University, has determined that how you add bacteria to the mix can make a big difference.

He has also shed light on the biochemical pathways that allow plants and bacteria to clean up some of the worst soils on the planet while increasing their fertility.

Wusirika, an associate professor of biological sciences, first collected stamp sands near the village of Gay, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. For decades, copper mining companies crushed copper ore and dumped the remnants -- an estimated 500 million tons of stamp sand -- throughout the region. Almost nothing grows on these humanmade deserts, which are laced with high concentrations of copper, arsenic and other plant-unfriendly chemicals.

Then, Wusirika and his team planted maize in the stamp sand, incorporating bacteria in four different ways:
1. mixing it in the stamp sand before planting seed;
2. coating seed with bacteria and planting it;
3. germinating seeds and planting them in soil to which bacteria were added; and
4. the conventional method, immersing the roots of maize seedlings in bacteria and planting them in stamp sand.

After 45 days, the team uprooted the plants and measured their dry weight. All maize grown with bacteria was significantly more vigorous -- from two to five times larger -- than the maize grown in stamp sand alone. The biggest were those planted as seedlings or as germinated seeds.

However, when the researchers analyzed the dried maize, they made a surprising discovery: the seed-planted maize took up far more copper as a percentage of dry weight. In other words, the smaller plants pulled more copper, ounce per ounce, out of the stamp sands than the bigger ones.

That has implications for land managers trying to remediate contaminated sites, or even for farmers working with marginal soils, Wusirika said. The usual technique -- applying bacteria to seedlings' roots before transplanting -- works fine in the lab but would be impractical for large-scale projects. This could open the door to simple, practical remediation of copper-contaminated soils.

But the mere fact that all the plants grown with bacteria did so well also piqued his curiosity. "When we saw this, we wondered what the bacteria were doing to the soil," Wusirika said. "Based on our research, it looks like they are improving enzyme activity and increasing soil fertility," in part by freeing up phosphorus that had been locked in the rock.

The bacteria are also changing copper into a form that the plants can take up. "With bacteria, the exchangeable copper is increased three times," he said. "There's still a lot of copper that's not available, but it is moving in the right direction."

By analyzing metabolic compounds, the team was able to show that the bacteria enhance photosynthesis and help the plants make growth hormones. Bacteria also appear to affect the amount phenolics produced by the maize. Phenolics are antioxidants similar to those in grapes and red wine.
Compared to plants grown in normal soil without bacteria, plants grown in stamp sand alone showed a five-fold increase in phenolics. However, phenolics in plants grown in stamp sand with bacteria showed a lesser increase.

"Growing in stamp sand is very stressful for plants, and they respond by increasing their antioxidant production," Wusirika said. "Adding the metal-resistant bacteria enables the plants to cope with stress better, resulting in reduced levels of phenolics."

"There's still a lot to understand here," he added. "We'd like to do a study on stamp sands in the field, and we'd also like to work with plants besides maize. We think this work has applications in organic agriculture as well as remediation."

Source:  Michigan Technological University

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