With frequent fluctuations in global climate, plants are exposed to co-occurring drought and pathogen infection and this combination adversely affects plant survival. In the past, some studies indicated that morpho-physiological responses of plants to the combined stress are different from the individual stressed plants. However, interaction of drought stressed plants with pathogen has not been...

BACKGROUND In 2011, a new orthobunyavirus, named the Schmallenberg virus (SBV), was discovered in Europe. Like the related Shamonda virus, SBV is an arbovirus (arthropod-borne virus). After its discovery, the virus was detected in a wide area in north-western Europe, an unexpected finding in a territory where climatic conditions would not seem ideal for arbovirus transmission. This sudden expan...

The C4 photosynthetic pathway uses water more efficiently than the C3 type, yet biogeographical analyses show a decline in C4 species relative to C3 species with decreasing rainfall. To investigate this paradox, the hypothesis that the C4 advantage over C3 photosynthesis is diminished by drought was tested, and the underlying stomatal and metabolic mechanisms of this response determined. The ef...

Knowledge of the ecological requirements determining tree species distributions is a precondition for sustainable forest management. At present, the abiotic requirements and the relative importance of the different abiotic factors are still unclear for many temperate tree species. We therefore investigated the relative importance of climatic and edaphic factors for the abundance of 12 temperate...

Climatic niche models based on native-range climatic data accurately predict invasive-range distributions in the majority of species. However, these models often do not account for ecological and evolutionary processes, which limit the ability to predict future range expansion. This might be particularly problematic in the case of invaders that occupy environments that would be considered margi...

Drought entails important effects on tree physiology, which may result in short- to long-term radial growth decreases. While the majority of studies have focused on annual drought-related variability of growth, relatively little is known about sustained growth decreases following drought years. We apply a statistical framework to identify climatic factors that induce abrupt growth decreases and...

Drought is the major abiotic stress to rice grain yield under unpredictable changing climatic scenarios. The widely grown, high yielding but drought susceptible rice varieties need to be improved by unraveling the genomic regions controlling traits enhancing drought tolerance. The present study was conducted with the aim to identify quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for grain yield and root develo...

(2014) Larger investment in roots in southern range-edge populations of Scots pine is associated with increased growth and seedling resistance to extreme drought in response to simulated climate change, Environmental and Experimental Botany, 105, pp. 32-38. Title: Larger investment in roots in southern range-edge populations of Scots pine is associated with increased growth and seedling resista...

76 JOURNAL OF NATURAL RESOURCES & LIFE SCIENCES EDUCATION VOLUME 36 2007 A working knowledge of climatic patterns and processes is an important tool for range managers in the southwestern United States. High variability in temperature and precipitation patterns require that climatic conditions be considered when implementing best management practices. It is widely accepted that the earth’s clim...

The Dustbowl Era drought in the 1930s was the principal Midwest drought of the twentieth century, occurring primarily in late spring–summer [April–August (AMJJA)] when 70% of annual rainfall normally occurred. Another major Midwest drought occurred in the 1950s but primarily in fall–early winter [September–December (SOND)] when normal rainfall was 1/2 as much. Optimized canonical correlation an...