Endophytic fungi are known to be commonly associated with herbaceous plants, however, there are few studies focusing on their occurrence and distribution in plant roots from ecosystems with different land uses. To explore the phylogenetic diversity and community structure of Sebacinales endophytes from agricultural and grassland habitats under different land uses, we analysed the roots of herba...

As Earth’s atmosphere accumulates carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases, Earth’s climate is expected to warm and precipitation patterns will likely change. The manner in which terrestrial ecosystems respond to climatic changes will in turn affect the rate of climate change. Here we describe responses of an old-field herbaceous community to a factorial combination of four levels of war...

Trait-based ecology predicts that evolution in high-resource agricultural environments should select for suites of traits that enable fast resource acquisition and rapid canopy closure. However, crop breeding targets specific agronomic attributes rather than broad trait syndromes. Breeding for specific traits, together with evolution in high-resource environments, might lead to reduced phenotyp...

Bamboos, unlike other grasses, mostly live in association with forests. Two different types of bamboos are recognized: the thick, hard “woody” bamboos, reaching up to 40 m tall, and the softer-stemmed “herbaceous” bamboos, rarely reaching more than 1 m tall. Worldwide, over 1,650 bamboo species are known, and although many people think of bamboos as Asian, 530 species (about one-third of total ...

Large-scale patterns of species richness and the underlying mechanisms regulating these patterns have long been the central issues in biogeography and macroecology. Phylogenetic community structure is a result of combined effects of contemporary ecological interactions, environmental filtering, and evolutionary history, and it links community ecology with biogeography and trait evolution. The Q...

Most herbaceous plants employ thermodynamically active mechanisms of phloem loading, whereas in many trees, the mechanism is passive, by diffusion. Considering the different water transport characteristics of herbs and trees, we hypothesized that water relations play a role in the adoption of phloem loading strategies. We measured whole-plant hydraulic conductance (K(p)), osmolality, concentrat...

Natural selection on photosynthetic performance is a primary factor determining leaf phenotypes. The complex CO2 diffusion path from substomatal cavities to the chloroplasts - the mesophyll conductance (g(m)) - limits photosynthetic rate in many species and hence shapes variation in leaf morphology and anatomy. Among sclerophyllous and succulent taxa, structural investment in leaves, measured a...

Downed logs are known to increase species diversity in many forest ecosystems by increasing resource and structural complexity and by altering fire behavior in fire-prone ecosystems. In a frequently burned oak savanna in central Missouri, combustion of downed logs formed patches that have remained free of herbaceous vegetation for more than 3 years. To assess the influence of ‘‘log burnouts’’ o...