The carob tree, which is a member of the Fabaceae family, an agrosilvopastoral tree whose pre-Mediterranean tropical origin appears well established on basis genetic, fossil and physiological data. C. siliqua has recently been successfully introduced from Mediterranean basin to other parts world that have climate. In terms its domestication, there paleobotanical, philological, ecological histor...

Tree shelters were used in an ecological restoration effort in 1999 and 2000 to test the decrease in transplant shock and increase in growth and survival of two selected Mediterranean species, carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua L.) and cork oak (Quercus suber L.), planted in a dry degraded region. At plantation, two treatments were established, one planted with 60 cm tall TUBEX MinitubesTM and the o...

We present improved techniques for finding homologous regions in DNA and protein sequences. Our approach focuses on the core regions of a local pairwise alignment; we suggest new ways to characterize these regions that allow marked improvements in both specificity and sensitivity over existing techniques for sequence alignment. For any such characterization, which we call a vector seed, we give...

Seeds of Mimosa bimucronata are heavily infested (pre-dispersal predation) by the bruchid beetle Acanthoscelides schrankiae in Brazil. In this study, firstly we set up experiments to assess seed germination under seven and six different light and temperature regimes, respectively, and then we evaluated the ability of seeds to germinate after predation. We tested the hypothesis that the non-pred...

We carried out a seed germination experiment using two thrush species in captivity. We compared the number of germinated seeds and germination time of control seeds (manually removed from fruits) and ingested seeds of Miconia prasina by two bird species, Turdus albicollis and T. amaurochalinus, and also compared retention times of seeds by both thrush species. Control seeds germinated more freq...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Differences in dormancy and germination requirements have been documented in heteromorphic seeds of many species, but it is unknown how this difference contributes to maintenance and regeneration of populations. The primary aim of this study was to compare the seed bank dynamics, including dormancy cycling, of the two seed morphs (black and brown) of the cold desert halophyt...

Seed heteromorphism observed in many halophytes is an adaptive phenomenon toward high salinity. However, the relationship between heteromorphic seed germination and germination-related hormones under salt stress remains elusive. To gain an insight into this relationship, the roles of gibberellins (GAs) and abscisic acid (ABA) in regulating germination of Suaeda salsa dimorphic brown and black s...