Woody hemiepiphytic species (Hs) are important components of tropical rain forests, and they have been hypothesized to differ from non-hemiepiphytic tree species (NHs) in adaptations relating to water relations and carbon economy; but few studies have been conducted comparing ecophysiological traits between the two growth forms especially in an evolutionary context. Using common-garden plants o...

Leptin is a hormone that affects the regulation of body weight, energy expenditure, fat metabolism, food intake, and appetite. In this study, we cloned the jlLEP-A1 and jlLEP-A2 genes in Jian carp (Cyprinus carpio var. Jian) and performed an association analysis between identified polymorphisms and growth traits. Three polymorphisms in exons of jlLEP-A1 (A1-T113C) and jlLEP-A2 (A2-G415A and A2-...

Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata (Lamb.) Hook) is one of the major commercial conifer species in China. The present study concentrated on the assessment of growth, wood property traits, and strobili number in a 12-year grafted clone test of 62 Chinese fir breeding parents, aiming to describe the variation and correlations between these traits and to identify parent clones with the highest p...

Many species of harmful algae transition between a motile, vegetative stage in the water column and a non-motile, resting stage in the sediments. Physiological and behavioral traits expressed during benthic-pelagic transition potentially regulate the timing, location and persistence of blooms. The roles of key physiological and behavioral traits involved in resting cell emergence and bloom form...

Adaptive evolution progresses as a series of steps toward a multidimensional phenotypic optimum, and organismal or environmental complexity determines the number of phenotypic dimensions, or traits, under selection. Populations evolving in complex environments may experience costs of complexity such that improvement in one or more traits is impeded by selection on others. We compared the fitnes...

The incidence of Swiss needle cast on Douglas-fir has increased significantly in recent years on the Oregon coast. Genetic variation in symptoms of disease infection, as measured by foliage traits, was assessed in two series of progeny trials to determine whether these “crown health” indicators were under genetic control and correlated with tolerance; tolerance being continued growth in the pre...

1716 Abstract: Genetic variation in drought hardiness traits and their genetic correlations with growth potential and recovery traits were investigated in 39 full-sib families of coastal Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) from southwestern British Columbia. Seedlings of these families were grown in raised nursery beds and subjected to three moisture regimes each i...

The objective of this study was to determine the appropriate non-linear function describing growth of some testicular traits (testicular length, testicular diameter, scrotal circumference and scrotal length) in Norduz male lambs. Testicular characteristics at 90, 110, 130, 150, 170, and 190 days of age for all the lambs were measured. Four growth (Monomolecular, Logistic, Gompertz, and Richard’...

The insulin-like growth factor, IGF-I, plays an important role in the development of growth and reproductive traits. Single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis was used to detect and analyze polymorphisms and expression profiles of the IGF-I gene and its association with growth and reproductive traits of Jinghai yellow chickens. A point mutation g.295T>C was detected in the IGF-I gene wit...

BACKGROUND Growth and meat production traits are significant economic traits in sheep. The aim of the study is to identify candidate genes affecting growth and meat production traits at genome level with high throughput single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) genotyping technologies. METHODOLOGY AND RESULTS Using Illumina OvineSNP50 BeadChip, we performed a GWA study in 329 purebred sheep for 1...