The performance of Rumex nepalensis, an important medicinal herb, varies significantly among subalpine grasslands, shrublands and forest ecosystems in southwestern China. Plant–soil feedback is receiving increasing interest as driver influencing plant growth population dynamics. However, the effects soils from different on R. nepalensis remain poorly understood. A greenhouse experiment was carr...

The Hengduan Mountains region (HMR) on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, supports a high diversity of herbs, particularly in its subalpine to alpine ecosystems, due altitude and cool temperate climate. Current understanding formation such herbaceous richness is based chiefly molecular phylogenies; however, direct geological evidence lacking because herbs are rarely preserved as macroscopic foss...

Fungi are responsible for many of the processes that occur in natural ecosystems and largely determine forest ecosystem dynamics, such as ability trees to access limiting nutrients sequester carbon. Understanding predicting climate change impacts on fungal dynamics over large scales is key order gain further insights into effects global functioning related services. In this study, we use predic...

Particles were isolated from soil leachates from the genetic horizons of a subalpine Podzol from the central Cascades, Washington. Organic particles containing traces of aluminum, iron, silicon, and sulfur were predominant in the migrant material through the upper horizons (horizons A + B); their movement was arrested in the B2hir horizon. Below B2hir and at depth, phyllosilicates, quartz, and ...

More than 20 Synechococcus and Cyanobium isolates were obtained from central European subalpine lakes and sequenced for their 16S rRNA gene and part of the phycocyanin operon (cpc), specifically the intergenic spacer (IGS) between cpcB and cpcA, and corresponding flanking regions (cpcBA-IGS). Maximum-likelihood analyses revealed the existence of at least six to seven clusters of nonmarine picoc...

Wilf et al. (1998) analyzed leaf sizes in modern vegetation and concluded that leaf sizes accurately predict mean annual precipitation (MAP). However, we question the methods employed by these authors to derive leaf size; the modern samples are not comparable to one another or to fossil leaf assemblages, and the influence of temperature on leaf size is ignored. Data for some samples were derive...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Is the release of allelochemicals by the dominant tussock grass Festuca paniculata responsible for its dominance by inhibiting growth of neighbour grasses in subalpine grasslands? As such a community is also structured by mowing practices, what could be the impact of mowing on allelopathy? METHODS A design was used that isolated allelopathy from resource competition by sep...