An undisturbed natural reserve area iocated in a tropical montane rain forest at about 1800 m altitude in Sri Lanka served as a study site to investigate and assess the natural background concentration levels of As, Cd, Co, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn in plants representing different taxonomic groups (divisions) in the plant kingdom. The plants selected were: the lichen,Usnea barbata (old man's beard);Po...

Stanhopea tigrina is a Mexican endemic orchid reported as a threatened species. The naturally occurring microorganisms present in S. tigrina are unknown. In this work, we analyzed the diversity of endophytic and epiphytic culturable fungi in S. tigrina according to morphological and molecular identification. Using this combined approach, in this study we retrieved a total of 634 fungal isolates...

Epiphytic lichens were surveyed in the “Bosco Siro Negri” Integral Nature State Reserve (province of Pavia, Lombardy, NW Italy), which hosts a well-preserved fragment oak-elm floodplain forest (Natura 2000 Habitat 91F0). The core woodland hosted only four species on tree boles, i.e. Lepraria finkii plus specialists Coenogonium pineti, Diarthonis spadicea, and Opegrapha vermicellifera. An additi...

Hemiepiphytic Ficus species (Hs) possess traits of more conservative water use compared with non-hemiepiphytic Ficus species (NHs) even during their terrestrial growth phase, which may result in significant differences in photosynthetic light use between these two growth forms. Stem hydraulic conductivity, leaf gas exchange and chlorophyll fluorescence were compared in adult trees of five Hs an...

We propose a graphical language that enables the specification of assistance systems for a given application, by means of a set of rules. We implemented it through the SEPIA environment, mainly composed of an assistance editor aimed at assistance designers, and a generic assistance engine able to execute the specified assistance for the target-application end-users, without a need to modify thi...

Different species of aquatic macrophytes have strongly contrasting effects on the oxygen dynamics of the waters they inhabit. We conducted laboratory experiments to test the hypothesis that macroinvertebrates inhabiting stands of the floating-leaved water-chestnut (Trapa natans), which causes severe hypoxia, are more resistant to low oxygen concentrations (0.5–1 mg L−1) than those that inhabit ...

The atmosphere is an important pathway for microplastic (MP) transport; however, observations are limited, as traditional sampling methods generally labor-intensive. Biological monitors (biomonitors) have been widely used a simple alternative to determine the abundance or presence of anthropogenic pollutants. Here, we compared effectiveness co-located lichen and moss species biomonitors atmosph...