The role of species and functional group diversity of primary producers for decomposers and decomposition processes is little understood. We made use of the "Jena Biodiversity Experiment" and tested the hypothesis that increasing plant species (1, 4, and 16 species) and functional group diversity (1, 2, 3, and 4 groups) beneficially affects decomposer density and activity and therefore the deco...

the current study aims to ordinate ecological groups in the wetlands of northern and eastern slopes of the sabalan mountain and investigate their relationship with environmental variables. the location of wetlands was found using field surveys and satellite images. in total, 32 wetland sites were identified for the sampling purpose. 320 sample plots (relevé) were selected using the systematic-r...

Phytoplasmas are insect-vectored bacteria that cause disease in a wide range of plant species. The increasing availability of molecular DNA analyses, expertise and additional methods in recent years has led to a proliferation of discoveries of phytoplasma-plant host associations and in the numbers of taxonomic groupings for phytoplasmas. The widespread use of common names based on the diseases ...

Medicinal plants play a key role in human health care. Pterocarpus marsupium is one of the plants used in treatment of diabetes mellitus and the present study was aimed to assess hepatoprotective effect of the plant against CCl(4) induced hepatotoxicity. Wistar albino rats were divided into four groups. Group I was normal control group; Group II, the hepatotoxic group was given CCl(4) (2ml/kg b...

One in five of the world's plant species is threatened with extinction according to the 2010 first global analysis of extinction risk. Tilman et al. predicted a massive ecological change to terrestrial plants within the next 50-100 y, accompanied by an increase in the number of global plant species facing extinction [Tilman D, et al. (2001) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 98(10):5433-5440]. Most of the ...

1 Classifying species by shared functional characteristics is important if common functional response groups are to be identified among different taxa. 2 We investigated plant traits that determine the response of forest plant species to land use changes using literature data. Sources from eight European countries and four North-eastern American states, comprising 20 field studies yielded infor...

In this study, the relation of plasma levels of lathosterol (an indicator of whole body cholesterol synthesis) and plant sterols (indicator of cholesterol absorption) with age, sex, weight, height, plasma lipids, and lipoproteins, and with apolipoprotein (apo) E phenotype, was investigated in a group of 160 nuclear families consisting of twins living with their parents. Lathosterol was higher i...