A combination of solid-phase-extraction (SPE) and reversed-phase preparative high-performance liquid chromatography (prep-HPLC) of the methanolic extract of the aerial parts of Artemisia splendens (common name: “Asia Minor Wormwood”), an endemic Iranian species, afforded Zand E-melilotosides (1 and 2), Zand E-4-methoxy-melilotosides (3 and 4), and a new dimer, bis-ortho-Z-melilotoside (5, named...

Global nitrogen (N) deposition and climate change have been identified as two of the most important causes of current plant diversity loss. However, temporal patterns of species turnover underlying diversity changes in response to changing precipitation regimes and atmospheric N deposition have received inadequate attention. We carried out a manipulation experiment in a steppe and an old-field ...

Seed predation is an important biotic filter that can influence abundance and spatial distributions of native species through differential effects on recruitment. This filter may also influence the relative abundance of nonnative plants within habitats and the communities' susceptibility to invasion via differences in granivore identity, abundance, and food preference. We evaluated the effect o...

Land use change and grassland degradation are two of the most critical problems ubiquitously found in arid and semi-arid areas in Northern China. Energy fluxes, including net radiation (Rn), latent heat flux (LE), sensible heat flux (H) and soil heat flux (G), were examined over an entire year (December 2005 to November 2006) in different steppe ecosystems – the steppe and cropland in Duolun an...

Nature reserves are an important component of the strategy to halt biodiversity loss caused by habitat fragmentation and loss, climate change and other anthropogenic factors. In the past decades, 184 nature reserves were designed for biodiversity conservation in Inner Mongolia. However, no studies have quantified the general condition of these reserves. In this paper, we summarized the history,...

Artemisia species, widespread in nature, are frequently utilized for the treatment of diseases such as malaria, hepatitis, cancer, inflammation, and infections by fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Furthermore, some Artemisia constituents were found to be potential insecticides and allelopathic chemicals. This genus is receiving growing attention presumably due to: (i) the diversified biology and ch...

Essential oil from aerial parts of Artemisia vulgaris L., was obtained by hydro-distillation to produce oil in the yield of 0.25% (w/w). The oil was analyzed by capillary gas chromatography, using mass spectrometric detection. The amount of the samples injected by nano scale included were 1.0 nL (diluted 1.0 μL of sample in 1000 ml of n-pentane, v/v). Twenty three bioactive and flavour molecule...

In this study Artemisia amygdalina a critically endangered medicinal plant endemic to Kashmir Himalayas was grown under in vitro conditions. ISSR markers were used to study the somaclonal variation at the genetic level. Two ISSR-primers (CAC)3 GC and (ACTG)5 were used, two additional DNA bands (0.15kb and 0.2kb) were observed respectively in tissue cultured Artemisia amygdalina. Direct regenera...

Western North American sagebrush shrublands and steppe face accelerating risks from fire-driven feedback loops that transition these ecosystems into self-reinforcing states dominated by invasive annual grasses. In response, conservation decision-making is increasingly done through the lens of resilience to fire grass invasion resistance. Operationalizing resistance concepts requires place-based...

By comparing the sex-specifically inheritedX chromosome to the autosomes in ancient genetic samples,we (1) studied sex-specific admixture for two prehistoric migrations. For each migration we used several admixture estimation procedures—including ADMIXTURE model-based clustering (2)—to compare X-chromosomal and autosomal ancestry in contemporaneous Central Europeans and we interpreted greater a...