The factors responsible for maintaining diverse groundcover plant communities of high conservation value in frequently burned wet pine savannas are poorly understood. While most management involves manipulating extrinsic factors important in maintaining species diversity (e.g., fire regimes), most ecological theory (e.g., niche theory and neutral theory) examines how traits exhibited by the spe...

the distribution of phytophthora parsiana a high-temperature tolerant newly described species was studied in southern iran and examined its host range in woody perennial plant species in greenhouse condition under high inoculum potential. among different plant species examined, almonds were highly susceptible by different isolates. from 24 woody plants inoculated, the disease severity in descen...

Woody encroachment is a widespread and acute phenomenon affecting grasslands and savannas worldwide. We performed a meta-analysis of 29 studies from 13 different grassland/savanna communities in North America to determine the consequences of woody encroachment on plant species richness. In all 13 communities, species richness declined with woody plant encroachment (average decline = 45%). Speci...

Land-use changes threaten biodiversity and ecosystem services. Some of the last remaining forest fragments in Ethiopia, and the world’s only habitats that retain genetically diverse wild Arabica coffee populations, have experienced rapid recent conversion to coffee farms, plantations and agricultural fields. We examined patterns of remnant woody plant diversity in the remaining forests, and ass...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The family Balsaminaceae is essentially herbaceous, except for some woodier species that can be described as 'woody' herbs or small shrubs. The family is nested within the so-called balsaminoid clade of Ericales, including the exclusively woody families Tetrameristaceae and Marcgraviaceae, which is sister to the remaining families of the predominantly woody order. A molecula...

The decomposition rates and mass of fine (< 10-cm-diameter) and coarse (> 10-cm-diameter) woody detritus were measured in the dry tropical forests of the northeastern Yucatan Peninsula. The smallest mass of woody detritus was found in undisturbed stands: fine fractions averaged 4.7 Mg ha-' and coarse fractions ranged between 13 and 38 Mg ha-I. The largest mass of fine woody detritus (32.2 Mg h ...

This review of the human dimensions of invasive woody plants investigates the history and purposes of introductions, people’s perceptions of alien and invasive species and the impact of invasives on human activities. A perusal of the literature indicates that all aspects of the human dimensions of alien woody plants are highly varied and some are still poorly documented. Changes in the usage of...

In this research, biodiversity was investigated in the species diversity level. The objective of this research was to study of Norway Maple (Acer platanoides L.) dispersion and biodiversity of associated woody species in the Shafaroud forests, Gilan (IRAN). In this regard, a 0.5 ha lozenge sample plot was selected with considering presence of Norway Maple in each site. In each plot, geographic ...

Species turnover is fundamental for understanding the mechanisms that influence large-scale species richness patterns. However, few studies have described and interpreted large-scale spatial variation in plant species turnover, and the causes of this variation remain elusive. In addition, the determinants of species turnover depend on the dispersal ability of growth forms. In this study, we exp...

A large number of small-sized samples invariably shows that woody species are absent from forest soil seed banks, leading to a large discrepancy with the seedling bank on the forest floor. We ask: 1) Does this conventional sampling strategy limit the detection of seeds of woody species? 2) Are large sample areas and sample sizes needed for higher recovery of seeds of woody species? We collected...