It is well known that direct effects of seed predators or dispersers can have strong effects on seedling establishment. However, we have limited knowledge about the indirect species interactions between seeds of different species that are mediated by shared seed predators and/or dispersers and their consequences for plant demography and diversity. Because scatter-hoarding rodents as seed disper...

The predator-avoidance hypothesis states that once released from the parent plant, myrmecochorous seeds are rapidly taken by ants to their nests, where they are protected from predators. Previous studies conducted to test this hypothesis have frequently neglected two major aspects necessary for its verification: 1) the influence of processes acting after the seed release and 2) the spatial even...

Weed seeds may maintain their viability when passing through the digestive tract of cattle and can be therefore dispersed by animal movement or the application of manure. Whether different cattle types of the same species can cause differential weed seed fate is largely unknown to us particularly under non-grazed systems similar to Holstein-Friesian dairy farming. We investigated the effect on ...

Domestication has resulted in selection upon seed traits found in wild populations, yet crop-wild hybrids retain some aspects of both parental phenotypes. Seed fates of germination, dormancy, and mortality can influence the success of crop allele introgression in crop-wild hybrid zones, especially if crop alleles or crop-imparted seed coverings result in out-of-season germination. We performed ...

This Memorandum discusses the fate of variola virus stocks which have been kept in two WHO Collaborating Centres, as well as cloned DNA fragments of variola virus genome, smallpox vaccine, and seed vaccinia virus for the production of this vaccine. General and specific recommendations are given concerning destruction of variola virus; storage, distribution and handling of cloned DNA fragments o...