Woody-herbaceous-livestock species interactions have attracted a great deal of research attention due to global land cover changes and increasing livestock production systems around the world. It has been well recognized that many local and regional factors, physical and biological, influence the interaction between woody and herbaceous species. While impacting the dynamics, and tipping the bal...

BACKGROUND Atakora mountains in Benin are a unique but fragile ecosystem, harboring many endemic plant species. The ecosystem is undergoing degradation, and the woody vegetation is dramatically declining due to high anthropogenic actions and recurrent drought. This study aimed to (i) assess the diversity of threatened woody species and (ii) identify their potential substitutes in the three regi...

Woody encroachment threatens prairie ecosystems globally, and thus understanding the mechanisms that facilitate woody encroachment is of critical importance. Coastal tallgrass prairies along the Gulf Coast of the US are currently threatened by the spread of several species of woody plants. We studied a coastal tallgrass prairie in Texas, USA, to determine if existing woody structure increased t...

We investigated the impacts of Microstegium vimineum (Trin.) A. Camus, on the density and diversity of native woody species regeneration following canopy disturbance in a productive mixed-hardwood forest in southwest Tennessee. Field observations of M. vimineum in the forest understory preand post-canopy disturbance led us to believe the species might have an impact on post-disturbance regenera...

/ Land condition trend analysis (LCTA) is a long-term monitoring program used on military training lands to identify ecological changes that result from training and management activities. We initiated LCTA at the Kansas Army National Guard Training Facility (KANGTF) in Saline County, Kansas, in March 1998. This paper evaluates the LCTA methodology for birds by comparing LCTA results with a mod...

A well-timed phenology is essential for plant growth and reproduction, but species-specific phenological strategies are still poorly understood. Here, we use a common garden approach to compare biannual leaf-out data for 495 woody species growing outdoors in Munich, 90% of them not native to that climate regime. For three species, data were augmented by herbarium dates for 140-year-long time se...

In this paper, five species of the agaric fungi viz., Entoloma griseoluridum, E. niphoides, Limacella ochraceolutea, Mycena clavicularisand M. acicula belonging to family Amanitaceae, Entolomataceae and Mycenaceae, are reported for the first time for Iranian mycobiota. Limacella ochraceolutea is the first species of fungi belonging to genus Limacella in Iran.Because L. ochraceolutea is a rare s...