Floral herbivory may have deleterious effects on the reproductive success of flowering plants. However, plants may evolve floral traits that allow them to defend against herbivory in particular conditions. A bumblebee-pollinated subalpine herb, Pedicularis rex (Orobanchaceae), endemic to southwest China, has cup-like bracts that fill with rainwater, which submerges its corolla tubes. We hypothe...

Soil drainage and phosphorus (P) availability are considered indicators of management intensity in pasture-based agriculture supporting livestock. However, microbial adaptations to P-availability according soil class rarely investigated. We hypothesized that well-drained grasslands with high will sustain a distinctive microbiota when compared poorly-drained low-P availability. The relationship ...

An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of different harvest draining techniques of fish ponds on water quality and fish growth in subsequent culture cycles. Fifteen tilapia ponds of 200 m2 were harvested using five different harvest draining techniques. After harvest, these ponds were stocked with Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) at 2 fish m-2. Fish with an initial size of 11 to 1...

A 1977 tundra fire burned a hillslope where prefire soils and vegetation ranged from poorly drained moist tussock-shrub tundra on the lower slopes to well-drained dwarf shrub tundra on the back slope and very poorly drained wet sedge meadow on the flat crest. We sampled the vegetation on this slope before the fire and at 8 sites following the fire at irregular intervals from 1 yr to 25 yr. Duri...

The restoration of peatlands is an important strategy to counteract subsidence and loss of biodiversity. However, responses of important microbial soil processes are poorly understood. We assessed functioning, diversity and spatial organization of methanotrophic communities in drained and rewetted peat meadows with different water table management and agricultural practice. Results show that th...

Responses of barnyardgrass (Echinochloa crus-galli var. crux-galli) to water drained, saturated, or flooded soils were assessed in relation to the aerenchyma formation in crown roots. Plant height, fresh weight of shoots, the number of crown roots, and the fresh weight of roots of 4-week-old barnyardgrass increased in the following order: saturated>drained>flooded. By contrast, aerenchyma was r...