The Himalayan endemic alpine genus Roscoea, like other members of ginger family, exhibits the combination of floral traits that would fit pollination by long distant foragers such as bees, birds or flies. We studied the pollination biology of Roscoea alpina, observed potential floral visitors and determined their foraging behaviour, visitation frequency and pollination efficiency, to seek evide...

We investigated the degradation pathways and kinetics of 2,4-dichlorophenol (DCP) by an endemic soil fungus, Mortierella sp. (Zygomycetes). Mortierella sp. degraded 32% of added DCP (final concentration, 250 microM) within 1 h. We identified four aromatic metabolites and found two DCP degradation pathways (a hydroxylation pathway and a dechlorination pathway). This is the first report of a dech...

Mountain uplifts have generated new ecologic opportunities for plants, and triggered evolutionary processes, favouring an increase on the speciation rate in all continents. Moreover, mountain ranges may act as corridors or barriers for plant lineages and populations. In South America a high rate of diversification has been linked to Andean orogeny during Pliocene/Miocene. More recently, Pleisto...

The fungus Mortierella elongata FMR23-6 harbors an endobacterium inside its mycelium. Attempts to isolate the endobacterium from the fungus were not yet successful, but a highly purified bacterial fraction was prepared. Here, we report the draft genome sequence of the endobacterium.

In a continuation of studies started by de Ruiter et al. (1993), all known species of the Mortierella isabellina-group (Micromucor/Umbelopsis clade of O'Donnell et al. 2001) and a few other Mucorales and species of Mortierella were investigated by RFLP (including ITS1, 5.8S, ITS2 and the 5' end of the large subunit rDNA gene) and ITS1 sequence analyses. This monophyletic group is unrelated to M...