Long-term exposure to low concentrations of toxic substances can cause several adverse consequences ranging from molecular to morphological. Sublethal doses may also lead to increased tolerance in the offspring of surviving individuals. One of the consequences of such stress is deviations from the ideal body symmetry during development, reflected by increased levels of fluctuating asymmetry (FA).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeonicotinoids form a class of insecticides that are chemically related to nicotine and are widely used in crop protection. They have adverse effects on the neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). One of the neonicotinoids approved for control of the invasive pest Drosophila suzukii is acetamiprid.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe complex includes several dozen closely related European mountain pines. The discrimination of specific taxa within this complex is still extremely challenging, although numerous methodologies have been used to solve this problem, including morphological and anatomical analyses, cytological studies, allozyme variability, and DNA barcoding, etc. In this study, we used the seed total protein (STP) patterns to search for taxonomically interesting differences among three closely-related pine taxa from the complex and five more distant species from the Pinaceae family.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe fruit fly is a model species used for a wide range of studies. Contamination of cultures with bacterial infection is common and is readily eradicated by antibiotics. Neomycin antibiotics can cause stress to 's larvae and imagoes, which may affect the interpretation of the results of research using culture from neomycin-based medium.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlant-derived substances, because of high biological activity, arouse interest of many scientists. Thus, plant extracts and pure substances are intensively studied on various insects as potential insecticides. In such studies, D.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDNA barcoding is a standard and efficient method, frequently used for identification, discrimination and discovery of new species. Although this approach is very useful for classifying the world's biodiversity, little is known about its usefulness in barcoding at lower taxonomic level and its discrimination rate for closely related species, like conifers. In this study, we compared the genetic variation of eight chloroplast DNA barcode regions (matK, rbcL, trnH-psbA, trnL-trnF, rpl20-rps18, trnV, ycf1, ycf2) in 17 conifers - three closely related pines from Pinus mugo complex and 14 more distant conifers representing two genera and four sections of the Pinaceae family.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Scots pine is often used in the biomonitoring of forests. Studies on the chemical composition plus variability of its needles morphological structure allow for an assessment of the state of environmental pollution. However, in their natural populations, the response of individual trees to stress differs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlycoalkaloids are secondary metabolites commonly found in Solanaceae plants. They have anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and insecticidal activities. In the present study we examine the effects of potato and tomato leaf extracts and their main components, the glycoalkaloids α-solanine, α-chaconine and α-tomatine, on development and reproduction of Drosophila melanogaster wild-type flies at different stages.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHeadspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) coupled to GC/MS analysis was used to identify the constituents of pine-needle volatiles differentiating three closely-related pine species within the Pinus mugo complex, i.e., P.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe levels of variation and genetic diversity of offspring of randomly selected old mother trees in four marginal populations of the Pinus cembra in the Tatra Mountains were analyzed. Twenty-four isozyme loci were analyzed (nine of them were monomorphic). The analyzed offspring of Swiss stone pine showed highly diverse polymorphism at the levels of both provenances and individual families (the offspring of one mother tree).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLiving or formerly living organisms are being used to obtain information on the quality of the general health status of our environment by bioindication and biomonitoring methods for many decades. Thus, different roads toward this common scientific goal were developed by a lot of different international research groups. Global cooperation in between various scientific teams throughout the world has produced common ideas, scientific definitions, and highly innovative results of this extremely attractive working field.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Sci Pollut Res Int
February 2014
The impact of industrial heavy metal pollution on Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) and black pine (Pinus nigra Arn.) populations was investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis isoenzymatic and cytogenetic study has shown significant differences in genetic composition between two groups of Pinus sylvestris trees: tolerant and sensitive to heavy metal pollution. Total and mean numbers of alleles and genotypes per locus were higher in the pollution-sensitive group of trees, but heterozygosity (Ho) was lower in this group. Fixation index (F) indicates that trees tolerant for pollution were in the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, while the sensitive group had a significant excess of homozygosity.
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