Responses of gas-exchange rates and water relations to annual fluctuations of weather in three species of urban street trees.

The frequency of extreme weather has been rising in recent years. A 3-year study of street trees was undertaken in Tokyo to determine whether: (i) street trees suffer from severe water stress in unusually hot summer; (ii) species respond differently to such climatic fluctuations; and (iii) street trees are also affected by nitrogen (N) deficiency, photoinhibition and aerosol pollution. During the study period (2010-12), midsummers of 2010 and 2012 were unusually hot (2.

Psychrobacter vallis sp. nov. and Psychrobacter aquaticus sp. nov., from Antarctica.

Twelve strains of psychrophilic bacteria were isolated from cyanobacterial mat samples collected from various water bodies in the McMurdo Dry Valley region of Antarctica. All the isolates were Gram-negative, non-motile, coccoid, psychrophilic, halotolerant bacteria and had C(16 : 1)omega7c, C(17 : 1)omega8c and C(18 : 1)omega9c as the major fatty acids, ubiquinone-8 as the respiratory quinone and DNA G+C content of 41-46 mol%. Based on these characteristics, the isolates were assigned to the genus Psychrobacter.

Psychrophilic pseudomonads from Antarctica: Pseudomonas antarctica sp. nov., Pseudomonas meridiana sp. nov. and Pseudomonas proteolytica sp. nov.

Thirty-one bacteria that belonged to the genus Pseudomonas were isolated from cyanobacterial mat samples that were collected from various water bodies in Antarctica. All 31 isolates were psychrophilic; they could be divided into three groups, based on their protein profiles. Representative strains of each of the three groups, namely CMS 35(T), CMS 38(T) and CMS 64(T), were studied in detail.

Kocuria polaris sp. nov., an orange-pigmented psychrophilic bacterium isolated from an Antarctic cyanobacterial mat sample.

Strain CMS 76orT, an orange-pigmented bacterium, was isolated from a cyanobacterial mat sample from a pond located in McMurdo Dry Valley, Antarctica. On the basis of chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic properties, strain CMS 76orT was identified as a member of the genus Kocuria. It exhibited a 16S rDNA similarity of 99.