Extensive loss of forage diversity in social bees owing to flower constancy in simulated environments.

Many bees visit just one flower species during a foraging trip, i.e. they show flower constancy.

When should bees be flower constant? An agent-based model highlights the importance of social information and foraging conditions.

Many bee species show flower constancy, that is, a tendency to visit flowers of one type during a foraging trip. Flower constancy is important for plant reproduction, but the benefits of constancy to bees is unclear. Social bees, which often use communication about food sources, show particularly strong flower constancy.

Sociality is a key driver of foraging ranges in bees.

Bees are important pollinators of wild and agricultural plants and there is increasing evidence that many bee populations decline due to a combination of habitat loss, climate change, pesticides, and other anthropogenic effects. One trait that shapes both their role in plant reproduction and their exposure to anthropogenic stressors is the distance at which bees forage. It has been suggested that bee sociality and diet affect bee foraging ranges, but how these traits and their potential interactions drive foraging ranges remains unclear.

Germline predisposition to pediatric Ewing sarcoma is characterized by inherited pathogenic variants in DNA damage repair genes.

More knowledge is needed regarding germline predisposition to Ewing sarcoma to inform biological investigation and clinical practice. Here, we evaluated the enrichment of pathogenic germline variants in Ewing sarcoma relative to other pediatric sarcoma subtypes, as well as patterns of inheritance of these variants. We carried out European-focused and pan-ancestry case-control analyses to screen for enrichment of pathogenic germline variants in 141 established cancer predisposition genes in 1,147 individuals with pediatric sarcoma diagnoses (226 Ewing sarcoma, 438 osteosarcoma, 180 rhabdomyosarcoma, and 303 other sarcoma) relative to identically processed cancer-free control individuals.

Acclimation of leaf respiration temperature responses across thermally contrasting biomes.

Short-term temperature response curves of leaf dark respiration (R-T) provide insights into a critical process that influences plant net carbon exchange. This includes how respiratory traits acclimate to sustained changes in the environment. Our study analysed 860 high-resolution R-T (10-70°C range) curves for: (a) 62 evergreen species measured in two contrasting seasons across several field sites/biomes; and (b) 21 species (subset of those sampled in the field) grown in glasshouses at 20°C : 15°C, 25°C : 20°C and 30°C : 25°C, day : night.

Leaf trait variation is similar among genotypes of Eucalyptus camaldulensis from differing climates and arises in plastic responses to the seasons rather than water availability.

We used a widely distributed tree Eucalyptus camaldulensis subsp. camaldulensis to partition intraspecific variation in leaf functional traits to genotypic variation and phenotypic plasticity. We examined if genotypic variation is related to the climate of genotype provenance and whether phenotypic plasticity maintains performance in a changing environment.

The validity of optimal leaf traits modelled on environmental conditions.

The ratio of leaf intercellular to ambient CO (χ) is modulated by stomatal conductance (g ). These quantities link carbon (C) assimilation with transpiration, and along with photosynthetic capacities (V and J ) are required to model terrestrial C uptake. We use optimization criteria based on the growth environment to generate predicted values of photosynthetic and water-use efficiency traits and test these against a unique dataset.

Mesophyll conductance does not contribute to greater photosynthetic rate per unit nitrogen in temperate compared with tropical evergreen wet-forest tree leaves.

Globally, trees originating from high-rainfall tropical regions typically exhibit lower rates of light-saturated net CO assimilation (A) compared with those from high-rainfall temperate environments, when measured at a common temperature. One factor that has been suggested to contribute towards lower rates of A is lower mesophyll conductance. Using a combination of leaf gas exchange and carbon isotope discrimination measurements, we estimated mesophyll conductance (g ) of several Australian tropical and temperate wet-forest trees, grown in a common environment.

The combination of gas-phase fluorophore technology and automation to enable high-throughput analysis of plant respiration.

Background: Mitochondrial respiration in the dark () is a critical plant physiological process, and hence a reliable, efficient and high-throughput method of measuring variation in rates of is essential for agronomic and ecological studies. However, currently methods used to measure in plant tissues are typically low throughput. We assessed a high-throughput automated fluorophore system of detecting multiple O consumption rates.