Nineteenth-century land use shapes the current occurrence of some plant species, but weakly affects the richness and total composition of Central European grasslands.

Context: Historical land use is thought to have influenced plant community diversity, composition and function through the local persistence of taxa that reflect ecological conditions of the past.

Objectives: We tested for the effects of historical land use on contemporary plant species richness, composition, and ecological preferences in the grassland vegetation of Central Europe.

Methods: We analyzed 6975 vegetation plots sampled between 1946 and 2021 in dry, mesic, and wet grasslands in the borderland between Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.

A continental-wide decline of occupancy and diversity in five Neotropical carnivores.

The Neotropics are a global biodiversity hotspot that has undergone dramatic land use changes over the last decades. However, a temporal perspective on the continental-wide distributions of species in this region is still missing. To unveil it, we model the entire area of occupancy of five Neotropical carnivore species at two time periods (2000-2013 and 2014-2021) using integrated species distribution models (ISDMs) in a Bayesian framework.

MRI-Seed-Wizard: combining deep learning algorithms with magnetic resonance imaging enables advanced seed phenotyping.

Evaluation of relevant seed traits is an essential part of most plant breeding and biotechnology programmes. There is a need for non-destructive, three-dimensional assessment of the morphometry, composition, and internal features of seeds. Here, we introduce a novel tool, MRI-Seed-Wizard, which integrates deep learning algorithms with non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for use in a new domain-plant MRI.

Thermodynamic Modulation of Dihydrogen Activation Through Rational Ligand Design in Ge-Ni Complexes.

A family of chelating aryl-functionalized germylene ligands has been developed and employed in the synthesis of their corresponding 16-electron Ni complexes (DippGeAr·Ni·IPr; Dipp = {[PhPCHSi(Pr)](Dipp)N}; IPr = [{(H)CN(Dipp)}C:]; Dipp = 2,6-PrCH). These complexes demonstrate the ability to cooperatively and reversibly activate dihydrogen at the germylene-nickel interface under mild conditions (1.5 atm H, 298 K).

Mechanical forces orchestrate the metabolism of the developing oilseed rape embryo.

The initial free expansion of the embryo within a seed is at some point inhibited by its contact with the testa, resulting in its formation of folds and borders. Although less obvious, mechanical forces appear to trigger and accelerate seed maturation. However, the mechanistic basis for this effect remains unclear.