In recent years, the impacts of climate change and human activities have intensified the loss and fragmentation of habitats for wild rare Magnoliaceae. Predicting the potential impacts of future climate change on the suitable habitat distribution of wild and endangered Magnoliaceae species is of great significance for their conservation and application. This study employs the optimized MaxEnt model to investigate current and future potential suitable habitats of three rare Magnoliaceae species (, , and ).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChanges in species' habitats provide important insights into the effects of climate change. , a critically endangered species endemic to karst ecosystems, has a highly restricted distribution and is a key biological resource. Despite its ecological importance, the factors influencing its habitat suitability and distribution remain poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTotal leaf area per shoot () can reflect the photosynthetic capacity of a shoot. A prior study hypothesized that is proportional to the product of the sum of the individual leaf widths per shoot () and the maximum individual leaf length per shoot (), referred to as the Montgomery-Koyama-Smith equation (MKSE). However, empirical evidence does not support such a proportional relationship hypothesis, as was found to allometrically scale with , i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe size of floral organs is closely related to the successful reproduction of plants, and corolla size is, to some extent, indicative of the size of floral organs. Petals are considered to be homologous to leaves, so we also attempted to estimate the area of a single petal using the method that is typically employed for estimating single leaf area (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe concept of a geometric series (GS) plays an important role in mathematics. However, it has been neglected in describing biological size series. Herein, we show that a GS describes the nonreproductive (perianth) parts of the flowers of four Magnoliaceae species and two Rosaceae species and the leaves of 60 Alangium chinense and 60 Shibataea chinensis shoots.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe "leafing intensity premium" hypothesis proposes that leaf size results from natural selection acting on different leafing intensities, i.e., the number of leaves per unit shoot volume or mass.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA 2-dimensional (2D) egg-shape equation can be used to construct a 3D egg geometry based on the hypothesis that an egg is a solid of revolution, which helps to calculate egg volume and surface area. The parameters in the 2D egg-shape equation are potentially valuable for providing a clue to the ecology and evolution of avian eggs. In this study, the 5-parameter Preston equation (PE), the 4-parameter Troscianko equation (TE), and another 2 egg-shape equations, were compared in describing real 2D egg-shape data of 300 Gallus gallus domesticus eggs and additional 50 eggs that represented the variation in avian egg geometries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is a lack of research on whether tree size affects lamina and petiole biomass allocation patterns, whereas the trade-off between leaf biomass allocated to the lamina and the petiole is of significance when considering the hydraulic and mechanical function of the leaf as a whole. Here, Decne was selected for study because of the availability of trees differing in size growing under the same conditions. A total of 600 leaves for two tree size groups and 300 leaves per group differing in height and trunk diameter were collected.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTotal leaf area per plant is an important measure of the photosynthetic capacity of an individual plant that together with plant density drives the canopy leaf area index, that is, the total leaf area per unit ground area. Because the total number of leaves per plant (or per shoot) varies among conspecifics and among mixed species communities, this variation can affect the total leaf area per plant and per canopy but has been little studied. Previous studies have shown a strong linear relationship between the total leaf area per plant (or per shoot) ( ) and the total number of leaves per plant (or per shoot) ( ) on a log-log scale for several growth forms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDi(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) is a widely used plasticizer known to pose health risks to humans upon exposure. Recognizing the toxic nature of DEHP, our study aimed to elucidate the response mechanisms in Brassica chinensis L. (Shanghai Qing) when subjected to varying concentrations of DEHP (2 mg kg, 20 mg kg, and 50 mg kg), particularly under tissue stress.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlants (Basel)
December 2023
In nature, the fruit shapes of many plants resemble avian eggs, a form extensively studied as solids of revolution. Despite this, the hypothesis that egg-shaped fruits are themselves solids of revolution remains unvalidated. To address this, 751 L.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMembranes (Basel)
November 2023
The formation process of membrane fouling is complex and diverse, which is an important problem that needs to be overcome in membrane applications. In this paper, three foulant systems consisting of humic acid, humic acid plus Ca and humic acid plus Ca plus yeast were selected to compare membrane fouling processes with different aeration intensities. The aim was to establish the quantitative relationship between membrane fouling rate and shear stress, respectively, in a large-scale flat sheet MBR (FSMBR).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStomata are involved in transpiration and CO uptake by mediating gas exchange between internal plant tissues and the atmosphere. The capacity for gas exchange depends on stomatal density (SD), stomatal size, and pore dimensions. Most published work on stomatal quantification has assumed that stomatal distribution and stomatal density are spatially homogeneous across the leaf, but this assumption has been seldom tested.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMeasuring the inequality of leaf area distribution per plant (ILAD) can provide a useful tool for quantifying the influences of intra- and interspecific competition, foraging behavior of herbivores, and environmental stress on plants' above-ground architectural structures and survival strategies. Despite its importance, there has been limited research on this issue. This paper aims to fill this gap by comparing four inequality indices to measure ILAD, using indices for quantifying household income that are commonly used in economics, including the Gini index (which is based on the Lorenz curve), the coefficient of variation, the Theil index, and the mean log deviation index.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA large number of antibiotics have been used in the medical industry, agriculture, and animal husbandry industry in recent years. It may cause pollution to the aquatic environment and ultimately threaten to human health due to their prolonged exposure to the environment. We aim to study the toxicity mechanism of enrofloxacin (ENR), chlortetracycline hydrochloride (CTC), trimethoprim (TMP), chloramphenicol (CMP), and erythromycin (ETM) to luciferase of Vibrio Qinghaiensis sp.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBamboo is an important component in subtropical and tropical forest communities. The plant has characteristic long lanceolate leaves with parallel venation. Prior studies have shown that the leaf shapes of this plant group can be well described by a simplified version (referred to as SGE-1) of the Gielis equation, a polar coordinate equation extended from the superellipse equation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc
January 2023
The natural flavonoids with bioactivity as secondary plant metabolites are mostly found in fruits, vegetables, tea and herbs, the distribution and bioavailability of which in vivo depends on the interaction and successive binding with carrier proteins in the systemic circulation. In this paper, the binding behavior of bioactive 7-methoxyflavone (7-MF) with human serum albumin (HSA) was studied with the aid of the combination of multi-spectroscopic methods, molecular docking and molecular dynamic simulation. The results of multi-spectroscopic experiments revealed that 7-MF interacted with HSA predominantly via fluorescence static quenching and the microenvironment around the fluorophore Trp residues in HSA became more hydrophilicity with the binding of 7-MF.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study investigated the effects of an aqueous acidic solution at typical concentrations on polymeric polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)-based membranes. Flat-sheet PVDF-based membranes were completely embedded in sulfuric acid at varying concentrations. The effect of the acid concentration after a prolonged exposure time on the chemical, mechanical and physical properties of the membrane were checked via FE-SEM, EDX (Energy-Dispersive Spectrometer), FTIR, XRD, tensile strength, zeta potential, contact angle, porosity, pure water flux measurement and visual observation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDiabetic nephropathy (DN) is an important microvascular complication of diabetes, and one of the leading causes of end‑stage kidney disease. However, the mechanism of the DN pathogenic process remains unclear. Recently, long non‑coding (lnc)RNA dysregulation has been regarded to cause the occurrence and development of various human diseases, although the functions of lncRNAs in human DN are poorly understood.
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