Mean plant toxicity modulates the effects of plant defense variability.

Plant trait variation is thought to suppress herbivore performance, but experiments typically manipulate only a single mean level of the trait. We manipulated the mean and variation of the concentration of a plant toxin in a model plant-herbivore system across three field and greenhouse experiments. Plants with leaves painted with a higher mean toxin concentration exhibited increased fitness and resistance to herbivores; however, at high mean concentrations, variation reduced the defensive effect, while at lower mean concentrations, variation enhanced it.

Large Differences in Herbivore Performance Emerge From Simple Herbivore Behaviours and Fine-Scale Spatial Heterogeneity in Phytochemistry.

Patterns of phytochemistry localisation in plant tissues are diverse within and across leaves. These spatial heterogeneities are important to the fitness of herbivores, but their effects on herbivore foraging and dietary experience remain elusive. We manipulated the spatial variance and clusteredness of a plant toxin in a synthetic diet landscape on which individual caterpillars fed.

The frequency and chemical phenotype of neighboring plants determine the effects of intraspecific plant diversity.

Associational effects, whereby plants influence the biotic interactions of their neighbors, are an important component of plant-insect interactions. Plant chemistry has been hypothesized to mediate these interactions. The role of chemistry in associational effects, however, has been unclear in part because the diversity of plant chemistry makes it difficult to tease apart the importance and roles of particular classes of compounds.

Heat waves induce milkweed resistance to a specialist herbivore via increased toxicity and reduced nutrient content.

Over the last decade, a large effort has been made to understand how extreme climate events disrupt species interactions. Yet, it is unclear how these events affect plants and herbivores directly, via metabolic changes, and indirectly, via their subsequent altered interaction. We exposed common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) and monarch caterpillars (Danaus plexippus) to control (26:14°C, day:night) or heat wave (HW) conditions (36:24°C, day:night) for 4 days and then moved each organism to a new control or HW partner to disentangle the direct and indirect effects of heat exposure on each organism.

Neutrality in plant-herbivore interactions.

Understanding the distribution of herbivore damage among leaves and individual plants is a central goal of plant-herbivore biology. Commonly observed unequal patterns of herbivore damage have conventionally been attributed to the heterogeneity in plant quality or herbivore behaviour or distribution. Meanwhile, the potential role of stochastic processes in structuring plant-herbivore interactions has been overlooked.

Clinical outcomes following a combined vertical and horizontal alveolar ridge augmentation and two-stage implant placement using either autogenous tooth roots or autogenous bone blocks.

Aim: To assess and compare the short-term clinical outcomes following a combined vertical and horizontal alveolar ridge augmentation and two-stage implant placement using either autogenous tooth roots (TR) or autogenous bone blocks (AB).

Materials And Methods: A total of n = 27 patients (TR/AB: 13/14) exhibiting n = 31 implants (TR/AB: 14/17) were available for the analysis. Each subject had been allocated to a combined vertical and horizontal alveolar ridge augmentation using either (1) healthy TR (e.

The timing of heat waves has multiyear effects on milkweed and its insect community.

Extreme heat events are becoming more frequent and intense as climate variability increases, and these events inherently vary in their timing. We predicted that the timing of a heat wave would determine its consequences for insect communities owing to temporal variation in the susceptibility of host plants to heat stress. We subjected common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) plants to in-field experimental heat waves to investigate how the timing of heat waves, both seasonally and relative to a biotic stressor (experimental herbivory), affected their ecological consequences.

The ecological consequences of the timing of extreme climate events.

Climate change is increasing the intensity, duration, and frequency of extreme climate events (ECEs). These ECEs can have major ecological consequences, e.g.

A bioenergetic framework for aboveground terrestrial food webs.

Bioenergetic approaches have been greatly influential for understanding community functioning and stability and predicting effects of environmental changes on biodiversity. These approaches use allometric relationships to establish species' trophic interactions and consumption rates and have been successfully applied to aquatic ecosystems. Terrestrial ecosystems, where body mass is less predictive of plant-consumer interactions, present inherent challenges that these models have yet to meet.

The role of timing in intraspecific trait ecology.

Intraspecific trait variation has tremendous importance for species interactions and community composition. A major source of intraspecific trait variation is an organism's developmental stage; however, timing is rarely considered in studies of the ecological effects of intraspecific variation. Here, we examine the role of time in the ecology of intraspecific trait variation, focusing on plants and their interactions with other organisms.

A Qualitative Exploration of Pregnancy Experience With a Nutrient-Dense, Plant-Rich Dietary Pattern: A Pilot Study.

Introduction: A nutrient-dense, plant-rich diet may be promising as a nutrition intervention for pregnant women for a number of factors. Factors include the possibility of a decreased risk for gestational diabetes, excess weight gain, and preeclampsia. Little is known about the experience of following this type of dietary pattern while pregnant and what barriers are present that should be addressed in a large-scale intervention.

A domestic plant differs from its wild relative along multiple axes of within-plant trait variability and diversity.

For 10,000 years humans have altered plant traits through domestication and ongoing crop improvement, shaping plant form and function in agroecosystems. To date, studies have focused on how these processes shape whole-plant or average traits; however, plants also have characteristic levels of trait variability among their repeated parts, which can be heritable and mediate critical ecological interactions. Here, we examine an underappreciated scale of trait variation-among leaves, within plants-that may have changed through the process of domestication and improvement.

Selective Interruption of Auditory Interhemispheric Cross Talk Impairs Discrimination Learning of Frequency-Modulated Tone Direction But Not Gap Detection and Discrimination.

Functional hemispheric lateralization is a basic principle of brain organization. In the auditory domain, the right auditory cortex (AC) determines the pitch direction of continuous auditory stimuli whereas the left AC discriminates gaps in these stimuli. The involved functional interactions between the two sides, mediated by commissural connections, are poorly understood.

Empathy, personality traits, and emotional management in 2nd and 4th-year dentistry students: a single-center study.

Background: Patients fearing dental interventions are at risk of delaying or skipping much-needed treatments. Empathic communication could lead to a higher rate of compliance from patients within this group. Empathy, the big five personality traits, and emotion management abilities are all known to influence the quality of communication between dentists and patients.

Chemical diversity rather than cultivar diversity predicts natural enemy control of herbivore pests.

Cultivar mixtures have been studied for decades as a means for pest suppression. The literature, however, shows a large variability in outcomes, suggesting that we are unable to create mixtures that consistently suppress insect pests and attract natural enemies. A key gap in our understanding of how cultivar mixtures influence pest control is that few studies have examined the plant traits or mechanisms by which cultivar diversity affects pests and their interactions with natural enemies.

Symptom-orientated oral hygiene for children after heart transplantation: Effectiveness of a standardized prophylactic program.

Children with CHD, especially heart-transplanted patients, are predisposed to have caries lesions, gingivitis and other oral findings like gingival hyperplasia. The aim of the study was the implementation of a specific oral hygiene program in these patients and its effect on the improvement of oral health, especially gingival overgrowth. For this, we used a newly developed systematic GHI to evaluate and describe this gingival alteration.

Disentangling dimensions of phytochemical diversity: alpha and beta have contrasting effects on an insect herbivore.

Phytochemical diversity is comprised of two main dimensions-the average (alpha) within-plant neighbors or the difference (beta) in the composition of chemicals between plant neighbors. Research, however, has primarily examined the consequences of phytochemical diversity on herbivore performance through a single dimension, even though diversity is multidimensional. Furthermore, the ecological role of phytochemical diversity is not well understood because each of these dimensions exhibits unique biological effects on herbivore performance.

Generalising indirect defence and resistance of plants.

Indirect defence, the adaptive top-down control of herbivores by plant traits that enhance predation, is a central component of plant-herbivore interactions. However, the scope of interactions that comprise indirect defence and associated ecological and evolutionary processes has not been clearly defined. We argue that the range of plant traits that mediate indirect defence is much greater than previously thought, and we further organise major concepts surrounding their ecological functioning.

Protocol and Preliminary Results of the Nutritarian Women's Health Study: A Longitudinal Effectiveness-Implementation Hybrid Study Assessing Dietary Intake and Health Outcomes.

Whole-food plant-rich dietary patterns have been shown to be associated with significant health benefits and disease-risk reduction. One such program, which has been gaining popularity, is the micronutrient-dense plant-rich (mNDPR) "Nutritarian" diet. The goal of this study is to determine the feasibility of implementing an online mNDPR "Nutritarian" intervention program and to determine the effectiveness of this program in reducing risk of chronic disease in women.

The many dimensions of phytochemical diversity: linking theory to practice.

Research on the ecological and evolutionary roles of phytochemicals has recently progressed from studying single compounds to examining chemical diversity itself. A key conceptual advance enabling this progression is the use of species diversity metrics for quantifying phytochemical diversity. In this perspective, we extend the theory developed for species diversity to further our understanding of what exactly phytochemical diversity is and how its many dimensions impact ecological and evolutionary processes.

Predicting Within- and Between-Year Variation in Activity of the Invasive Spotted Wing Drosophila (Diptera: Drosophilidae) in a Temperate Region.

Invasive insect pests can be challenging to manage because their recent arrival provides limited information on which to build predictive population models. The magnitude and timing of activity by the invasive vinegar fly, Drosophila suzukii, in crop fields has been unpredictable due to its recent arrival in many new regions of the world and changes in methods for its detection. Using 7 yr of consistent trapping of adults at four blueberry farms in Michigan, United States, we modeled the temporal and environmental factors influencing D.

Impact of a 6-Month Micronutrient-Dense Plant-Rich Nutrition Intervention on Health and Well-Being at the Worksite.

This nonrandomized pilot study utilized the health belief model and the theory of planned behavior to assess the effectiveness of perceived behavioral control to determine the impact of a micronutrient-dense plant-rich (mNDPR) dietary intervention on employee health and wellness at the worksite. Seventy-one employees and/or spouses (≥18 years) who met the inclusion criteria were recruited from a regional medical center and a local university. Participants were provided more than 14 hours of in-person lecture combined with take-home materials, and electronic resources to support participants in their transition and adherence to the dietary plan.