Promoting resilience of large international collaborative research programs in times of global crisis.

The recent coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is impacting the research community worldwide with unforeseen long-term consequences for research, doctoral training, and international collaboration. It is already clear that the immediate effects of the crisis resulting from disrupted research stays and reduced career development opportunities are being most detrimental to early-career researchers. Based on a Sino-German international research training group dedicated to doctoral training and biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research, we show how resilience of large collaborative research programs can be promoted in times of global crisis.

Consequences of multiple imputation of missing standard deviations and sample sizes in meta-analysis.

Meta-analyses often encounter studies with incompletely reported variance measures (e.g., standard deviation values) or sample sizes, both needed to conduct weighted meta-analyses.

Scale-dependent impact of land management on above- and belowground biodiversity.

Land management is known to have consequences for biodiversity; however, our synthetic understanding of its effects is limited due to highly variable results across studies, which vary in the focal taxa and spatial grain considered, as well as the response variables reported. Such synthetic knowledge is necessary for management of agroecosystems for high diversity and function.To fill this knowledge gap, we investigated the importance of scale-dependent effects of land management (LM) (pastures vs.

Warning about conservation status of forest ecosystems in tropical Andes: National assessment based on IUCN criteria.

World ecosystems are suffering from anthropogenic and natural pressure. The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) has developed analogous criteria for the Red List of Threatened Species in order to perform similar risk assessments on ecosystems, creating the Red List of Ecosystems (RLE) methodology. One of the most significant challenges for the construction of these lists is gathering the available information to apply the criteria.

Species-area relationships in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands emerge because rarer species are disproportionately favored on larger islands.

The island species-area relationship (ISAR) describes how the number of species increases with increasing size of an island (or island-like habitat), and is of fundamental importance in island biogeography and conservation. Here, we use a framework based on individual-based rarefaction to infer whether ISARs result from passive sampling, or whether some processes are acting beyond sampling (e.g.

Tree litter functional diversity and nitrogen concentration enhance litter decomposition via changes in earthworm communities.

Biodiversity is a major driver of numerous ecosystem functions. However, consequences of changes in forest biodiversity remain difficult to predict because of limited knowledge about how tree diversity influences ecosystem functions. Litter decomposition is a key process affecting nutrient cycling, productivity, and carbon storage and can be influenced by plant biodiversity.

Abundance, origin, and phylogeny of plants do not predict community-level patterns of pathogen diversity and infection.

Pathogens have the potential to shape plant community structure, and thus, it is important to understand the factors that determine pathogen diversity and infection in communities. The abundance, origin, and evolutionary relationships of plant hosts are all known to influence pathogen patterns and are typically studied separately. We present an observational study that examined the influence of all three factors and their interactions on the diversity of and infection of several broad taxonomic groups of foliar, floral, and stem pathogens across three sites in a temperate grassland in the central United States.

WHIRLY2 plays a key role in mitochondria morphology, dynamics, and functionality in .

WHIRLY2 is a single-stranded DNA binding protein associated with mitochondrial nucleoids. In the mutant of , a major proportion of leaf mitochondria has an aberrant structure characterized by disorganized nucleoids, reduced abundance of cristae, and a low matrix density despite the fact that the macroscopic phenotype during vegetative growth is not different from wild type. These features coincide with an impairment of the functionality and dynamics of mitochondria that have been characterized in detail in wild-type and mutant cell cultures.

A critical analysis of the potential for EU Common Agricultural Policy measures to support wild pollinators on farmland.

Agricultural intensification and associated loss of high-quality habitats are key drivers of insect pollinator declines. With the aim of decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture, the 2014 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) defined a set of habitat and landscape features (Ecological Focus Areas: EFAs) farmers could select from as a requirement to receive basic farm payments. To inform the post-2020 CAP, we performed a European-scale evaluation to determine how different EFA options vary in their potential to support insect pollinators under standard and pollinator-friendly management, as well as the extent of farmer uptake.

How do trees respond to species mixing in experimental compared to observational studies?

For decades, ecologists have investigated the effects of tree species diversity on tree productivity at different scales and with different approaches ranging from observational to experimental study designs. Using data from five European national forest inventories (16,773 plots), six tree species diversity experiments (584 plots), and six networks of comparative plots (169 plots), we tested whether tree species growth responses to species mixing are consistent and therefore transferrable between those different research approaches. Our results confirm the general positive effect of tree species mixing on species growth (16% on average) but we found no consistency in species-specific responses to mixing between any of the three approaches, even after restricting comparisons to only those plots that shared similar mixtures compositions and forest types.

Cardiac Myosin-Binding Protein C to Diagnose Acute Myocardial Infarction in the Pre-Hospital Setting.

Background Early triage is essential to improve outcomes in patients with suspected acute myocardial infarction (AMI). This study investigated whether cMyC (cardiac myosin-binding protein), a novel biomarker of myocardial necrosis, can aid early diagnosis of AMI and risk stratification. Methods and Results cMyC and high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T were retrospectively quantified in blood samples obtained by ambulance-based paramedics in a prospective, diagnostic cohort study.

Semi-polar root exudates in natural grassland communities.

In the rhizosphere, plants are exposed to a multitude of different biotic and abiotic factors, to which they respond by exuding a wide range of secondary root metabolites. So far, it has been unknown to which degree root exudate composition is species-specific and is affected by land use, the local impact and local neighborhood under field conditions. In this study, root exudates of 10 common grassland species were analyzed, each five of forbs and grasses, in the German Biodiversity Exploratories using a combined phytometer and untargeted liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) approach.

Release from natural enemies mitigates inbreeding depression in native and invasive populations.

Inbreeding and enemy infestation are common in plants and can synergistically reduce their performance. This inbreeding ×environment (I × E) interaction may be of particular importance for the success of plant invasions if introduced populations experience a release from attack by natural enemies relative to their native conspecifics. Here, we investigate whether inbreeding affects plant infestation damage, whether inbreeding depression in growth and reproduction is mitigated by enemy release, and whether this effect is more pronounced in invasive than native plant populations.

The geometry of habitat fragmentation: Effects of species distribution patterns on extinction risk due to habitat conversion.

Land-use changes, which cause loss, degradation, and fragmentation of natural habitats, are important anthropogenic drivers of biodiversity change. However, there is an ongoing debate about how fragmentation per se affects biodiversity in a given amount of habitat. Here, we illustrate why it is important to distinguish two different aspects of fragmentation to resolve this debate: (a) geometric fragmentation effects, which exclusively arise from the spatial distributions of species and habitat fragments, and (b) demographic fragmentation effects due to reduced fragment sizes, and/or changes in fragment isolation, edge effects, or species interactions.

Trait-performance relationships of grassland plant species differ between common garden and field conditions.

The way functional traits affect growth of plant species may be highly context-specific. We asked which combinations of trait values are advantageous under field conditions in managed grasslands as compared to conditions without competition and land-use. In a two-year field experiment, we recorded the performance of 93 species transplanted into German grassland communities differing in land-use intensity and into a common garden, where species grew unaffected by land-use under favorable conditions regarding soil, water, and space.

A roadmap for urban evolutionary ecology.

Urban ecosystems are rapidly expanding throughout the world, but how urban growth affects the evolutionary ecology of species living in urban areas remains largely unknown. Urban ecology has advanced our understanding of how the development of cities and towns change environmental conditions and alter ecological processes and patterns. However, despite decades of research in urban ecology, the extent to which urbanization influences evolutionary and eco-evolutionary change has received little attention.

Renal Biomarker and Angiostatic Mediator? Cystatin C as a Negative Regulator of Vascular Endothelial Cell Homeostasis and Angiogenesis.

See Article by Li et al .

Monitoring gradient formation in a jet aerated bioreactor.

Jet aerated loop reactors (JLRs) provide high mass transfer coefficients (ka) and can be used for the intensification of mass transfer limited reactions. The jet loop reactor achieves higher ka values than a stirred tank reactor (STR). The improvement relies on significantly higher local power inputs (∼10) than those obtainable with the STR.

Social environment affects the transcriptomic response to bacteria in ant queens.

Social insects have evolved enormous capacities to collectively build nests and defend their colonies against both predators and pathogens. The latter is achieved by a combination of individual immune responses and sophisticated collective behavioral and organizational disease defenses, that is, social immunity. We investigated how the presence or absence of these social defense lines affects individual-level immunity in ant queens after bacterial infection.

Designing Magnetic Anisotropy through Strain Doping.

The coupling between a material's lattice and its underlying spin state links structural deformation to magnetic properties; however, traditional strain engineering does not allow the continuous, post-synthesis control of lattice symmetry needed to fully utilize this fundamental coupling in device design. Uniaxial lattice expansion induced by post-synthesis low energy helium ion implantation is shown to provide a means of bypassing these limitations. Magnetocrystalline energy calculations can be used a priori to estimate the predictive design of a material's preferred magnetic spin orientation.

OpenNahele: the open Hawaiian forest plot database.

Background: This data paper provides a description of OpenNahele, the open Hawaiian forest plot database. OpenNahele includes 530 forest plots across the Hawaiian archipelago containing 43,590 individuals of 185 native and alien tree, shrub and tree fern species across six islands. We include estimates of maximum plant size (D95 and D) for 58 woody plant species, a key functional trait associated with dispersal distance and competition for light.

Seasonal variation of secondary metabolites in nine different bryophytes.

Bryophytes occur in almost all land ecosystems and contribute to global biogeochemical cycles, ecosystem functioning, and influence vegetation dynamics. As growth and biochemistry of bryophytes are strongly dependent on the season, we analyzed metabolic variation across seasons with regard to ecological characteristics and phylogeny. Using bioinformatics methods, we present an integrative and reproducible approach to connect ecology with biochemistry.

BioTIME: A database of biodiversity time series for the Anthropocene.

Motivation: The BioTIME database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time. These data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics. BioTIME is being developed as a community-led open-source database of biodiversity time series.

Associations between apparent diffusion coefficient and electromyography parameters in myositis-A preliminary study.

Objective: MRI is widely used in several muscle disorders. Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) is an emergent imaging modality sensitive to microstructural alterations in tissue. The apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) is used to quantify the random motion of water molecules.

Impact of nozzle operation on mass transfer in jet aerated loop reactors. Characterization and comparison to an aerated stirred tank reactor.

The impact of mass transfer on productivity can become a crucial aspect in the fermentative production of bulk chemicals. For highly aerobic bioprocesses the oxygen transfer rate (OTR) and productivity are coupled. The achievable space time yields can often be correlated to the mass transfer performance of the respective bioreactor.