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There are few more active frontiers in plant science than helping understand and predict the ecological consequences of on-going, global changes in climate, land use and cover, nutrient cycling, and acidity. This collection of research papers and reviews focuses on how these changes are likely to interact with two important factors, clonal growth in plants and the introduction of species into new regions by humans, to reshape the ecology of our world. Clonal growth is vegetative reproduction in which offspring remain attached to the parent at least until establishment. Clonal growth is associated with the invasiveness of introduced species, their tendency to spread after introduction and negatively affect other species. Will changes in climate, land cover, or nutrients further increase biological invasions by introduced, clonal plants? The articles in this book seek to address this question with new research and theory on clonal growth and its interactions with invasiveness and other components of global change.
Clonality is widespread in plant species, and clonal plants often have a broad geographic range and long lifespan. Clonality can maintain high fitness in the short term, but vegetative reproduction is commonly considered to preclude adaptation to changing conditions. However, an increasing body of empirical and theoretical evidence suggests that epigenetic modifications such as DNA methylation can provide an alternative to gene-driven evolution through natural selection and allow clonal plants to maintain fitness in the long term. To deepen our understanding of clonal ecology, this collection of research papers and reviews focuses on how epigenetic regulation can encode phenotypic plasticity and contribute to the rapid adaptation of clonal plants to accelerating global and regional environmental changes.
Clonales Wachstum, Evolution und Systematik, Ökologie.
The question "Why are there so many species?" has puzzled ecologist for a long time. Initially, an academic question, it has gained practical interest by the recent awareness of global biodiversity loss. Species diversity in local ecosystems has always been discussed in relation to the problem of competi tive exclusion and the apparent contradiction between the competitive exclu sion principle and the overwhelming richness of species found in nature. Competition as a mechanism structuring ecological communities has never been uncontroversial. Not only its importance but even its existence have been debated. On the one extreme, some ecologists have taken competi tion for granted and have used...
This book provides the reader relevant information about actual knowledge about the process of allelopathy, covering all aspects from the molecular to the ecological level. Special relevance is given to the physiological and ecophysiological aspects of allelopathy. Several ecosystems are studied and methodological considerations are taken into account in several different chapters. The book has been written to be useful both for Ph.D. students and for senior researchers, so the chapters include all necessary information to be read by beginners, but they also include a lot of useful information and discussion for the initiated.
Invasion Genetics: the Baker & Stebbins legacy provides a state-of-the-art treatment of the evolutionary biology of invasive species, whilst also revisiting the historical legacy of one of the most important books in evolutionary biology: The Genetics of Colonizing Species, published in 1965 and edited by Herbert Baker and G. Ledyard Stebbins. This volume covers a range of topics concerned with the evolutionary biology of invasion including: phylogeography and the reconstruction of invasion history; demographic genetics; the role of stochastic forces in the invasion process; the contemporary evolution of local adaptation; the significance of epigenetics and transgenerational plasticity for invasive species; the genomic consequences of colonization; the search for invasion genes; and the comparative biology of invasive species. A wide diversity of invasive organisms are discussed including plants, animals, fungi and microbes.
The fourth edition of Soil Microbiology, Ecology and Biochemistry updates this widely used reference as the study and understanding of soil biota, their function, and the dynamics of soil organic matter has been revolutionized by molecular and instrumental techniques, and information technology. Knowledge of soil microbiology, ecology and biochemistry is central to our understanding of organisms and their processes and interactions with their environment. In a time of great global change and increased emphasis on biodiversity and food security, soil microbiology and ecology has become an increasingly important topic. Revised by a group of world-renowned authors in many institutions and disci...