ALBERT

Description: Restoration efforts in Florida’s Everglades focus on preserving and restoring this unique wetland’s natural landscape. Because most of the Everglades is a freshwater peatland, it requires surplus rainfall to remain a peatland. Restoration plans generally assume a stable climate, yet projections of altered climate over a 50-year time horizon suggest that this assumption may be inappropriate. Using a legacy regional hydrological model, we simulated combinations of a temperature rise of 1.5 °C, a ± 10 % change in rainfall, and a 0.46 m sea level rise relative to base conditions. The scenario of increased evapotranspiration and increased rainfall produced a slight increase in available water. In contrast, the more likely scenario of increased evapotranspiration and decreased rainfall lowered median water depths by 5–114 cm and shortened inundation duration periods by 5–45 %. Sea level rise increased stages and inundation duration in southern Everglades National Park. These ecologically significant decreases in water depths and inundation duration periods would greatly alter current ecosystems through severe droughts, peat loss and carbon emissions, wildfires, loss of the unique ridge and slough patterns, large shifts in plant and animal communities, and increased exotic species invasions. These results suggest using adaptive restoration planning, a method that explicitly incorporates large climatic and environmental uncertainties into long-term ecosystem restoration plans, structural design, and management. Anticipated water constraints necessitate alternative approaches to restoration, including maintaining critical landscapes and facilitating transitions in others. Accommodating these uncertainties may improve the likelihood of restoration success.

Description: Gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) plays an important role in the prevention and/or treatment of certain diseases. In this work, we investigate the incorporation of GLA from supplemented feed diets with borage oil (BO) and evening primrose oil (EPO) as substitutes for soybean oil (SO) into the composition of tilapia fillet lipids. High contents of PUFA and n-6 fatty acids were quantified in fish fillet after 30 days of treatment with SO, BO, and EPO. Feed diets containing BO and EPO were efficient in the incorporation of GLA into fish. Compared to the initial day of the experiment, the increase of GLA was significant (from 6.43 to 13.99 and 15.12 mg g −1 , in lipids of fish treated for 30 days with BO and EPO, respectively). The increase of GLA was also observed in fish which were fed with SO diet (6.43–11.43 mg g −1 ). Principal component analysis (PCA) allowed the separation of the treatments and discriminated BO and EPO in a group of fish that received the GLA supplemented diet. In addition to GLA, n-3 fatty acids were important in the characterization of SO diet and affected the separation of BO and EPO from SO in the PCA score plot.

Description: The effects of sucrose esters (SEs) with different acyl chain lengths, namely, lauryl (L-195), palmitoyl (P-170), stearoyl (S-170), oleoyl (O-170), and erucyl (ER-190), on isothermal crystallization of a palm oil-based blend (PO–PS) were studied. From this study, it was found that both α- and β′-crystals coexisted following crystallization of PO–PS from melt to room temperature. Addition of SEs P-170 and S-170, which had saturated acyl chains similar to PO–PS, resulted in an accelerating crystallization rate, promoting the appearance of α-crystals and transition to β′-crystals and increasing viscosity of PO–PS blend. SE O-170, which is liquid at room temperature, had little effect on blend crystallization. SEs L-195 and ER-190, with an acyl chain dissimilar to PO–PS, inhibited triacylglycerol bonding or further integration to the surface of crystals and reduced the crystallization rate and viscosity of the PO–PS blend. The PO–PS blend with SE L-195 and ER-190 contained large crystals and resulted in slower formation of α-crystals and transformation to β′-crystals. Results from this study indicate that crystallization of PO–PS was greatly influenced by acyl–acyl interactions between acyl chains of SEs and triacylglycerols.

Description: Accurate predictions of nuisance algae responses to algicide exposures are needed to guide management decisions. Copper sorption and responses of Lyngbya wollei (Farlow ex Gomont) Speziale and Dyck were measured in the laboratory and two areas in Lay Lake (AL, USA) to treatments of Captain ® XTR (SePRO Corporation; chelated copper algicide) and a sequential treatment of GreenClean ® Liquid (BioSafe Systems, LLC; peroxygen algicide) combined with Hydrothol ® 191 (United Phosphorus, Inc.; endothall algicide) followed by Captain XTR. Measured filament viability in laboratory exposures predicted Captain XTR alone could control L.   wollei in Lay Lake, with 2 mg Cu/g algae EC 75 . This produced a targeted field treatment of 9.7 kg Cu/ha which was divided into three applications of 0.3 mg Cu/L as Captain XTR in the treatment areas. Laboratory and field experiments indicated treatments of Captain XTR alone and the combination treatment resulted in comparable copper sorption and responses of L.   wollei . Copper adsorbed greater to L.   wollei in laboratory experiments than in the treated areas of Lay Lake with comparable exposures (2 mg Cu/g L.   wollei ). However, responses and infused copper were similar and correlated in laboratory experiments and treated areas of Lay Lake indicating infused copper is critical for governing toxicity. Laboratory exposures as mg Cu/g algae accurately predicted the necessary algicide exposure required to attain the critical burden of infused copper and elicit desired responses of L.   wollei in treated areas of Lay Lake.

Description: The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), established in 2009, encourages collaborative landscape scale ecosystem restoration efforts on United States Forest Service (USFS) lands. Although the USFS employees have experience engaging in collaborative planning, CFLRP requires collaboration in implementation, a domain where little prior experience can be drawn on for guidance. The purpose of this research is to identify the ways in which CFLRP’s collaborative participants and agency personnel conceptualize how stakeholders can contribute to implementation on landscape scale restoration projects, and to build theory on dynamics of collaborative implementation in environmental management. This research uses a grounded theory methodology to explore collaborative implementation from the perspectives and experiences of participants in landscapes selected as part of the CFLRP in 2010. Interviewees characterized collaborative implementation as encompassing three different types of activities: prioritization, enhancing treatments, and multiparty monitoring. The paper describes examples of activities in each of these categories and then identifies ways in which collaborative implementation in the context of CFLRP (1) is both hindered and enabled by overlapping legal mandates about agency collaboration, (2) creates opportunities for expanded accountability through informal and relational means, and, (3) creates feedback loops at multiple temporal and spatial scales through which monitoring information, prioritization, and implementation actions shape restoration work both within and across projects throughout the landscape creating more robust opportunities for adaptive management.

Description: Main conclusion The research demonstrated that Arabidopsis can be used as a model system for studying plant–nematode–endophyte tripartite interactions; thus, opening new possibilities for further characterizing the molecular mechanisms behind these interactions. Arabidopsis has been established as an important model system for studying plant biology and plant–microbe interactions. We show that this plant can also be used for studying the tripartite interactions among plants, the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne incognita and a beneficial endophytic isolate of Fusarium oxysporum , strain Fo162. In various plant species, Fo162 can systemically reduce M. incognita infection development and fecundity. Here it is shown that Fo162 can also colonize A. thaliana roots without causing disease symptoms, thus behaving as a typical endophyte. As observed for other plants, this endophyte could not migrate from the roots into the shoots and leaves. Direct inoculation of the leaves also did not result in colonization of the plant. A significant increase in plant fresh weight, root length and average root diameter was observed, suggesting the promotion of plant growth by the endophyte. The inoculation of A. thaliana with F. oxysporum strain Fo162 also resulted in a significant reduction in the number of M. incognita juveniles infecting the roots and ultimately the number of galls produced. This was also observed in a split-root experiment, in which the endophyte and nematode were spatially separated. The usefulness of Arabidopsis opens new possibilities for further dissecting complex tripartite interactions at the molecular and biochemical level.

Description: Main conclusion Medicinal and aromatic plants are known to produce secondary metabolites that find uses as flavoring agents, fragrances, insecticides, dyes and drugs. Biotechnology offers several choices through which secondary metabolism in medicinal plants can be altered in innovative ways, to overproduce phytochemicals of interest, to reduce the content of toxic compounds or even to produce novel chemicals. Detailed investigation of chromatin organization and microRNAs affecting biosynthesis of secondary metabolites as well as exploring cryptic biosynthetic clusters and synthetic biology options, may provide additional ways to harness this resource. Plant secondary metabolites are a fascinating class of phytochemicals exhibiting immense chemical diversity. Considerable enigma regarding their natural biological functions and the vast array of pharmacological activities, amongst other uses, make secondary metabolites interesting and important candidates for research. Here, we present an update on changing trends in the biotechnological approaches that are used to understand and exploit the secondary metabolism in medicinal and aromatic plants. Bioprocessing in the form of suspension culture, organ culture or transformed hairy roots has been successful in scaling up secondary metabolite production in many cases. Pathway elucidation and metabolic engineering have been useful to get enhanced yield of the metabolite of interest; or, for producing novel metabolites. Heterologous expression of putative plant secondary metabolite biosynthesis genes in a microbe is useful to validate their functions, and in some cases, also, to produce plant metabolites in microbes. Endophytes, the microbes that normally colonize plant tissues, may also produce the phytochemicals produced by the host plant. The review also provides perspectives on future research in the field.