Protected areas are vital for biodiversity conservation although some have been criticized for not providing adequate socio-economic benefits to local people. However, empirical studies on socio-economic impacts of protected areas that control for confounding factors are rare. Here, we assessed the potential impacts of Maasai Mara National Reserve in South-Western Kenya on welfare (indicated by levels of income, consumption, and assets) of, and poverty incidence among 423 randomly selected local households. We used descriptive statistics...

Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) is the causative agent of bovine viral diarrhea-mucosal disease, which significantly affects the production performance of cattle, causing serious economic losses to the cattle industries worldwide. Up to now, some mechanisms involved in host–BVDV interaction are still not fully understood. The discovery of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) has provided a new perspective on gene regulation in diverse biological contexts, particularly in viral infection and host immune responses. However, little is...

Regional differences and regulatory mechanisms of vegetation productivity response to changing environmental conditions constitute a core issue in macroecological researches. To verify the main limiting factors of different macrosystems [temperature-limited Tibetan Plateau (TP), precipitation-limited Mongolian Plateau (MP), and nutrient-limited Loess Plateau (LP)], we conducted a comparative survey of the east-west grassland transects on the three plateaus and explored the factors limiting regional productivity and their underlying mechanisms. The results showed that aboveground net primary productivity...

Plant species diversity affects carbon and nutrient cycling during litter decomposition, yet the generality of the direction of this effect and its magnitude remain uncertain. With a meta-analysis including 65 field studies across the Earth’s major forest ecosystems, we showed here that on average decomposition was faster when litter was composed of more than one species. These positive biodiversity effects were mostly driven by temperate forests, but more variable in other forests. Litter mixture effects...

Climate change is known to affect many facets of the Earth’s ecosystems. However, little is known about its impacts on phylogenetic and functional properties of ecological communities. Here we studied the responses of plant communities in an alpine grassland on the Tibetan Plateau to environmental warming across taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional levels in a six-year multiple-level warming experiment. While low-level warming did not alter either plant species richness or phylogenetic/functional community structure, high-level warming significantly...

Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) is the causative agent of bovine viral diarrhea-mucosal disease, which significantly affects the production performance of cattle, causing serious economic losses to the cattle industries worldwide. Up to now, some mechanisms involved in host–BVDV interaction are still not fully understood. The discovery of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) has provided a new perspective on gene regulation in diverse biological contexts, particularly in viral infection and host immune responses. However, little is...

Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and acid deposition are co-occurring in many ecosystems, likely with complex interactive effects on litter decomposition. Few studies have been conducted to distinguish the interactive effects of these three factors on forest litter decomposition. Thus, we performed a 5-year litter decomposition experiment with N, P, acid addition in a temperate forest of Changbai Mountain in China, including four litter types from Pinus koraiensis, Quercus mongolica, Tilia amurensis and their mixtures. Our...

Collagen type X alpha 1 (COL10A1) is a member of the collagen family and the main matrix component. However, COL10A1 expression and prognosis relationship remains unclear in gastric cancer (GC). Through the analysis of database of Oncomine, the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) as well as the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), in contrast to the tissue of normal gastric, COL10A1 in gastric cancer, had been upregulated. The high expression of COL10A1 was obviously related to T...

Aim: Coastal wetlands provide critical ecosystem functions and services, e.g. coastal protection, nutrient retention and C sequestration. Despite the important roles in global C, N and P cycling, the global variation in leaf stoichiometry across coastal wetlands remains unclear. Location: Global. Time period: 1980-2018. Major taxa studied: Vascular plants. Methods: By compiling a global dataset of 698 data records in 205 sites, we systematically analysed the world-wide trends and their determinants in leaf element contents...

1. Ecosystem stability is essential to its sustainable functions and services to humanity. Although climate warming is projected to vary from 1-5ºC by the end of 21st century, how the temporal stability of plant community biomass production responds to different warming scenarios remains unclear. 2. To fill this knowledge gap, we conducted a 6-year field experiment with three levels of warming treatments (control, + 1.5oC, + 5oC) by using infrared radiators, in an alpine meadow...

Global environmental change is altering Earth’s ecosystems. However, much research has focused on ecosystem-level responses, and we know substantially less about community-level responses to global change stressors. Here we conducted a 6-year field experiment in a high-altitude (4600 m above sea level) alpine grassland on the Tibetan Plateau to explore the effects of nitrogen (N) addition and rising atmospheric CO2 concentration on plant communities. Our results showed that N and CO2 enrichment had synergistic effects...

Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) is the causative agent of bovine viral diarrhea-mucosal disease, which significantly affects the production performance of cattle, causing serious economic losses to the cattle industries worldwide. Up to now, some mechanisms involved in host-BVDV interaction are still not fully understood. The discovery of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) has provided a new perspective on gene regulation in diverse biological contexts, particularly in viral infection and host immune responses. However, little is...

Collagen type X alpha 1 (COL10A1) is a member of the collagen family and the main matrix component. However, COL10A1 expression and prognosis relationship remains unclear in gastric cancer (GC). Through the analysis of database of Oncomine, the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) as well as the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), in contrast to the tissue of normal gastric, COL10A1 in gastric cancer, had been upregulated. The high expression of COL10A1 was obviously related to T...