Spin quantum beats prove the quantum nature of reactions involving radical pairs, the key species of spin chemistry. However, such quantum beats remain hidden to transient-absorption-based optical observation because the spin hardly affects the radical pairs’ absorption properties. We succeeded in demonstrating such quantum beats in the photo-induced charge separated state (CSS) of an electron-donor-acceptor dyad by using two laser pulses, one for pumping the sample, and another one, with variable delay, for further exciting...

Exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics are apparently costly and seem to defy natural selection. This conundrum prompted Charles Darwin to propose the theory of sexual selection. Accordingly, exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics might be ornaments on which female choice is based and/or armaments used during male-male competition. Males of many cichlid fish species, including the adaptive radiation of Nicaraguan Midas cichlids, develop a highly exaggerated nuchal hump, which is thought to be a sexually selected trait. To...

This article examines the reshaping of Belgrade’s memorial landscape after the Second World War and after the 1999 NATO bombings, with a focus on the role of architects. As such, the paper shifts the scale of memory debates in two ways: first, from the national to the urban; second, from ‘classical’ memory entrepreneurs of the political realm to city makers, usually perceived as ‘technical’ actors, but, as the paper argues, in fact relevant memory actors...

Species delimitation is fundamental to deciphering the mechanisms that generate and maintain biodiversity. Alpha taxonomy historically relied on expert knowledge to describe new species using phenotypic and biogeographic evidence, which has the appearance of investigator subjectivity. In contrast, DNA‐based methods using the multispecies coalescent model (MSC) promise a more objective approach to describing biodiversity. However, recent criticisms suggest that under some conditions the MSC may over‐split lineages, identifying species that do not reflect biological reality....

Transposable elements (TEs) are selfish genomic parasites whose ability to spread autonomously is facilitated by sexual reproduction in their hosts. If hosts become obligately asexual, TE frequencies and dynamics are predicted to change dramatically, but the long-term outcome is unclear. Here, we test current theory using whole-genome sequence data from eight species of bdelloid rotifers, a class of invertebrates in which males are thus far unknown. Contrary to expectations, we find a variety of active...

Giant clams (Tridacninae) are important members of Indo-Pacific coral reefs and among the few bivalve groups that live in a symbiosis with unicellular algae (Symbiodiniaceae). Despite the importance of these endosymbiotic dinoflagellates for clam ecology, the diversity and specificity of these associations remains relatively poorly studied, especially in the Red Sea. Here, we used the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) rDNA gene region to investigate Symbiodiniaceae communities associated with Red Sea Tridacna maxima clams. We...

A greenhouse experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of drought on the interactions between native and invasive tree species. Organic and inorganic net N uptake capacity and total soluble protein as well as total soluable amino acid contents were quantified in leaves and fine roots of the native species Fagus sylvatica L., Quercus robur L. and Pinus sylvestris L.) and the invasive species Prunus serotina Ehrh. and Robinia pseudoacacia L.. We used a fully...

Artificial light at night has rapidly increased during the last century, and could potentially affect many ecological processes, from individuals via communities to entire ecosystems. Recent research has shown that artificial light at night may not only affect the behavior of animals but also growth of plants and vegetation composition. However, it is not known yet whether artificial light at night may also affect other global change components such as plant invasions. Here, we tested...

The Naturalistic Action Therapy approach was designed to train patients with impaired real tool-use and related anosognosia. The manual contains a description of example tasks trained in our laboratory. In addition video-material and evaluation sheets were designed to facilitate its application. The therapy concept can and is anticipated to be adapted for miscellaneous tasks of daily living that may need to be trained in a rehabilitation institute or at home. The main neurorehabilitation principles of...

The Pacific region has the highest density of naturalized plant species worldwide, which makes it an important area for research on the ecology, evolution and biogeography of biological invasions. While different data sources on naturalized plant species exist for the Pacific, there is no taxonomically and spatially harmonized database available for different subsets of species and islands. A comprehensive, accessible database containing the distribution of naturalized vascular plant species in the Pacific will enable new...

pp. 64-76 El Renacimiento, a magazine founded by Ignacio Manuel Altamirano together with Gonzalo A. Esteva at the beginning of 1869, has as its objective, according to the explicit will of its founder, to promote the progress of Literature in Mexico after the interruption caused by the Reform War and the French Intervention in the middle of the 19th century. For this reason, throughout the year, this magazine published articles on subjects as diverse as...

Transitions from outcrossing to selfing have been a frequent evolutionary shift in plants and clearly play a role in species divergence. However, many questions remain about the initial mechanistic basis of reproductive isolation during the evolution of selfing. For instance, how important are pre-zygotic pre-pollination mechanisms (e.g. changes in phenology and pollinator visitation) in maintaining reproductive isolation between newly arisen selfing populations and their outcrossing ancestors? To test whether changes in phenology and pollinator visitation...

Recent research suggests that nitrogen (N) cycling microbes are important for coral holobiont functioning. In particular, coral holobionts may acquire bioavailable N via prokaryotic dinitrogen (N2) fixation or remove excess N via denitrification activity. However, our understanding of environmental drivers on these processes in hospite remains limited. Employing the strong seasonality of the central Red Sea, this study assessed the effects of environmental parameters on the proportional abundances of N cycling microbes associated with the...

A field study was conducted to evaluate the effects of associated mycorrhization type on tree-tree interactions using the framework of the MyDiv tree diversity experiment established at the Bad Lauchstädt Experimental Research Station of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) (Saxony-Anhalt, Germany). Inorganic and organic net N uptake capacity was quantified in fine roots of AM (i.e. Acer pseudoplatanus L., Fraxinus excelsior L., and Prunus avium L.) as well as EM associated tree species...

The nutritional diversity of resources can affect the adaptive evolution of consumer metabolism and consumer diversification. The omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA; 20:5n-3) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; 22:6n-3) have a high potential to affect consumer fitness, through their widespread effects on reproduction, growth, and survival. However, few studies consider the evolution of fatty acid metabolism within an ecological context. In the paper associated with this dataset, we document the extensive diversity in...

Self-fertilization inherently restricts gene flow by reducing the fraction of offspring that can be produced by inter-population matings. Therefore, mating system transitions from outcrossing to selfing could result in reproductive isolation between selfing and outcrossing lineages and provide a starting point for speciation. In newly diverged lineages, for example after a transition to selfing, further reproductive isolation can be caused by a variety of prezygotic and postzygotic mechanisms that operate before, during, and after pollination....

Understanding the ecological factors that shape geographic range limits and the evolutionary constraints that prevent populations from adaptively evolving beyond these limits is an unresolved question. Here, we investigated why the euryhaline fish, Poecila reticulata, is confined to freshwater within its native range, despite being tolerant of brackish water. We hypothesized that competitive interactions with a close relative, Poecilia picta, in brackish water prevents P. reticulata from colonizing brackish water. Using a combination of field...

Flying over the open sea is energetically costly for terrestrial birds. Despite this, over-water journeys of many birds, sometimes hundreds of kilometers long, are uncovered by bio-logging technology. To understand how these birds afford their flights over the open sea, we investigated the role of atmospheric conditions, specifically wind and uplift, in subsidizing over-water flight at the global scale. We first established that ∆T, the temperature difference between sea surface and air, is a meaningful...

Mutation supply can influence eco-evolutionary dynamics in important ways which have received little attention. Mutation supply determines key features of population genetics, such as the pool of adaptive mutations, evolutionary pathways available, and importance of processes such as clonal interference. The resultant trait evolutionary dynamics, in turn, can alter population size and species interactions. However, controlled experiments testing for the importance of mutation supply on rapid adaptation and thereby population and community dynamics are lacking....

All organisms struggle to make sense of environmental stimuli in order to maximize their fitness. For animals, single cells and superorganisms responses to stimuli are generally proportional to stimulus ratios – a phenomenon described by Weber’s Law. However, Weber’s Law has not yet been used to predict how plants respond to stimuli generated from their symbiotic partners. Here, we develop a model for quantitatively predicting the carbon (C) allocation ratios into symbionts that provide nutrients...

Species losses and local extinctions are alarmingly common, frequently as a consequence of habitat destruction. Nevertheless, many intact habitats also face species losses, most likely due to environmental changes. However, the exact drivers, and why they affect some species more than others in apparently intact habitats, are still poorly understood. Addressing these questions requires data on changes in occurrence frequency of many species, and comparisons of the responses of those species to experimental manipulations of...

Organisms at the base of aquatic food webs synthesize essential nutrients, such as omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA), which are transferred to consumers at higher trophic levels. Many consumers, requiring n-3 long-chain (LC) PUFA, such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), have limited ability to bioconvert them from the essential dietary precursor α-linolenic acid (ALA) and thus rely on dietary provision of LC-PUFA. We investigated LC-PUFA metabolism in freshwater zooplankton using stable...

Das DILA-S ist ein neues Diagnostikinstrument zur Untersuchung von Gliedmaßen-Apraxie. Mit Hilfe der klassischen Testverfahren Imitation von Handstellungen und Pantomime von Werkzeuggebrauch kann das Vorliegen einer Gliedmaßen-Apraxie geprüft werden. Zusätzlich werden in diesem Testverfahren Aufgaben zur tatsächlichen Nutzung von unbekannten und bekannten Werkzeugen eingeführt. Hiermit soll der Einfluss der Apraxie auf das tägliche Leben der Patienten anschaulich dargestellt und untersucht werden. Mit Hilfe einer Gruppe von 82 gesunden Personen wurden Normwerte für jeden einzelnen Test...

Plant belowground organs perform essential functions, including water and nutrient uptake, anchorage, vegetative reproduction and recruitment of mutualistic soil microbiota. Recently, multivariate analyses showed that root traits of species can largely be linked to a ‘conservation’ and a ‘collaboration’ gradient. Here, we tested whether this species-level bidimensional belowground trait space also exists at the community level in grasslands. Furthermore, we tested whether the position of grassland communities in belowground trait space relates to environmental variables....

This dataset contains data on the cultivated alien and native flora of Southern Africa associated with data on geographic origins, growth form, functional traits, and naturalization status extracted from different data sources described in Omer, A. et al. 2021. Characteristics of the naturalized flora of Southern Africa largely reflect the non-random introduction of alien species for cultivation– Ecography. doi: 10.1111/ecog.05669. It is frequently overlooked, however, that patterns in origin, phylogeny, and traits of naturalized alien...