Search results for "biologie"
showing 10 items of 256 documents
Priming: getting ready for battle
2006
International audience; Infection of plants by necrotizing pathogens or colonization of plant roots with certain beneficial microbes causes the induction of a unique physiological state called “priming.” The primed state can also be induced by treatment of plants with various natural and synthetic compounds. Primed plants display either faster, stronger, or both activation of the various cellular defense responses that are induced following attack by either pathogens or insects or in response to abiotic stress. Although the phenomenon has been known for decades, most progress in our understanding of priming has been made over the past few years. Here, we summarize the current knowledge of p…
The Ectocarpus genome and the independent evolution of multicellularity in brown algae
2010
Brown algae (Phaeophyceae) are complex photosynthetic organisms with a very different evolutionary history to green plants, to which they are only distantly related. These seaweeds are the dominant species in rocky coastal ecosystems and they exhibit many interesting adaptations to these, often harsh, environments. Brown algae are also one of only a small number of eukaryotic lineages that have evolved complex multicellularity (Fig. 1). We report the 214 million base pair (Mbp) genome sequence of the filamentous seaweed Ectocarpus siliculosus (Dillwyn) Lyngbye, a model organism for brown algae, closely related to the kelps (Fig. 1). Genome features such as the presence of an extended set of…
The Bruce effect revisited: is pregnancy termination in female rodents an adaptation to ensure breeding success after male turnover in low densities?
2017
Pregnancy termination after encountering a strange male, the Bruce effect, is regarded as a counterstrategy of female mammals towards anticipated infanticide. While confirmed in caged rodent pairs, no verification for the Bruce effect existed from experimental field populations of small rodents. We suggest that the effect may be adaptive for breeding rodent females only under specific conditions related to populations with cyclically fluctuating densities. We investigated the occurrence of delay in birth date after experimental turnover of the breeding male under different population composition in bank voles (Myodes glareolus) in large outdoor enclosures: one-male–multiple-females (n = 6 p…
Discrimination of fish populations using parasites: Random Forests on a ‘predictable’ host-parasite system
2010
SUMMARYWe address the effect of spatial scale and temporal variation on model generality when forming predictive models for fish assignment using a new data mining approach, Random Forests (RF), to variable biological markers (parasite community data). Models were implemented for a fish host-parasite system sampled along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Spain and were validated using independent datasets. We considered 2 basic classification problems in evaluating the importance of variations in parasite infracommunities for assignment of individual fish to their populations of origin: multiclass (2–5 population models, using 2 seasonal replicates from each of the populations) and 2…
Bayesian spatio-temporal approach to identifying fish nurseries by validating persistence areas
2015
Spatial and temporal closures of fish nursery areas to fishing have recently been recognized as useful tools for efficient fisheries management, as they preserve the reproductive potential of populations and increase the recruitment of target species. In order to identify and locate potential nursery areas for spatio-temporal closures, a solid understanding of species− environment relationships is needed, as well as spatial identification of fish nurseries through the application of robust analyses. One way to achieve knowledge of fish nurseries is to analyse the persistence of recruitment hotspots. In this study, we propose the comparison of different spatiotemporal model structures to ass…
Abundance–variance and abundance–occupancy relationships in a marine host–parasite system: The importance of taxonomy and ecology of transmission
2011
Abundance-occupancy and abundance-variance relationships are two of the most general macroecological patterns capturing essential fundamentals of the structuring of species distributions and are widely documented for free-living animal and plant species populations at different spatial scales. However, empirical data for parasites have been gathered using appropriate sampling designs only recently. We performed analyses across species of the variation in infection parameters and patterns of aggregation of the most widespread parasites in the marine sparid fish Boops boops across seven localities of two marine biogeographical regions, the North East Atlantic and the Mediterranean. We used a …
Reciprocal interactions between plants and fluorescent pseudomonads in relation to iron in the rhizosphere
2013
SPE EA Section 15 : Engineering the rhizosphere: The "biased rhizosphere" concept Ouvrage en 2 volumes Résumé du livre : Molecular Microbial Ecology of the Rhizosphere covers current knowledge on the molecular basis of plant-microbe interactions in the rhizosphere. Also included in the book are both reviews and research-based chapters describing experimental materials and methods. Edited by a leader in the field, with contributions from authors around the world, Molecular Microbial Ecology of the Rhizosphere brings together the most up-to-date research in this expanding area, and will be a valuable resource for molecular microbiologists and plant soil scientists, as well as upper level stud…
The Selaginella Genome Identifies Genetic Changes Associated with the Evolution of Vascular Plants
2011
International audience; Vascular plants appeared ~410 million years ago, then diverged into several lineages of which only two survive: the euphyllophytes (ferns and seed plants) and the lycophytes. We report here the genome sequence of the lycophyte Selaginella moellendorffii (Selaginella), the first nonseed vascular plant genome reported. By comparing gene content in evolutionarily diverse taxa, we found that the transition from a gametophyte- to a sporophyte-dominated life cycle required far fewer new genes than the transition from a nonseed vascular to a flowering plant, whereas secondary metabolic genes expanded extensively and in parallel in the lycophyte and angiosperm lineages. Sela…
Priorities for research in soil ecology
2017
The ecological interactions that occur in and with soil are of consequence in many ecosystems on the planet. These interactions provide numerous essential ecosystem services, and the sustainable management of soils has attracted increasing scientific and public attention. Although soil ecology emerged as an independent field of research many decades ago, and we have gained important insights into the functioning of soils, there still are fundamental aspects that need to be better understood to ensure that the ecosystem services that soils provide are not lost and that soils can be used in a sustainable way. In this perspectives paper, we highlight some of the major knowledge gaps that shoul…
Modelling sensitive elasmobranchs habitat
2013
Basic information on the distribution and habitat preferences of ecologically important species is essential for their management and protection. In the Mediterranean Sea there is increasing concern over elasmobranch species because their biological (ecological) characteristics make them highly vulnerable to fishing pressure. Their removal could affect the structure and function of marine ecosystems, inducing changes in trophic interactions at the community level due to the selective elimination of predators or prey species, competitors and species replacement. In this study Bayesian hierarchical spatial models are used to map the sensitive habitats of the three most caught elasmobranch spe…