Dormancy of alpine and subalpine perennial forbs

6170 Alpine and subalpine calcareous grasslands

Environmental mycobacteria from alpine and subalpine habitats.

Abstract Mycobacteria were isolated from a variety of materials such as soil, peat, humus, tufa, sphagnum, and wood, collected in alpine and subalpine habitats. Mycobacteria, including Mycobacterium kansasii, Mycobacterium malmoense, Mycobacterium szulgai, Mycobacterium gordonae, Mycobacterium terrae, Mycobacterium chelonae, and Mycobacterium fortuitum were recovered from 69 of 81 (85%) samples...

Community structure of ectomycorrhizal fungi across an alpine/subalpine ecotone

In order to assess changes in the community structure of ectomycorrhizal fungi across the tree line, data on distributions of fungi and their host plants, as well as on edaphic factors and stand age, were collected at two montane sites in the Front Range of the Canadian Rockies. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) was used to explore relationships between fungal species composition and envi...

Senescence, dormancy and tillering in perennial C4 grasses.

Perennial, temperate, C4 grasses, such as switchgrass and miscanthus have been tabbed as sources of herbaceous biomass for the production of green fuels and chemicals based on a number of positive agronomic traits. Although there is important literature on the management of these species for biomass production on marginal lands, numerous aspects of their biology are as yet unexplored at the mol...

A plurality of causal mechanisms explains the persistence or transience of soil seed banks

Annual forbs form short-term persistent soil seed banks whereas perennial grasses form mostly transient ones in the central Monte desert. A conceptual framework predicts that annual forb seeds will have primary dormancy, whereas perennial grasses will have low dormancy levels. We assessed whether the dormancy traits of four annual forb species and five perennial grass species can account for th...