Wind pollination was experimentally demonstrated in Linanthus parviflorus (Polemoniaceae), a predominantly beefly-pollinated, self-incompatible annual. Seed set in plants enclosed in mesh tents that excluded pollinators but allowed airborne pollen flow provided evidence for wind pollination, and the extent of seed set due to wind pollination was compared to that in open-pollinated controls and ...

Plant species that bear fruit often utilize expansion of an ovary (carpel) or accessory tissue as a vehicle for seed dispersal. While the seed(s) develop, the tissue(s) of the fruit follow a common progression of cell division and cell expansion, promoting growth of the fruit. Once the seed is fully developed, the fruit matures and the surrounding tissue either dries or ripens promoting the dis...

Information diffusion in networks has received a lot of recent attention. Most previous work addresses the influence maximization problem of selecting an appropriate set of seed nodes to initiate the diffusion process so that the largest number of nodes is reached. Since the seed selection problem is NP hard, most solutions are sub-optimal. Furthermore, there may be settings in which the seed n...

Iso-surface extraction is one of the most important approaches for volume rendering, and iso-contouring is one of the most effective methods for iso-surface extraction. Unlike most other methods having their search domain to be the whole dataset, iso-contouring does its search only on a relatively small subset of the original data-set. This subset, called a seed-set, has the property that every...

In this work, we look at a two-sample problem within the framework of Gaussian graphical models. When the global hypothesis of equality of two distributions is rejected, the interest is usually in localizing the source of difference. Motivated by the idea that diseases can be seen as system perturbations, and by the need to distinguish between the origin of perturbation and components affected ...

Global climate change, especially, increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and the associated increases in temperature will have significant impact on the crop production. Grain-sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] cultivar DeKalb 28E was grown at daytime maximum/nighttime minimum temperature regimes of 32/22, 36/26, 40/30 and 44/34 8C at ambient (350 mmol CO2 mol ) and elevated (700 m...

The outcome of species interactions is often difficult to predict, depending on the organisms involved and the ecological context. Nectar robbers remove nectar from flowers, often without providing pollination service, and their effects on plant reproduction vary in strength and direction. In two case studies and a meta-analysis, we tested the importance of pollen limitation and plant mating sy...

Prunella vulgaris (Lamiaceae), commonly known as selfheal, is a perennial herb with a long history of use in traditional medicine. Recent studies have found that P. vulgaris possesses anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and antibacterial properties, and it is likely that this will lead to increased commercial demand for this species. To date, research publications on P. vulgaris cultivation and genet...

In habitats where resource availability declines during the growing season, selection may favor early-flowering individuals. Under such ephemerally favorable conditions, late-blooming species (and individuals) may be particularly vulnerable to resource limitation of seed production. In California, a region prone to seasonal drought, members of the annual genus Clarkia are among the last to flow...

Apomixis evolves from a sexual background and usually is linked to polyploidization. Pseudogamous gametophytic apomicts, which require a fertilization to initiate seed development, of various ploidy levels frequently co-occur with their lower-ploid sexual ancestors, but the stability of such mixed populations is affected by reproductive interferences mediated by cross-pollination. Thereby, repr...