From the perspective of a specialist herbivore, how homogenous are individual tree crowns as patches of habitat? We partitioned variation in physical and chemical host leaf traits and in the abundance and performance of a specialist oak leaf miner, Tischeria ekebladella , into variation at different hierarchical levels. For the phenolic contents of the leaves, we examined variation among oak st...

We compared the tolerance of hiba (Thujopsis dolabrata var. hondae Makino), beech (Fagus crenata Blume) and oak (Quercus serrata Thunb.) to creep and glide pressures of snow. The top/root (T/R) ratio of hiba trees ranged between 7.1 and 41.4 compared with 3.6-10.9 and 1.0-12.4 for beech and oak, respectively. However, if prostrate stems bearing adventitious roots were included in the root compo...

During recent years, oak decline has been widely spread across Brant’s oak (Quercus Brantii Lindl.) stands in the Zagros Mountains, Western Iran, which caused large-area forest dieback in several sites. Mapping the intensity and spatial distribution of forest dieback is essential for developing management and control strategies. This study evaluated a range of geostatistical and interpolation m...

The ambrosia beetle, Platypus koryoensis (Murayama), vectors the Korean oak wilt (KOW) pathogen, Raffaelea quercus-mongolicae K.H. Kim, Y.J. Choi, & H.D. Shin, in Korea, which is highly lethal to Mongolian oak, Quercus mongolica Fisch., and is considered a major threat to forest ecosystem health. We characterized the attack pattern of P. koryoensis along the lower trunk of 240 Mongolian oaks i...

Anthracnose is one of the most common and important foliage diseases of shade trees in Iowa. Symptoms of anthracnose are often referred to as “leaf blights” or “leaf spots” and are most serious on sycamore, ash, maple, white and bur oak, and walnut. Linden, hickory, elm, red and black oak, and other deciduous trees also are susceptible, although anthracnose is less common and damaging on these ...

The natural history of the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is poorly understood and confounded by domestication. In nature, S. cerevisiae and its undomesticated relative S. paradoxus are usually found on the bark of oak trees, a habitat very different from wine or other human fermentations. It is unclear whether the oak trees are really the primary habitat for wild yeast, or whether this a...

Sudden oak death, caused by Phytophthora ramorum, has resulted in high levels of coast live oak (CLO) mortality. However, some CLO survive in areas with high disease pressure and may thus be resistant. We tested the hypothesis that such field-resistant trees contain constitutively higher levels of phenolics than susceptible trees. Phloem was sampled from the trunks of two groups of trees (one p...

—Unsuccessful oak (Quercus spp.) regeneration could result in losses of the rarer portions of the midwestern North American oak savanna region, including the tall grass oak savannas. We undertook this study to understand the effects of restoration on promoting growth of naturally occurring Q. alba seedlings in a degraded tall grass oak savanna in Iowa, USA. Initial restoration efforts, which in...

We evaluated county planning policies and procedures to determine what protection is provided to oak woodlands during the land development process. We selected three Sierra Nevada counties to do a pilot assessment: El Dorado, Placer and Madera. The assessment methodology included three components: 1) analysis of county plans, policies, guidelines, and ordinances to determine if oak woodland man...

The San Francisco Bay Area was home to some of the most celebrated valley oak lands in California, their grandeur much chronicled by early visitors and residents. Despite extensive loss, there remains substantial local interest in their preservation and restoration, necessitating an understanding of historical distribution and subsequent change. Assembling and interpreting historical and curren...