Germination is the first stage in plant life cycle confronted with soil salinity and because of expanded saline areas around the world it is important to determine salt effects on this stage. In this study, we report an in vitro procedure for studying germination of Acacia spp. under salt stress with different NaCl and KCl concentrations. Seeds of Acacia tortilis (Forssk.) Hayne and Acacia oerf...

The foundation of many plant-ant mutualisms is ant protection of plants from herbivores in exchange for food and/or shelter. While the role of symbiotic ants in protecting plants from stem- and leaf-feeding herbivores has been intensively studied, the relationship between ant defense and measures of plant fitness has seldom been quantified. We studied ant aggression, damage by herbivores and se...

In this paper we report results of skin prick tests (SPT) using pollen extracts on 200 patients with clinical symptoms of asthma, and results of a parallel study in which pollen was collected and classified over a period of 18 months. The patients were outpatients from the University Hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, while the pollen grains were collected with a spore trap placed in the campu...

Cyperus rotundus, Caesalpinia bonducella, Tinospora cordifolia, Gardenia gummifera, Ailanthus excelsa, Acacia arabica, Embelia ribes and Ventilago maderspatana from Melghat forest were screened for their antibacterial potential against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus vulgaris, Salmonella typhi, Shigella flexneri, Salmonella paratyphi, Salmonella typhimuri...

Environmental pollution with toxic metals continues to be a serious global concern. Pollution of soils with toxic trace metals have increased considerably since the onset of industrialization and urbanization (Nriagu, 1990; Senwo and Tazisong, 2004). Trace metals, either derived from natural inputs or anthropogenic emissions, are ubiquitous in the global environment (Blackmore, 1998; Muohi et a...

Saline or alkaline soils present a strong stress on plants that together may be even more deleterious than alone. Australia’s soils are old and contain large, sometimes overlapping, areas of high salt and alkalinity. Acacia and other Australian plant lineages have evolved in this stressful soil environment and present an opportunity to understand the evolution of salt and alkalinity tolerance. ...

We quantified the fruit set of four Acacia spp. inside and outside of long-term experimental exclosures in order to examine the fitness consequences of herbivory by large mammals. We found a considerable interspecific variation in the reproductive fitness costs of herbivory in four African Acacia spp. Acacia nilotica and A. brevispica respond to protection from large mammalian herbivores by gre...

Contarinia manii (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) is described as a new species, on the basis of adults reared from remarkable 'cylinder-piston' galls formed from contiguous leaflets of Acacia ferruginea D.C. in southern India. These galls have been known since 1952 but adults were not reared until 2007. The new species, and another Indian species, Contarinia ramachandrani (Mani), induce similar but di...

Our knowledge of the rhizosphere bacterial communities in deep soils and the role of Eucalyptus and Acacia on the structure of these communities remains very limited. In this study, we targeted the bacterial community along a depth profile (0 to 800 cm) and compared community structure in monospecific or mixed plantations of Acacia mangium and Eucalyptus grandis. We applied quantitative PCR (qP...

Dry eucalypt forests are believed to be highly fire tolerant, but their response to fire is not well quantified. We measured the effect of high-severity fires in dry eucalypt forest in the Tasmanian Midlands, the driest region on the island. We compared stand structures and fuel loads in long-unburnt (>15 years since fire) and recently burnt (<5 years since fire) sites that had been completely ...