background and objectives: cold stress is one of the most important limiting factor for growth and development of grasses in temperate regions. freezing tolerance is highly different between plant species and between regions. the importance of grasses is due to widespread application in lawn beautifying, animal feeding, and erosion control. there are many differences between grass species in re...

Abstract Outbreaks of defoliating insects in low‐diversity tropical forests occur infrequently but provide valuable insights about outbreak ecology temperate environments and general. We investigated an extensive the endemic koa moth ( Scotorythra paludicola ), which defoliated trees Acacia ) over a third their range on Hawai‘i Island during 2013 2014. At Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge...

In grasses such as rice or maize, the distribution of genic GC content is well known to be bimodal. It is mainly driven by GC content at third codon positions (GC3 for short). This feature is thought to be specific to grasses as closely related species like banana have a unimodal GC3 distribution. GC3 is associated with numerous genomics features and uncovering the origin of this peculiar distr...

The ability of warm-grown leaves to acclimate their photosynthetic machinery to low, non-freezing temperature was compared for contrasting species of grasses and trees. All trees (Betula pubescens, Salix sp. and Picea abies), and young plants of one of the grasses (Hordeum vulgare) showed acclimation of photosynthesis while the other two grasses (Phalaris arundinacea and Festuca ovina) did not....

With an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events, plants are likely to reach their thermal limits and show slower growth or increased mortality. We investigated differences amongst coastal native and invasive shrubs and grasses to investigate if particular species might be more at risk in the future. Using an ecologically relevant experimental set of heat waves over a mont...

Native grasses are increasingly popular and valuable tools for revegetation, erosion control, and wildlife habitat improvement. Many have unique features and benefits that make them advantageous over certain exotic and introduced grasses. In the field of ecological restoration, they are a critical and required component of the target plant community, ecosystem, or natural habitat. A number of n...

Most studies examining endophytic fungi associated with grasses (Poaceae) have focused on agronomically important species in managed ecosystems or on wild grasses in subtropical, temperate and boreal grasslands. However grasses first arose in tropical forests, where they remain a significant and diverse component of understory and forest-edge communities. To provide a broader context for unders...

Almost all that is known about the transition to flowering in grasses is based on studies of agronomic species. The grain produced by two tropically derived grasses, maize (Zea mays) and rice (Oryza sativa), and a temperate origin grass, wheat (Triticum aestivum), provides most of the world’s food. Other grasses, such as barley (Hordeum vulgare), ryegrass species (Lolium spp.), sorghum (Sorghum...

Palatable food is rich in fat and/or sucrose. In this study we examined the long-term effects of such diets on food intake, body weight, adiposity and circulating levels of the satiety peptide leptin and the hunger peptide ghrelin. The experiments involved rats and mice and lasted 5 weeks. In rats, we examined the effect of diets rich in fat and/or sucrose and in mice the effect of a high fat d...

Six classes of current herbaceous and woody forage were collected seasonally from a 5-yearold mixed loblolly (Pinus taeda) -shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata) plantation (in Texas) and subjected to nutrient analyses and nylon bag dry-matter digestion trials. Forages were most nutritious and digestible in the spring when tissues were succulent and growing rapidly. Browse leaves and twig tips were t...