The independent origins of associations between morphology and ecology are often viewed as evidence of adaptation (e.g., Larson and Losos, 1996). There are many examples of morphological and ecological convergence among bats that are linked to diet. One of the most widely cited instances of trophic convergence is the independent evolution of plant-visiting in the families Pteropodidae (Old Worl...

Accurate high-resolution 3D models are essential for a noninvasive analysis of phenotypic characteristics of plants. Leaf surface areas, fruit volumes and leaf inclination angles are typically of interest. This work presents a globally optimal 3D geometry reconstruction method that is specialized to high-resolutions and is thus suitable to reconstruct thin structures typically occuring in the g...

Genomic approaches have accelerated the study of quantitative genetics underlying phenotypic variation. These approaches associate genome-scale analyses such as transcript profiling with targeted phenotypes such as measurements of specific metabolites. Additionally, these approaches have potential utility in identifying uncharacterized networks/pathways. However, little is known about the compl...

The effects of herbivores and diversity on plant communities have been studied separately but rarely in combination. We conducted two concurrent experiments over 3 years to examine how tree seedling diversity, density and herbivory affected forest regeneration. One experiment factorially manipulated plant diversity (one versus 15 species) and the presence/absence of deer (Odocoileus virginianus...

This chapter presents a graph-based approach to automatically categorize plant and insect species. In this approach, the plant leaf and insect objects are segmented from the background semi-automatically. For each object, the contour is then extracted, so that the contour points are used to form the vertices of a graph. We propose a vectorization method to recover clique histogram vectors from ...

Programmed cell death (PCD) functions in the developmental remodeling of leaf shape in higher plants, a process analogous to digit formation in the vertebrate limb. In this study, we provide a cytological characterization of the time course of events as PCD remodels young expanding leaves of the lace plant. Tonoplast rupture is the first PCD event in this system, indicated by alterations in cyt...

A long-standing question in biology is how a group of primordial cells can give rise to complex organs. A new study finds that, in an ancient land plant, growth rate variation patterned by meristematic cells primarily determines shape.

Plants have undergone 470 million years of evolution on land and different groups have distinct body shapes. Liverworts are the most ancient land plant lineage and have a flattened, creeping body (the thallus), which grows from apical cells in an invaginated "notch." The genetic mechanisms regulating liverwort shape are almost totally unknown, yet they provide a blueprint for the radiation of l...

Leaves can be categorized based on various physical attributes but the most popular attribute is shape. For example, we can use „shape‟ as a criterion to differentiate between a mango leaf and a banana leaf. Ideally this criterion can be of immense help to the user of an image database that stores, for instance, the images of different kinds of leaves. The user would often wish to retrieve imag...

Plant breeders have focused on improving plant architecture as an effective means to increase crop yield. Here, we identify the main-effect quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for plant shape-related traits in rice (Oryza sativa) and find candidate genes by applying whole genome re-sequencing of two parental cultivars using next-generation sequencing. To identify QTLs influencing plant shape, we ana...