HIGHLIGHTSIn an abortive ovary of hazel, an integument seldom differentiated and a mature embryo sac never developed.In an abortive ovary of hazel, pollen tube growth was arrested at the style base about 40 days after blooming. Thus, fertilization of the ovule was precluded.Ovary abortion in the four hybrid cultivars was indicated to be associated with insufficient resource availability to supp...

In the anthers of flowering plants, gymnosperms, and seed ferns, tiny (¡1 mm) granules might occur on the radial and innermost tangential wall of secretory tapetum cells. These sporopollenin granules develop simultaneously with the pollen exine and are called orbicules or Ubisch bodies. The present paper focuses on two quite different topics associated with orbicules. The morphological and ultr...

The effect of litter on seedling establishment can influence species richness in plant communities. The effect of litter depends on amount, and also on litter type, but relatively little is known about the species-specific effects of litter. We conducted a factorial greenhouse experiment to examine the effect of litter type, using two woody species that commonly co-occur in boreonemoral forest-...

improvement of one trait on its own will affect the performance of other traits because ofgenotypic correlations between traits. index selection is one of the tools used by plant breedersto overcome this problem. the purpose of this paper is to evaluate selection indices developedfor improving grain yield in rice (oryza sativa l.). forty-nine rice genotypes were cultivated attonekabon rice rese...

To determine whether the pathogenic Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia spielmanii is adapted exclusively to garden dormice, we compared the reservoir competence of various rodent species for this spirochete, including sympatric and peridomestic rodents. The different kinds of rodents varied in their attractiveness to nymphal ticks and their level of susceptibility to tick-borne B. spielmanii infe...

Iris recognition has been acknowledged as the most accurate method in biometrics that is one of main automated identification technologies. The iris image quality and iris verification of eyes in dark brown, regular brown, hazel, green, and blue was tested. The effects of eyeglasses and contact lenses on the iris image quality score and iris verification were investigated, respectively. The inv...

The development of appropriate wildlife survey techniques is essential to promote effective and efficient monitoring of species of conservation concern. Here, we demonstrate the utility of two rapid-assessment, non-invasive methods to detect the presence of elusive, small, arboreal animals. We use the hazel dormouse, Muscardinus avellanarius, a rodent of conservation concern, as our focal speci...