The Florida harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius, is one of many ant species and genera that stores large numbers of seeds in damp, underground chambers for later consumption. A comparison of the sizes of seeds recovered from storage chambers with those of seed husks discarded following consumption revealed that the used seeds are far smaller than stored seeds. This difference in use-rate was con...

The effect of artificial gravity on the growth of a microorganism, Dictyostelium discoideum, was studied and the following results were obtained: (a) Germination efficiency increased as gravity increased up to 3 gravities. (b) Cell differentiation was influenced by gravity. Retardation of spore formation or reduction in the spore fraction was observed at hypergravity. (c) Fruiting bodies were t...

White mold is an agricultural disease caused by the fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, which affects important crops. There are different ways of controlling this organism, but none provides inhibition of its resistance structures (sclerotia). Nanotechnology offers promising applications in agricultural area. Here, silver nanoparticles were biogenically synthesized using the fungus Trichoderma ha...

Germination experiments with specific germination mutants of Bacillus subtilis, including a newly isolated mutant affected in pressure-induced germination, suggest that a pressure of 100 MPa triggers the germination cascades that are induced by the nutrient germinant alanine (Ala) and by a mixture of asparagine, glucose, fructose, and potassium ions (AGFK), by activating the receptors for alani...

Manufactured nanoparticles (NPs) are increasingly being used for commercial purposes and certain NP types have been shown to have broad spectrum antibacterial activity. In contrast, their activities against fungi and fungi-like oomycetes are less studied. Here, we examined the potential of two types of commercially available Zn NPs (Zn NPs and ZnO NPs) to inhibit spore germination and infectivi...

Germination timing influences plant fitness, and its sensitivity to temperature may cause it to change as climate shifts. These changes are likely to be complex because temperatures that occur during seed maturation and temperatures that occur post-dispersal interact to define germination timing. We used the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana to determine how flowering time (which defines seed...

Seed germination is a crucial stage in the life history of a species because it represents the pathway from adult to offspring, and it can affect the distribution and abundance of species in communities. In this study, we examined the effects of phylogenetic, life history and environmental factors on seed germination of 134 common species from an alpine/subalpine meadow on the eastern Tibetan P...