For many plant species, seed dispersal is one of the most important spatial demographic processes. We used a diffusion approximation and a spatially explicit simulation model to explore the mechanisms generating seed dispersal kernels for plants dispersed by frugivores. The simulation model combined simple movement and foraging rules with seed gut passage time, plant distribution, and fruit pro...

BACKGROUND Camellia sinensis is the source of tea leaves and it is an economic crop now grown around the World. Tea seed oil has been used for cooking in China and other Asian countries for more than a thousand years. Tea is the most widely consumed beverages after water in the world. It is mainly produced in Asia, central Africa, and exported throughout the World. Some engineering properties (...

'Lovran Marron' is the only known traditional Croatian variety of the sweet chestnut. The objective of this study is to specify qualitative and quantitative morphological characteristics and to analyze the chemical composition of the 'Lovran Marron' fruits as well as to compare them to Marušnjak fruits (trees from the 'Lovran Marron' seed) and fruits from the local natural sweet chestnut popula...

The pericarp consist in the transformed wall of the ovary that covers the seed and acts as a protection for the embryo and endosperm. It takes the place of the seed coats or integuments in the ordinary seeds, which in maize are reduced to unnoticeable remnants in the mature kernel. A thin, suberized nucellar membrane derived from the outer epidermal wall of the nucellus persists as a continuous...

1. In plants, long-distance dispersal (LDD) is a widespread phenomenon of great importance, especially in spatial dynamics such as in metapopulations, invasions and migration. Much has become known about the mechanisms underlying LDD by wind, but selective release mechanisms have received little attention. Recent papers call for particular effort in clarification of the seed release stage of th...

The term kernel is derived from a word that can be traced back to c. 1000 and originally meant a seed (contained within a fruit) or the softer (usually edible) part contained within the hard shell of a nut or stone-fruit. The former meaning is now obsolete. It was first used in mathematics when it was defined for integral equations in which the kernel is known and the other function(s) unknown,...

The Kangaroo Island glossy black-cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus lathami halmaturinus) is an endangered subspecies that feeds almost entirely on the kernels of drooping sheoak (Allocasuarina verticillata). Hence, it highly susceptible to changes in quantity or quality A. verticillata. Fire has potential severely impact feeding habitat island, but since verticillata serotinous, partially reliant fire ...

Lipid droplets (LDs) are composed of a monolayer of phospholipids (PLs), surrounding a core of non-polar lipids that consist mostly of triacylglycerols (TAGs) and to a lesser extent diacylglycerols. In this study, lipidome analysis illustrated striking differences in non-polar lipids and PL species between LDs derived from Triadica sebifera seed kernels and mesocarp. In mesocarp LDs, the most a...