This paper aims to identify the problems regarding the evaluation of ozone (and ozone-like) symptoms, by examining the results of the 4th UN/ECE ICP-Forests Intercalibration Course for the assessment of ozone-induced visible symptoms. Trees, shrubs and herbaceous species were evaluated in a tree nursery, at Lattecaldo (Switzerland) and under open field conditions at Moggio (Italy). The main fin...

Changes in growth forms frequently accompany plant adaptive radiations, including páramo-a high-elevation treeless habitat type of the northern Andes. We tested whether diverse group of Senecio inhabiting montane forests and páramo represented such growth form changes. We also investigated the role of Andean geography and environment in structuring genetic variation of this group. We sampled 10...

Can CSR theory, in conjunction with a recently proposed globally calibrated CSR ordination ("StrateFy"), using only three easily measured leaf traits (leaf area, specific leaf area and leaf dry matter content) predict the functional signature of herbaceous vegetation along experimentally manipulated gradients of soil fertility and disturbance? To determine this, we grew 37 herbaceous species in...

The persuasive evidence of closing forest canopies across the western United States during the last century suggests that primary energy production in forest ecosystems is shifting from herbaceous and shrubby vegetation to trees. This conclusion is supported by established inverse relationships between tree crown density and forage in the form of shrubs and herbaceous plants. Shrub and herbaceo...

BACKGROUND Herbaceous plants are common vegetal species generally exposed, for a limited period of time, to bioavailable environmental pollutants. Heavy metals contamination is the most common form of environmental pollution. Herbaceous plants have never been used as natural bioindicators of environmental pollution, in particular to monitor the amount of heavy metals in soil. In this study, we ...

We examined bird-habitat relationships within and across a range of aspen habitats in four major watersheds in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains of California and Nevada to identify habitat features of importance to aspen-breeding birds. Using point counts and vegetation assessments from 462 individual stations between 2001 and 2003 allowed us to investigate important habitat features at wate...

The curvature of the helical trajectory formed by herbaceous stem-twiners has been hypothesized to be constant on uniformly sized cylindrical supports and remains constant on different supports varying in diameter. However, experimental studies on the constant curvature hypothesis have been very limited. Here, we tested the hypothesis in a series of experiments on five herbaceous stem-twiners (...

the effect of soil and phanerogam characteristics on bryophytes composition, richness, abundance and functional groups were investigated in order to understand the factors responsible for bryophytes distribution patterns. three different sand dunes were selected: untouched, artificial sod-covered and planted by ammophila. along 10 transects perpendicular to the shore, a total of 142 permanent r...