Six strains of a novel yeast species were isolated from Nothofagus species trees in native forests in Patagonia, Argentina. The strains were isolated from bark, fluxes and the ectomycorrhizospheric soil fraction of Nothofagus antarctica, Nothofagus nervosa and Nothofagus pumilio. Analysis of the D1/D2 large-subunit rDNA sequences indicated that the novel species belonged to the genus Lachancea ...

Nothofagus (southern beech), with an 80-million-year-old fossil record, has become iconic as a plant genus whose ancient Gondwanan relationships reach back into the Cretaceous era. Closely associated with Wegener's theory of "Kontinentaldrift", Nothofagus has been regarded as the "key genus in plant biogeography". This paradigm has the New Zealand species as passengers on a Moa's Ark that rafte...

The obligate, biotrophic association among species of the fungal genus Cyttaria and their hosts in the plant genus Nothofagus often is cited as a classic example of cophylogeny and is one of the few cases in which the biogeography of a fungus is commonly mentioned or included in biogeographic analyses. In this study molecular and morphological data are used to examine hypotheses regarding the c...

Plant functional traits capture important variation in plant strategy and function. Recent literature has revealed that within-species variation in traits is greater than previously supposed. However, we still have a poor understanding of how intraspecific variation is coordinated among different traits, and how it is driven by environment. We quantified intraspecific variation in wood density ...

Plants and insects are key components of terrestrial ecosystems and insect herbivory is the most important type of interaction in these ecosystems. This study presents the first analysis of associations between plants and insects for the early Miocene Hindon Maar fossil lagerstätte, Otago, New Zealand. A total of 584 fossil angiosperm leaves representing 24 morphotypes were examined to determin...

Subfossil wood fragments up to 10 cm long and 2 cm in diameter recovered from a locality thought on the basis of diatom deposits to be upper Pliocene-lower Pleistocene (Oliver Bluffs, Sirius Formation, 85°1 O'S., between 1800 and 1900 m in the Transantarctic Mountains) were sectioned for identification. Degradation prevented observation of some wood features, but others were well preserved. All...

Using data from Lending Club and Prosper, the two largest peer-to-peer lenders in the U.S., we provide evidence of the winner’s curse in the online personal lending market. Borrowers who were rejected by a competitor are twice as likely to default as borrowers who were not rejected, conditional on receiving the same contract. Borrowers are also more likely to default when offered higher interes...

Citation: Grießinger J, Langhamer L, Schneider C, Saß B-L, Steger D, Skvarca P, Braun MH, Meier WJ-H, Srur AM and Hochreuther P (2018) Imprints of Climate Signals in a 204 Year δ18O Tree-Ring Record of Nothofagus pumilio From Perito Moreno Glacier, Southern Patagonia (50S). Front. Earth Sci. 6:27. doi: 10.3389/feart.2018.00027 Imprints of Climate Signals in a 204 Year δ18O Tree-Ring Record of N...

During a survey of ophiostomatoid fungi in native forests of southern Argentina, several isolates of Huntiella species were obtained from Nothofagus trees. Sequences of multiple gene regions were used to identify these fungi, and their pathogenicity was tested on N. pumilio and N. dombeyi. Phylogenetic analyses revealed a novel taxon described here as H. decorticans sp. nov. Inoculations on N. ...