Increasing plant group productivity through latent genetic variation for cooperation.

Historic yield advances in the major crops have, to a large extent, been achieved by selection for improved productivity of groups of plant individuals such as high-density stands. Research suggests that such improved group productivity depends on "cooperative" traits (e.g., erect leaves, short stems) that-while beneficial to the group-decrease individual fitness under competition. This poses a problem for some traditional breeding approaches, especially when selection occurs at the level of individuals, because "selfish" traits will be selected for and reduce yield in high-density monocultures. One approach, therefore, has been to select individuals based on ideotypes with traits expected to promote group productivity. However, this approach is limited to architectural and physiological traits whose effects on growth and competition are relatively easy to anticipate. Here, we developed a general and simple method for the discovery of alleles promoting cooperation in plant stands. Our method is based on the game-theoretical premise that alleles increasing cooperation benefit the monoculture group but are disadvantageous to the individual when facing noncooperative neighbors. Testing the approach using the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, we found a major effect locus where the rarer allele was associated with increased cooperation and productivity in high-density stands. The allele likely affects a pleiotropic gene, since we find that it is also associated with reduced root competition but higher resistance against disease. Thus, even though cooperation is considered evolutionarily unstable except under special circumstances, conflicting selective forces acting on a pleiotropic gene might maintain latent genetic variation for cooperation in nature. Such variation, once identified in a crop, could rapidly be leveraged in modern breeding programs and provide efficient routes to increase yields.

Tropical shrubs living in an extreme environment show convergent ecological strategies but divergent ecophysiological strategies.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Trait-based frameworks assess plant survival strategies using different approaches. Some frameworks use functional traits to assign species to a priori defined ecological strategies. Others use functional traits as the central element of a species ecophysiological strategy. We compared these two approaches by asking: (1) what is the primary ecological strategy of three dominant co-occurring shrub species from inselbergs based on the CSR scheme, and (2) what main functional traits characterize the ecophysiological strategy of the species based on their use of carbon, water and light? METHODS: We conducted our study on a Colombian inselberg. In this extreme environment with multiple stressors (high temperatures and low resource availability), we expected all species to be stress tolerant (S in the CSR scheme) and have similar ecophysiological strategies. We measured 22 anatomical, morphological and physiological leaf traits. KEY RESULTS: The three species have convergent ecological strategies as measured by CSR (S, Acanthella sprucei; and S/CS, Mandevilla lancifolia and Tabebuia orinocensis) yet divergent resource-use strategies as measured by their functional traits. A. sprucei has the most conservative carbon use, risky water use and a shade-tolerant strategy. M. lancifolia has acquisitive carbon use, safe water use and a shade-tolerant strategy. T. orinocensis has intermediate carbon use, safe water use and a light-demanding strategy. Additionally, stomatal traits that are easy to measure are valuable to describe resource-use strategies because they are highly correlated with two physiological functions that are hard to measure: stomatal conductance and maximum photosynthesis per unit mass. CONCLUSIONS: The two approaches provide complementary information on species strategies. Plant species can co-occur in extreme environments, such as inselbergs, because they exhibit convergent primary ecological strategies but divergent ecophysiological strategies, allowing them to use limiting resources differently.

Adaptation and spatial generalization to a triaxial visuomotor perturbation in a virtual reality environment.

We explored visuomotor adaptation and spatial generalization of three-dimensional reaching movements performed in a virtual reality environment. We used a multiphase learning paradigm. First, subjects performed reaching movements to six targets without visual feedback (VF) (pre-exposure phase). Next, participants aimed at one target with veridical VF (baseline phase). Immediately after, they were required to adapt their movements to a triaxial visuomotor perturbation (horizontal, vertical, and sagittal translations) between actual hand motion and VF of hand motion in the virtual environment (learning phase). Finally, subjects aimed at the same targets as in the baseline (aftereffect) and pre-exposure phases (generalization) without VF (post-exposure phase). The results revealed spatial axis-dependent visuomotor adaptation capacities. First, subjects showed smaller intertrial variability along the horizontal compared to the sagittal and vertical axes during the baseline and learning phases. Second, although subjects were unaware of the visual distortion, they adapted their movements to each component of the triaxial perturbation. However, they showed reduced learning rate and less persistent adaptation (aftereffect) along the vertical than the horizontal and sagittal axes. Similarly, subjects transferred the newly learned visuomotor association to untrained regions of the workspace, but their average level of generalization was smaller along the vertical than the horizontal and sagittal axes. Collectively, our results suggest that adapting three-dimensional movements to a visual distortion involves distinct processes according to the specific sensorimotor integration demands of moving along each spatial axis. This finding supports the idea that the brain employs a modular decomposition strategy to simplify complex multidimensional visuomotor tasks.

Effects of biotic interactions on tropical tree performance depend on abiotic conditions.

Predicting biotic responses to environmental change requires understanding the joint effects of abiotic conditions and biotic interactions on community dynamics. One major challenge is to separate the potentially confounding effects of abiotic environmental variation and local biotic interactions on individual performance. The stress gradient hypothesis (SGH) addresses this issue directly by predicting that the effects of biotic interactions on performance become more positive as the abiotic environment becomes more stressful. It is unclear, however, how the predictions of the SGH apply to plants of differing functional strategies in diverse communities. We asked (1) how the effect of crowding on performance (growth and survival) of trees varies across a precipitation gradient, and (2) how functional strategies (as measured by two key traits: wood density and leaf mass per area, LMA) mediate average demographic rates and responses to crowding across the gradient. We built trait-based neighborhood models of growth and survival across a regional precipitation gradient where increasing precipitation is associated with reduced abiotic stress. In total, our dataset comprised ~170,000 individual trees belonging to 252 species. The effect of crowding on tree performance varied across the gradient; crowding negatively affected growth across plots and positively affected survival in the wettest plot. Functional traits mediated average demographic rates across the gradient, but we did not find clear evidence that the strength of these responses depends on species' traits. Our study lends support to the SGH and demonstrates how a trait-based perspective can advance these concepts by linking the diversity of species interactions with functional variation across abiotic gradients.

Similarities and differences in intrapopulation trait correlations of co-occurring tree species: consistent water-use relationships amid widely different correlation patterns.

PREMISE OF THE STUDY: General relationships among functional traits have been identified across species, but the forces shaping these relationships remain largely unknown. Adopting an approach from evolutionary biology, we studied similarities and differences in intrapopulation trait correlations among locally co-occurring tree species to assess the roles of constraints, phylogeny, and the environmental niche in shaping multivariate phenotypes. We tested the hypotheses (1) that intrapopulation correlations among functional traits are largely shaped by fundamental trade-offs or constraints and (2) that differences among species reflect adaptation to their environmental niches. METHODS: We compared pairwise correlations and correlation matrices of 17 key functional traits within and among temperate tree species. These traits describe three well-established trade-off dimensions characterizing interspecific relationships among physiological functions: resource acquisition and conservation; sap transport and mechanical support; and branch architecture. KEY RESULTS: Six trait pairs are consistently correlated within populations. Of these, only one involves dimensionally independent traits: LMA-δ13 C. For all other traits, intrapopulation functional trait correlations are weak, are species-specific, and differ from interspecific correlations. Species intrapopulation correlation matrices are related to neither phylogeny nor environmental niche. CONCLUSIONS: The results (1) suggest that the functional design of these species is centered on efficient water use, (2) highlight flexibility in plant functional design across species, and (3) suggest that intrapopulation, local interspecific, and global interspecific correlations are shaped by processes acting at each of these scales.

A global meta-analysis of the relative extent of intraspecific trait variation in plant communities.

Recent studies have shown that accounting for intraspecific trait variation (ITV) may better address major questions in community ecology. However, a general picture of the relative extent of ITV compared to interspecific trait variation in plant communities is still missing. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis of the relative extent of ITV within and among plant communities worldwide, using a data set encompassing 629 communities (plots) and 36 functional traits. Overall, ITV accounted for 25% of the total trait variation within communities and 32% of the total trait variation among communities on average. The relative extent of ITV tended to be greater for whole-plant (e.g. plant height) vs. organ-level traits and for leaf chemical (e.g. leaf N and P concentration) vs. leaf morphological (e.g. leaf area and thickness) traits. The relative amount of ITV decreased with increasing species richness and spatial extent, but did not vary with plant growth form or climate. These results highlight global patterns in the relative importance of ITV in plant communities, providing practical guidelines for when researchers should include ITV in trait-based community and ecosystem studies.

Impact of Parkinson's disease on proprioceptively based on-line movement control.

Evidence suggests that Parkinson's disease (PD) patients produce large spatial errors when reaching to proprioceptively defined targets. Here, we examined whether these movement inaccuracies result mainly from impaired use of proprioceptive inputs for movement planning mechanisms or from on-line movement guidance. Medicated and non-medicated PD patients and healthy controls performed three-dimensional reaching movements in four sensorimotor conditions that increase proprioceptive processing requirements. We assessed the influence of these sensorimotor conditions on the final accuracy and initial kinematics of the movements. If the patterns of final errors are primarily determined by planning processes before the initiation of the movement, the initial kinematics of reaching movements should show similar trends and predict the pattern of final errors. Medicated and non-medicated PD patients showed a greater mean level of final 3D errors than healthy controls when proprioception was the sole source of information guiding the movement, but this difference reached significance only for medicated PD patients. However, the pattern of initial kinematics and final spatial errors were markedly different both between sensorimotor conditions and between groups. Furthermore, medicated and non-medicated PD patients were less efficient than healthy controls in compensating for their initial spatial errors (hand distance from target location at peak velocity) when aiming at proprioceptively defined compared to visually defined targets. Considered together, the results are consistent with a selective deficit in proprioceptively based movement guidance in PD. Furthermore, dopaminergic medication did not improve proprioceptively guided movements in PD patients, indicating that dopaminergic dysfunction within the basal ganglia is not solely responsible for these deficits.

Concentrating to avoid falling: interaction between peripheral sensory and central attentional demands during a postural stability limit task in sedentary seniors.

Evidence suggests falls and postural instabilities among seniors are attributed to a decline in both the processing of afferent signals (e.g., proprioceptive, vestibular) and attentional resources. We investigated the interaction between the non-visual and attentional demands of postural control in sedentary seniors. Old and young adults performed a postural stability limit task involving a maximal voluntary leaning movement with and without vision as well as a cognitive-attentional subtraction task. These tasks were performed alone (single-task) or simultaneously (dual-task) to vary the sensory-attentional demands. The functional limits of stability were quantified as the maximum center of pressure excursion during voluntary leaning. Seniors showed significantly smaller limits of postural stability compared to young adults in all sensory-attentional conditions. However, surprisingly, both groups of subjects reduced their stability limits by a similar amount when vision was removed. Furthermore, they similarly decreased their anterior-posterior stability limits when concurrently performing the postural and the cognitive-attentional tasks with vision. The overall average cognitive performance of young adults was higher than seniors and was only slightly affected during dual-tasking. In contrast, older adults markedly degraded their cognitive performance from the single- to the dual-task situations, especially when vision was unavailable. Thus, their dual-task costs were higher than those of young adults and increased in the eyes-closed condition, when postural control relied more heavily on non-visual sensory signals. Our findings provide the first evidence that as posture approaches its stability limits, sedentary seniors allot increasingly large cognitive attentional resources to process critical sensory inputs.

Root and biomass allocation traits predict changes in plant species and communities over four decades of global change.

Global change is affecting the distribution and population dynamics of plant species across the planet, leading to trends such as shifts in distribution toward the poles and to higher elevations. Yet, we poorly understand why individual species respond differently to warming and other environmental changes, or how the trait composition of communities responds. Here we ask two questions regarding plant species and community changes over 42 years of global change in a temperate montane forest in Québec, Canada: (1) How did the trait composition, alpha diversity, and beta diversity of understory vascular plant communities change between 1970 and 2010, a period over which the region experienced 1.5°C of warming and changes in nitrogen deposition? (2) Can traits predict shifts in species elevation and abundance over this time period? For 46 understory vascular species, we locally measured six aboveground traits, and for 36 of those (not including shrubs), we also measured five belowground traits. Collectively, they capture leading dimensions of phenotypic variation that are associated with climatic and resource niches. At the community level, the trait composition of high-elevation plots shifted, primarily for two root traits: specific root length decreased and rooting depth increased. The mean trait values of high-elevation plots shifted over time toward values initially associated with low-elevation plots. These changes led to trait homogenization across elevations. The community-level shifts in traits mirrored the taxonomic shifts reported elsewhere for this site. At the species level, two of the three traits predicting changes in species elevation and abundance were belowground traits (low mycorrhizal fraction and shallow rooting). These findings highlight the importance of root traits, which, along with leaf mass fraction, were associated with shifts in distribution and abundance over four decades. Community-level trait changes were largely similar across the elevational and temporal gradients. In contrast, traits typically associated with lower elevations at the community level did not predict differences among species in their shift in abundance or distribution, indicating a decoupling between species- and community-level responses. Overall, changes were consistent with some influence of both climate warming and increased nitrogen availability.

Impact of Parkinson's disease and dopaminergic medication on adaptation to explicit and implicit visuomotor perturbations.

The capacity to learn new visuomotor associations is fundamental to adaptive motor behavior. Evidence suggests visuomotor learning deficits in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the exact nature of these deficits and the ability of dopamine medication to improve them are under-explored. Previous studies suggested that learning driven by large and small movement errors engaged distinct neural mechanisms. Here, we investigated whether PD patients have a generalized impairment in visuomotor learning or selective deficits in learning from large explicit errors which engages cognitive strategies or small imperceptible movement errors involving primarily implicit learning processes. Visuomotor learning skills of non-medicated and medicated patients were assessed in two reaching tasks in which the size of visuospatial errors experienced during learning was manipulated using a novel three-dimensional virtual reality environment. In the explicit perturbation task, the visuomotor perturbation was applied suddenly resulting in large consciously detected initial spatial errors, whereas in the implicit perturbation task, the perturbation was gradually introduced in small undetectable steps such that subjects never experienced large movement errors. A major finding of this study was that PD patients in non-medicated and medicated conditions displayed slower learning rates and smaller adaptation magnitudes than healthy subjects in the explicit perturbation task, but performance similar to healthy controls in the implicit perturbation task. Also, non-medicated patients showed an average reduced deadaptation relative to healthy controls when exposed to the large errors produced by the sudden removal of the perturbation in both the explicit and implicit perturbation tasks. Although dopaminergic medication consistently improved motor signs, it produced a variable impact on learning the explicit perturbation and deadaptation and unexpectedly worsened performance in some patients. Considered together, these results indicate that PD selectively impairs the ability to learn from large consciously detected visuospatial errors. This finding suggests that basal ganglia-related circuits are important neural structures for adaptation to sudden perturbations requiring awareness and high-cost action selection. Dopaminergic treatment may selectively compromise the ability to learn from large explicit movement errors for reasons that remain to be elucidated.

Preserved spatial memory for reaching to remembered three-dimensional targets in aging.

UNLABELLED: BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Compared with the large literature on the impact of aging on spatial memory span, far fewer studies have examined the influence of aging on spatial memory processes required to reach a remembered target. This study assessed the ability of seniors to accurately reach to three-dimensional (3D) memorized targets in four conditions in which the memory delay and the attentional demands varied. METHODS: The accuracy and variability of reaching movements (3D absolute, 3D variable, and spatial component errors) were analyzed to evaluate the performance of 12 young adults aged 20 to 30 and 12 older adults aged 62 to 69 in the different delay conditions (short passive delay, long passive delay, long cognitive delay, and long spatial delay). Variance analyses were applied on each error measure as well as on kinematic features of the movements (movement time, deceleration time, and peak velocity). RESULTS: Results revealed that older participants were as capable as their younger counterpart to maintain target location in memory regardless of task complexity. CONCLUSION: Although memory deficits have been found in older adults in several previous studies, the current results support the idea that healthy aging does not produce a breakdown in all memory tasks. Hence, a specific spatial memory channel seems to remain unaffected in normal aging.

A Perspective on Plant Phenomics: Coupling Deep Learning and Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.

The trait-based approach in plant ecology aims at understanding and classifying the diversity of ecological strategies by comparing plant morphology and physiology across organisms. The major drawback of the approach is that the time and financial cost of measuring the traits on many individuals and environments can be prohibitive. We show that combining near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) with deep learning resolves this limitation by quickly, non-destructively, and accurately measuring a suite of traits, including plant morphology, chemistry, and metabolism. Such an approach also allows to position plants within the well-known CSR triangle that depicts the diversity of plant ecological strategies. The processing of NIRS through deep learning identifies the effect of growth conditions on trait values, an issue that plagues traditional statistical approaches. Together, the coupling of NIRS and deep learning is a promising high-throughput approach to capture a range of ecological information on plant diversity and functioning and can accelerate the creation of extensive trait databases.

Linking ecomechanical models and functional traits to understand phenotypic diversity.

Physical principles and laws determine the set of possible organismal phenotypes. Constraints arising from development, the environment, and evolutionary history then yield workable, integrated phenotypes. We propose a theoretical and practical framework that considers the role of changing environments. This 'ecomechanical approach' integrates functional organismal traits with the ecological variables. This approach informs our ability to predict species shifts in survival and distribution and provides critical insights into phenotypic diversity. We outline how to use the ecomechanical paradigm using drag-induced bending in trees as an example. Our approach can be incorporated into existing research and help build interdisciplinary bridges. Finally, we identify key factors needed for mass data collection, analysis, and the dissemination of models relevant to this framework.

Evidence for a proprioception-based rapid on-line error correction mechanism for hand orientation during reaching movements in blind subjects.

The contribution of visual experience to the perception and sensorimotor control of spatial orientation of the hand was investigated in blind subjects. In "orientation-matching" tasks, subjects aligned a match handle held in their right hand to a target handle held in their left hand and fixed in different orientations, with both arms outstretched. In "letter-posting" task 1, the same subjects reached out and simultaneously oriented their right hand to insert the match handle into a target slot fixed in the same range of orientations. Orientations were signaled proprioceptively by a reference handle held in the left hand. Final hand orientation errors were smaller when blind subjects simultaneously reached out and rotated their hand to insert the match handle into the target slot in letter-posting task 1 than when they held their arm extended and aligned the handles in the orientation-matching task. In letter-posting task 2, blind subjects first aligned their hand to the orientation of the target and then subsequently reached to the target with the instruction to not change hand orientation during reaching. Despite the instruction, subjects showed a reduction in absolute hand orientation error from the beginning to the end of the reach. In all tasks, performance of blind subjects was very similar to that of blindfolded normally sighted subjects. These findings provide the first evidence of an automatic on-line error-correction mechanism for hand orientation guided only by proprioceptive inputs during reaching in blind subjects, and reveal that the on-line mechanism does not depend on prior visual experience.

How do traits vary across ecological scales? A case for trait-based ecology.

Despite the increasing importance of functional traits for the study of plant ecology, we do not know how variation in a given trait changes across ecological scales, which prevents us from assessing potential scale-dependent aspects of trait variation. To address this deficiency, we partitioned the variance in two key functional traits (leaf mass area and leaf dry matter content) across six nested ecological scales (site, plot, species, tree, strata and leaf) in lowland tropical rainforests. In both traits, the plot level shows virtually no variance despite high species turnover among plots and the size of within-species variation (leaf + strata + tree) is comparable with that of species level variation. The lack of variance at the plot level brings substantial support to the idea that trait-based environmental filtering plays a central role in plant community assembly. These results and the finding that the amount of within-species variation is comparable with interspecific variation support a shift of focus from species-based to trait-based ecology.

Brain function decline in healthy retired athletes who sustained their last sports concussion in early adulthood.

Recent studies have shown that the detrimental effects of sports concussions on cognitive and motor function may persist up to a few years post-injury. The present study sought to investigate the effects of having sustained a sports concussion more than 30 years prior to testing on cognitive and motor functions. Nineteen healthy former athletes, in late adulthood (mean age = 60.79; SD = 5.16), who sustained their last sport-related concussion in early adulthood (mean age = 26.05; SD = 9.21) were compared with 21 healthy former athletes with no history of concussion (mean age = 58.89; SD = 9.07). Neuropsychological tests sensitive to age-related changes in cognition were administered. An auditory oddball paradigm was used to evoke P3a and P3b brain responses. Four TMS paradigms were employed to assess motor cortex excitability: (i) resting motor threshold; (ii) paired-pulse intracortical inhibition and intracortical facilitation; (iii) input/output curve and (iv) cortical silent period (CSP). A rapid alternating movement task was also used to characterize motor system dysfunctions. Relative to controls, former athletes with a history of concussion had: (i) lower performance on neuropsychological tests of episodic memory and response inhibition; (ii) significantly delayed and attenuated P3a/P3b components; (iii) significantly prolonged CSP and (iv) significantly reduced movement velocity (bradykinesia). The finding that the P3, the CSP as well as neuropsychological and motor indices were altered more than three decades post-concussion provides evidence for the chronicity of cognitive and motor system changes consecutive to sports concussion.

Evidence for continuous processing of visual information in a manual video-aiming task.

Research shows that individuals are able to correct for an experimentally-induced and unexpected aiming error (i.e., a cursor jump), even when they do not detect it consciously. Researchers have interpreted these results to be evidence of continuous processing of visual afferent information for movement control. The authors conducted 2 experiments to determine whether they would gain additional support for this proposition by showing that correction for a cursor jump can be initiated outside the central visual field. In addition, the authors wanted to determine whether the normally occurring modulation of the ongoing movement is affected by detection and correction of the cursor jump. Participants performed video-aiming movements in which a 30-mm cursor jump occurred in a small proportion of the trials. The results indicate that correction for the cursor jump was initiated when the cursor was as far as 15 degrees of visual angle from the target. In addition, the authors observed accurate corrections when vision of the cursor was withdrawn soon after the cursor jump. Last, online control processes reducing initial movement variability were not significantly affected by the detection and correction for the cursor jump. The results suggest near continuous monitoring of visual afferent information but a more discrete movement-correction process.

Development of postural stability limits: Anteroposterior and mediolateral postural adjustment mechanisms do not follow the same maturation process.

There is increasing evidence that indicates a critical transition period for the maturation of postural control from the ages of 6-7 years. Some studies suggest that this transitional period may be explained by a change from a ballistic toward a sensory strategy, but the cause remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of the transition period on dynamic postural control in a natural self-initiated leaning task under different sensory conditions. We evaluated the center of pressure (COP) displacement during maximum leaning in four directions (forward, backward, rightward, leftward) under three sensory conditions (eyes open, eyes closed and eyes closed standing on a foam). Three groups were tested: young children (4 years old), older children (8-10 years old) and adults (21-42 years old). The maximum COP excursion along the anteroposterior and mediolateral axes and the COP amplitude were analyzed. Young children showed smaller maximum anteroposterior and mediolateral COP excursion than other groups. Older children also exhibited a significantly smaller maximum excursion along the mediolateral direction but performed similar to adults along the anteroposterior direction. In a similar manner, the analysis of the COP amplitude did not indicate any differences between the groups along the anteroposterior axis. In contrast, along the mediolateral axis, the results showed developmental differences. Furthermore, the effect of sensory conditions was similar across the children's groups. Our results suggest an important plasticity period for the maturation of postural control mechanisms. Notably, our findings support the idea that the postural mechanisms controlling the anteroposterior axis reach maturity before the mechanisms involved in controlling the mediolateral axis.

Plant Biodiversity Change Across Scales During the Anthropocene.

Plant communities have undergone dramatic changes in recent centuries, although not all such changes fit with the dominant biodiversity-crisis narrative used to describe them. At the global scale, future declines in plant species diversity are highly likely given habitat conversion in the tropics, although few extinctions have been documented for the Anthropocene to date (<0.1%). Nonnative species introductions have greatly increased plant species richness in many regions of the world at the same time that they have led to the creation of new hybrid polyploid species by bringing previously isolated congeners into close contact. At the local scale, conversion of primary vegetation to agriculture has decreased plant diversity, whereas other drivers of change-e.g., climate warming, habitat fragmentation, and nitrogen deposition-have highly context-dependent effects, resulting in a distribution of temporal trends with a mean close to zero. These results prompt a reassessment of how conservation goals are defined and justified.