Leaf gene expression trajectories during the growing season are consistent between sites and years in American beech.

Transcriptomics provides a versatile tool for ecological monitoring. Here, through genome-guided profiling of transcripts mapping to 33 042 gene models, expression differences can be discerned among multi-year and seasonal leaf samples collected from American beech trees at two latitudinally separated sites. Despite a bottleneck due to post-Columbian deforestation, the single nucleotide polymorphism-based population genetic background analysis has yielded sufficient variation to account for differences between populations and among individuals. Our expression analyses during spring-summer and summer-autumn transitions for two consecutive years involved 4197 differentially expressed protein coding genes. Using Populus orthologues we reconstructed a protein-protein interactome representing leaf physiological states of trees during the seasonal transitions. Gene set enrichment analysis revealed gene ontology terms that highlight molecular functions and biological processes possibly influenced by abiotic forcings such as recovery from drought and response to excess precipitation. Further, based on 324 co-regulated transcripts, we focused on a subset of GO terms that could be putatively attributed to late spring phenological shifts. Our conservative results indicate that extended transcriptome-based monitoring of forests can capture diverse ranges of responses including air quality, chronic disease, as well as herbivore outbreaks that require activation and/or downregulation of genes collectively tuning reaction norms maintaining the survival of long living trees such as the American beech.

Temporal population variability in local forest communities has mixed effects on tree species richness across a latitudinal gradient.

Among the local processes that determine species diversity in ecological communities, fluctuation-dependent mechanisms that are mediated by temporal variability in the abundances of species populations have received significant attention. Higher temporal variability in the abundances of species populations can increase the strength of temporal niche partitioning but can also increase the risk of species extinctions, such that the net effect on species coexistence is not clear. We quantified this temporal population variability for tree species in 21 large forest plots and found much greater variability for higher latitude plots with fewer tree species. A fitted mechanistic model showed that among the forest plots, the net effect of temporal population variability on tree species coexistence was usually negative, but sometimes positive or negligible. Therefore, our results suggest that temporal variability in the abundances of species populations has no clear negative or positive contribution to the latitudinal gradient in tree species richness.

Temperature-induced pseudopolymorphism of molecular salts from a pyridyl bis-urea macrocycle and naphthalene-1,5-disulfonic acid.

Molecular salts, often observed as cocrystals, play an important role in the fields of pharmaceutics and materials science, where salt formation is used to tune the properties of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and improve the stability of solid-state materials. Salt formation via a proton-transfer reaction typically alters hydrogen-bonding motifs and influences supramolecular assembly patterns. We report here the molecular salts formed by the pyridyl bis-urea macrocycle 3,5,13,15,21,22-hexaazatricyclo[15.3.1.17,11]docosa-1(21),7(22),8,10,17,19-hexaene-4,14-dione, (1), and naphthalene-1,5-disulfonic acid (H2NDS) as two salt cocrystal solvates, namely 4,14-dioxo-3,5,13,15,21,22-hexaazatricyclo[15.3.1.17,11]docosa-1(21),7(22),8,10,17,19-hexaene-21,22-diium naphthalene-1,5-disulfonate dimethyl sulfoxide disolvate, C16H20N6O22+·C10H6O6S22-·2C2H6OS, (2), and the corresponding monosolvate, C16H20N6O22+·C10H6O6S22-·C2H6OS, (3). This follows the ΔpKa rule such that there is a proton transfer from H2NDS to (1), forming the reported molecular salts through hydrogen bonding. Prior to salt formation, (1) is relatively planar and assembles into columnar structures. The salt cocrystal solvates were obtained upon slow cooling of dimethyl sulfoxide-acetonitrile solutions of the molecular components from two temperatures (363 and 393 K). The proton transfer to (1) significantly alters the conformation of the macrocycle, changing the formerly planar macrocycle into a step-shaped conformation with trans-cis urea groups in (2) or into a bowl-shape conformation with trans-trans urea groups in (3).

Phylogenetic relatedness and leaf functional traits, not introduced status, influence community assembly.

Considerable debate focuses on whether invasive species establish and become abundant by being functionally and phylogenetically distinct from native species, leading to a host of invasion-specific hypotheses of community assembly. Few studies, however, have quantitatively assessed whether similar patterns of phylogenetic and functional similarity explain local abundance of both native and introduced species, which would suggest similar assembly mechanisms regardless of origin. Using a chronosequence of invaded temperate forest stands, we tested whether the occurrence and abundance of both introduced and native species were predicted by phylogenetic relatedness, functional overlap, and key environmental characteristics including forest age. Environmental filtering against functionally and phylogenetically distinct species strongly dictated the occurrence and abundance of both introduced and native species, with slight modifications of these patterns according to forest age. Thus, once functional and evolutionary novelty were quantified, introduced status provided little information about species' presence or abundance, indicating largely similar sorting mechanisms for both native and introduced species.

Cascading effects of a highly specialized beech-aphid-fungus interaction on forest regeneration.

Specialist herbivores are thought to often enhance or maintain plant diversity within ecosystems, because they prevent their host species from becoming competitively dominant. In contrast, specialist herbivores are not generally expected to have negative impacts on non-hosts. However, we describe a cascade of indirect interactions whereby a specialist sooty mold (Scorias spongiosa) colonizes the honeydew from a specialist beech aphid (Grylloprociphilus imbricator), ultimately decreasing the survival of seedlings beneath American beech trees (Fagus grandifolia). A common garden experiment indicated that this mortality resulted from moldy honeydew impairing leaf function rather than from chemical or microbial changes to the soil. In addition, aphids consistently and repeatedly colonized the same large beech trees, suggesting that seedling-depauperate islands may form beneath these trees. Thus this highly specialized three-way beech-aphid-fungus interaction has the potential to negatively impact local forest regeneration via a cascade of indirect effects.