Pine wilt disease (PWD) caused by the nematode Bursaphelenchus xylophilus is a devastating disease in conifer forests in Eurasia. However, information on the effect of PWD on the host microbial community is limited. In this study, the bacterial community structure and potential function in the needles, roots, and soil of diseased pine were studied under field conditions using Illumina MiSeq coupled with Phylogenetic Investigation of Communities by Reconstruction of Unobserved states (PICRUSt) software. The results showed that the community and functional structure of healthy and diseased trees differed only in the roots and needles, respectively (p <0.05). The needles, roots, and soil formed unique bacterial community and functional structures. The abundant phyla across all samples were Proteobacteria (41.9% of total sequence), Actinobacteria (29.0%), Acidobacteria (12.2%), Bacteroidetes (4.8%), and Planctomycetes (2.1%). The bacterial community in the healthy roots was dominated by Acidobacteria, Planctomycetes, and Rhizobiales, whereas in the diseased roots, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Burkholderiales were dominant. Functionally, groups involved in the cell process and genetic information processing had a higher abundance in the diseased needles, which contributed to the difference in functional structure. The results indicate that PWD can only affect the host bacteria community structure and function in certain anatomical regions of the host tree.

At the level of organ formation, tissue morphogenesis drives developmental processes in animals, often involving the rearrangement of two-dimensional (2D) structures into more complex three-dimensional (3D) tissues. These processes can be directed by growth factor signaling pathways. However, little is known about how such morphological changes affect the spatiotemporal distribution of growth factor signaling. Here, using the Drosophila pupal wing, we address how decapentaplegic (Dpp)/bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling and 3D wing morphogenesis are coordinated. Dpp, expressed in the longitudinal veins (LVs) of the pupal wing, initially diffuses laterally within both dorsal and ventral wing epithelia during the inflation stage to regulate cell proliferation. Dpp localization is then refined to the LVs within each epithelial plane, but with active interplanar signaling for vein patterning/differentiation, as the two epithelia appose. Our data further suggest that the 3D architecture of the wing epithelia and the spatial distribution of BMP signaling are tightly coupled, revealing that 3D morphogenesis is an emergent property of the interactions between extracellular signaling and tissue shape changes.

The influence of lake restoration efforts on lake bottom-water conditions and varve preservation is not well known. We studied varved sediments deposited during the last 80 years along a water-depth transect in the Enonsaari Deep, a deep-water area of the southernmost Enonselka Basin, Lake Vesijarvi, southern Finland. For the last few decades, the Enonselka Basin has been subject to ongoing restoration efforts. Varve, elemental, and diatom analyses were undertaken to explore how these actions and other human activities affected varve preservation in the Enonsaari Deep. In contrast to most varved Finnish lakes, whose water columns have a natural tendency to stratify, and possess varve records that span thousands of years, varve formation and preservation in Lake Vesijarvi was triggered by relatively recent anthropogenic stressors. The multi-core varve analysis revealed that sediment in the Enonsaari Deep was initially non-varved, but became fully varved in the late 1930s, a time of increasing anthropogenic influence on the lake. The largest spatial extent of varves occurred in the 1970s, which was followed by a period of less distinguishable varves, which coincided with diversion of sewage from the lake. Varve preservation weakened during subsequent decades and was terminated completely by lake aeration in the 2010s. Despite improvements in water quality, hypolimnetic oxygen depletion and varve preservation persisted beyond the reduction in sewage loading, initial aeration, and biomanipulation. These restoration efforts, however, along with other human actions such as harbor construction and dredging, did influence varve characteristics. Varves were also influenced by diatom responses to anthropogenic forcing, because diatoms form a substantial part of the varve structure. Of all the restoration efforts, a second episode of aeration seems to have had the single most dramatic impact on profundal conditions in the basin, resulting in replacement of a sediment accumulation zone by a transport or erosional zone in the Enonsaari Deep. We conclude that human activities in a lake and its catchment can alter lake hypolimnetic conditions, leading to shifts in lake bottom dynamics and changes in varve preservation.

Tree species is one of the most important determinants of wood-inhabiting fungal community composition, yet its relationship with fungal reproductive and dispersal traits remains poorly understood. We studied fungal communities (total of 657 species) inhabiting broadleaved and coniferous dead wood (total of 192 logs) in 12 semi-natural boreal forests. We utilized a trait-based hierarchical joint species distribution model to examine how the relationship between dead wood quality and species occurrence correlates with reproductive and dispersal morphological traits. Broadleaved trees had higher species richness than conifers, due to discomycetoids and pyrenomycetoids specializing in them. Resupinate and pileate species were generally specialized in coniferous dead wood. Fungi inhabiting broadleaved trees had larger and more elongated spores than fungi in conifers. Spore size was larger and spore shape more spherical in species occupying large dead wood units. These results indicate the selective effect of dead wood quality, visible not only in species diversity, but also in reproductive and dispersal traits. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd and British Mycological Society. All rights reserved.

In this paper, we study the second-order Sobolev regularity of solutions to the parabolic p-Laplace equation. For any p-parabolic function u, we show that D(vertical bar Du vertical bar(p-2+s/2) Du) exists as a function and belongs to L-loc(2) with s > -1 and 1 < p < infinity. The range of s is sharp.

The responses of biotic communities and ecosystems to climate change may be abrupt and non-linear. Thus, resolving ecological threshold mechanisms is crucial for understanding the consequences of climate change and for improving environmental management. Here, we present a study on the threshold responses of benthic diatom communities that are an important component of all aquatic environments and strongly contribute to global primary production. We reach beyond the taxonomic perspective by focusing on the diversity and functions of diatom communities and benthic biomass along gradients of salinity and wind disturbance, whose climate-change-induced changes have been predicted to strongly affect biotic communities in the marine and brackish systems in the future. To improve the generality of our results, we examine three self-collected datasets from different spatial scales (6-830 km) and ecosystem types. We collected samples from rock pools or from littoral stones and studied taxonomic thresholds using Threshold Indicator Taxa Analysis (TITAN2). We investigated threshold responses of community diversity, community functions, and benthic biomass using t-tests and regression analyses. Our results indicated that decreasing salinity may result in increasing diver-sity but decreasing biomass of brackish communities, while the effects of increasing wind disturbance were contradictory among spatial scales. Benthic biomass correlated with the taxonomic and functional diversity, as well as with the body size distribution of communities, highlighting the importance of considering community functions and organismal size when predicting ecosystem functions. The most pronounced effects of decreasing salinity and increasing wind distur-bance on community functions were changes in the abundance of low-profile diatom species, which, due to the high resilience of low-profile diatoms, may lead to changes in ecosystem functioning and resilience. To conclude, decreasing salinity and increasing wind disturbance may lead to threshold responses of biotic communities, and these changes may have profound effects on ecosystem functioning along marine coastal areas.

A top-down scalable method to produce flexible water and blood repellent tubes is introduced. The method is based on replication of overhanging nanostructures from an aluminum tube template to polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) via atomic layer deposition (ALD) assisted sacrificial etching. The nanostructured PDMS/titania tubes are superhydrophobic with water contact angles 163 +/- 1 degrees (advancing) and 157 +/- 1 degrees (receding) without any further coating. Droplets are able to slide through a 4 mm (inner diameter) tube with low sliding angles of less than 10 degrees for a 35 mu L droplet. The superhydrophobic tube shows up to 5,000 times increase in acceleration of a sliding droplet compared to a control tube depending on the inclination angle. Compared to a free falling droplet, the superhydrophobic tube reduced the acceleration by only 38.55%, as compared to a 99.99% reduction for a control tube. The superhydrophobic tubes are blood repellent. Blood droplets (35 mu L) roll through the tubes at 15 degrees sliding angles without leaving a bloodstain. The tube surface is resistant to adhesion of activated platelets unlike planar control titania and smooth PDMS surfaces.