Ceratophyllum demersum (coontail).

Author(s):  
Hugh Dawson

Abstract C. demersum is a cosmopolitan submerged aquatic species that has probably already invaded most of its potential exotic range. It has the advantages of being a perennial surviving well over-winter in deeper water and by growing both by asexual reproduction of broken or complete stems and by sexual reproduction of very many seeds. It has a wide ecological tolerance and grows relatively fast. Disturbance of the water body results in increases in growth through changes in nutrient availability but also in faster dispersal around water bodies allowing greater competition with less vigorous species.

1989 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 1821-1824
Author(s):  
M. Suzuki ◽  
K. Chihara ◽  
M. Okada ◽  
H. Kawashima ◽  
S. Hoshino

A computer program based on expert system software was developed and proposed as a prototype model for water management to control eutrophication problems in receiving water bodies (Suzuki etal., 1988). The system has several expert functions: 1. data input and estimation of pollution load generated and discharged in the river watershed; 2. estimation of pollution load run-off entering rivers; 3. estimation of water quality of receiving water bodies, such as lakes; and 4. assisting man-machine dialog operation. The program can be used with MS-DOS BASIC and assembler in a 16 bit personal computer. Five spread sheets are utilized in calculation and summation of the pollutant load, using multi-windows. Partial differential equations for an ecological model for simulation of self-purification in shallow rivers and simulation of seasonal variations of water quality in a lake were converted to computer programs and included in the expert system. The simulated results of water quality are shown on the monitor graphically. In this study, the expert system thus developed was used to estimate the present state of one typical polluted river basin. The river was the Katsura, which flows into Lake Sagami, a lake dammed for water supply. Data which had been actually measured were compared with the simulated water quality data, and good agreement was found. This type of expert system is expected to be useful for water management of a closed water body.


Impact ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (6) ◽  
pp. 73-75
Author(s):  
Akihiko Watanabe

One of the unifying traits of life on this planet is reproduction, or life's ability to make copies of itself. The mode of reproduction has evolved over time, having almost certainly begun with simple asexual reproduction when the ancestral single celled organism divided into two. Since these beginnings' life has tried out numerous strategies, and perhaps one of the most important and successful has been sexual reproduction. This form of reproduction relies on the union of gametes, otherwise known as sperm and egg. Evolutionarily, sexual reproduction allows for greater adaptive potential because the genes of two unique individuals have a chance to recombine and mix in order to produce a new individual. Unlike asexual reproduction which produces genetically-identical clones of the parent individual, sex produces offspring with novel genes and combinations of genes. Therefore, in the face of new selective pressures there is a higher chance that one of these novel genetic profiles will produce an adaptation that is advantageous in the new circumstances. Dr Akihiko Watanabe is a reproductive biologist based in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science Yamagata University in Japan, he is currently working on three research projects; a comparative study on the signalling pathways for inducing sperm motility and acrosome reaction in amphibians, the mechanism behind the adaptive modification of sperm morphology and motility, and the origin of sperm motility initiating substance (SMIS).


Genetics ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 164 (3) ◽  
pp. 1099-1118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah P Otto

AbstractIn diploids, sexual reproduction promotes both the segregation of alleles at the same locus and the recombination of alleles at different loci. This article is the first to investigate the possibility that sex might have evolved and been maintained to promote segregation, using a model that incorporates both a general selection regime and modifier alleles that alter an individual’s allocation to sexual vs. asexual reproduction. The fate of different modifier alleles was found to depend strongly on the strength of selection at fitness loci and on the presence of inbreeding among individuals undergoing sexual reproduction. When selection is weak and mating occurs randomly among sexually produced gametes, reductions in the occurrence of sex are favored, but the genome-wide strength of selection is extremely small. In contrast, when selection is weak and some inbreeding occurs among gametes, increased allocation to sexual reproduction is expected as long as deleterious mutations are partially recessive and/or beneficial mutations are partially dominant. Under strong selection, the conditions under which increased allocation to sex evolves are reversed. Because deleterious mutations are typically considered to be partially recessive and weakly selected and because most populations exhibit some degree of inbreeding, this model predicts that higher frequencies of sex would evolve and be maintained as a consequence of the effects of segregation. Even with low levels of inbreeding, selection is stronger on a modifier that promotes segregation than on a modifier that promotes recombination, suggesting that the benefits of segregation are more likely than the benefits of recombination to have driven the evolution of sexual reproduction in diploids.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xianghong Che ◽  
Min Feng ◽  
Hao Jiang ◽  
Jia Song ◽  
Bei Jia

Inland surface water is essential to terrestrial ecosystems and human civilization. Accurate mapping of surface water dynamic is vital for both scientific research and policy-driven applications. MODIS provides twice observation per day, making it perfect for monitoring temporal water dynamic. Although MODIS provides two bands at 250 m resolution, accurately deriving water area always depends on observations from the spectral bands with 500 m resolution, which limits its discrimination ability over small lakes and rivers. The paper presents an automated method for downscaling the 500 m MODIS surface reflectance (SR) to 250 m to improve the spatial discrimination of water body extraction. The method has been tested at Co Ngoin and Co Bangkog in Qinghai-Tibet plateau. The downscaled SR and the derived water bodies were compared to SR and water body mapped from Landsat-7 ETM+ images were acquired on the same date. Consistency metrics were calculated to measure their agreement and disagreement. The comparisons indicated that the downscaled MODIS SR showed significant improvement over the original 500 m observations when compared with Landsat-7 ETM+ SR, and both commission and omission errors were reduced in the derived 250 m water bodies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1168-1174
Author(s):  
A.A. Poroshina ◽  
◽  
D.Yu. Sherbakov ◽  

Abstract. Using a computer simulation model, we tried to investigate how the transition from sexual reproduction to asexual reproduction will affect the population of diploid organisms with a neutral character of molecular evolution. At the same time, special attention was paid to the specificity of microsatellite markers. In this paper, we develop fast and inexpensive methods for assessing the changes in populations that occur with a change in reproductive strategy.


Author(s):  
J. Y. Sun ◽  
G. Z. Wang ◽  
G. J. He ◽  
D. C. Pu ◽  
W. Jiang ◽  
...  

Abstract. Surface water system is an important part of global ecosystem, and the changes in surface water may lead to disasters, such as drought, waterlog, and water-borne diseases. The rapid development of remote sensing technology has supplied better strategies for water bodies extraction and further monitoring. In this study, AdaBoost and Random Forest (RF), two typical algorithms in integrated learning, were applied to extract water bodies in Chaozhou area (mainly located in Guangzhou Province, China) based on GF-1 data, and the Decision Tree (DT) was used for comparative tests to comprehensively evaluate the performance of classification algorithms listed above for surface water body extraction. The results showed that: (1) Compared with visual interpretation, AdaBoost performed better than RF in the extraction of several typical water bodies, such as rivers, lakes and ponds Moreover, the water extraction results of the strong classifiers using AdaBoost or RF were better than the weak basic classifiers. (2) For the quantitative accuracy statistics, the overall accuracy (96.5%) and kappa coefficient (93%) using AdaBoost exceeded those using RF (5.3% and 10.6%), respectively. The classification time of AdaBoost increased by 403 seconds and 918 seconds relative to RF and DT methods. However, in terms of visual interpretation, quantitative statistical accuracy and classification time, AdaBoost algorithm was more suitable for the water body extraction. (3) For the sample proportion comparison experiment of AdaBoost, four sampling proportions (0.1%, 0.2%, 1% and 2%) were chosen and 0.1% sampling proportion reached the optimum classification accuracy (93.9%) and kappa coefficient (87.8%).


Vestnik MGSU ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 294-306
Author(s):  
Aleksandra V. Ostyakova ◽  
Ekaterina V Pluisnina

Introduction. Studying water body ecological problems and ensuring the necessary level of sanitary maintenance and landscaping of the reservoirs with the surrounding areas are relevant due to the inadequate environmental condition of a large number of urban water bodies and small rivers within settlements. Materials and methods. The review of the available normative documents and the carried-out actions on the improvement of city water objects is given. Based on the visual study of the state of the pond banks at the Karbyshev Park at the settlement of Nakhabino, Moscow region, water quality indicators, sources of pollution of the pond, the article concluded on the unsatisfactory ecological and aesthetic condition of this urban pond. The objective of this paper is to analyze the existing negative environmental factors affectig the water body and to propose an option of the site landscaping and further safe usage. Results. A description of the Karbyshev Park territory is given. Also, negative factors influencing the pollution of the pond banks, and the quality of pond water are specified. A proposal contains a list of necessary types of activities on cleaning and improving the pond bowl and surrounding territory under the condition of preservation of its ecosystem. As a result of the integrated assessment of the pond ecological state, a model of the urban water body was created, and a variant of its ecological reconstruction was proposed. Conclusions. The study is of practical importance for accounting and elimination of environmental problems of urban water bodies of the Central European Russia and proposals of measures for their improvement and reclamation.


mBio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zheng Wang ◽  
Cristina Miguel-Rojas ◽  
Francesc Lopez-Giraldez ◽  
Oded Yarden ◽  
Frances Trail ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTFungal spores germinate and undergo vegetative growth, leading to either asexual or sexual reproductive dispersal. Previous research has indicated that among developmental regulatory genes, expression is conserved across nutritional environments, whereas pathways for carbon and nitrogen metabolism appear highly responsive—perhaps to accommodate differential nutritive processing. To comprehensively investigate conidial germination and the adaptive life history decision-making underlying these two modes of reproduction, we profiled transcription ofNeurospora crassagerminating on two media: synthetic Bird medium, designed to promote asexual reproduction; and a natural maple sap medium, on which both asexual reproduction and sexual reproduction manifest. A later start to germination but faster development was observed on synthetic medium. Metabolic genes exhibited altered expression in response to nutrients—at least 34% of the genes in the genome were significantly downregulated during the first two stages of conidial germination on synthetic medium. Knockouts of genes exhibiting differential expression across development altered germination and growth rates, as well as in one case causing abnormal germination. A consensus Bayesian network of these genes indicated especially tight integration of environmental sensing, asexual and sexual development, and nitrogen metabolism on a natural medium, suggesting that in natural environments, a more dynamic and tentative balance of asexual and sexual development may be typical ofN. crassacolonies.IMPORTANCEOne of the most remarkable successes of life is its ability to flourish in response to temporally and spatially varying environments. Fungi occupy diverse ecosystems, and their sensitivity to these environmental changes often drives major fungal life history decisions, including the major switch from vegetative growth to asexual or sexual reproduction. Spore germination comprises the first and simplest stage of vegetative growth. We examined the dependence of this early life history on the nutritional environment using genome-wide transcriptomics. We demonstrated that for developmental regulatory genes, expression was generally conserved across nutritional environments, whereas metabolic gene expression was highly labile. The level of activation of developmental genes did depend on current nutrient conditions, as did the modularity of metabolic and developmental response network interactions. This knowledge is critical to the development of future technologies that could manipulate fungal growth for medical, agricultural, or industrial purposes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 20180871 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sutherland K. Maciver ◽  
Zisis Koutsogiannis ◽  
Alvaro de Obeso Fernández del Valle

The amoebae (and many other protists) have traditionally been considered as asexual organisms, but suspicion has been growing that these organisms are cryptically sexual or are at least related to sexual lineages. This contention is mainly based on genome studies in which the presence of ‘meiotic genes’ has been discovered. Using RNA-seq (next-generation shotgun sequencing, identifying and quantifying the RNA species in a sample), we have found that the entire repertoire of meiotic genes is expressed in exponentially growing Acanthamoeba and we argue that these so-called meiotic genes are involved in the related process of homologous recombination in this amoeba. We contend that they are only involved in meiosis in other organisms that indulge in sexual reproduction and that homologous recombination is important in asexual protists as a guard against the accumulation of mutations. We also suggest that asexual reproduction is the ancestral state.


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