Distribution of some important honey plants visited by honey bees for feeding purposes in Narman (Erzurum, Turkey) natural pasture vegetation

Narman district is located at Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Average altitude is 1650 m, annual total precipitation is about 420 mm. In study area main economic activity is animal husbandry and animal production has made traditional practices, based on rangelands. This study carried out to determine honey plants, frequently visited by honey bees in 20 different locations of Narman. Total 56 plant species were determined and half of these plant species determined as visited plant species by honey bees. Most of honey plant species, determined in locations were wide leafy forbs and some of them were legume species. To determine botanical composition of rangeland vegetation in different locations line intercept method was used. The percentage of all plant species was calculated and each individual honey plant species percentages were determined. Some Alfalfa, Sainfoin, Lotus, Melilotus, Coronilla and Trifolium species were determined in locations. Thymus, Stachys, Centaurea and Campanula species were determined common plant species visited by honey bees.

Efficacy of Ethanolic plant extracts of Zingiber officinale, Raphanus sativus, Rosa indica and Aloe vera against Heterotermes indicola

Present study was performed to evaluate the anti-termitic potential of four common plant species of Zingiber officinale, Raphanus sativus, Rosa indica and Aloe vera. During laboratory bioassay, the biological activity of ethanolic extracts of these plants was evaluated. The ethanol extract of Z. officinale caused highest mortality (100%) while least mortality (68%) was observed in R. indica extract. The LT50 for Z. officinale were 24.34, 40.40 and 64.7 h for concentrations of 10%, 5% and 3% respectively. Present findings suggested that these plant extracts can provide environmental friendly management of H. indicola. In A. vera, also resulted in significant mortality against H. indicola i.e. 94%, 64% and 44% on exposure of 10%, 5% and 3% concentraions. While LT50 were 34.66, 65.59, and 100.1 hours against 10%, 5% and 3% concentrations. In R. sativus, mortality of H. indicola was 76%, 50% and 30% while LT50 against were 59.10, 86.20, and 127.3 h, against concentration of 10%, 5% and 3%. Least mortality was observed in R. indica i.e. 68%, 44% and 30% while LT50 were 64.17, 94.58 and 125.5 h at 10%, 5% and 3% respectively. This study revealed that the extracts of Z. officinale, A.vera and R. Sativus have a potential to be used for termite control especially Heterotermes indicola to minimize the damage. Copyright(c) The Author

Ecological Restoration in Gautam Buddha's Birthplace Lumbini

The historical information about natural vegetation of Lumbini is not clearly known. Modern day human colonization around Mayadevi temple could have been intensified after Khadga Samsher's visit to Lumbini in 1896, followed by the eradication of Malaria in the Tarai of Nepal around the 1950s. The dense human settlements around the Mayadevi temple (place where Buddha was born) was gradually shifted outside the area of Lumbini Development Trust (LDT) (16 x 4 km2 area), and the area was planted with a huge number of plant species. Hence, the forest within LDT is essentially a secondary forest without a scientific method of forest management (only plantation), as a result some species were not able to get naturally established and disappeared gradually. Studies indicated that there were around 354 species of plants species in LDT (Siwakoti, 2008) however, a recent vegetation survey (Tiwari, 1919) recorded only about 250 species including 39 tree species and other herbs and shrubs (the data is being produced, and needs second round survey to confirm). Some very common plant species have not been found from the region, indicating the heavy anthropogenic pressure including construction activities, grazing, fire, and plantation of trees without knowing microhabitat have taken the toll, and also by the encroachment of alien and invasive plant species both in terrestrial and aquatic environment. It is quite important to update the biodiversity, study regeneration of plant and animal species and management of invasive species in order to restore the natural ecosystems of Lumbini to develop it as both a sacred pilgrimage site and nature reserve. Ecosystem conservation and reintroduction at LDT could be done by following the strong reliance of Gautam Buddha's teaching about nature and life.

Matthew effect: common species become more common and rare ones become more rare in response to artificial light at night

Artificial light at night (ALAN) has been and still is rapidly spreading, and has become an important component of global change. Although numerous studies have tested its potential biological and ecological impacts on animals, fewer have tested its impacts on plants, and very few studies have tested whether it affects alien and native plants differently. Furthermore, common plant species, and particularly common alien species, are often found to benefit more from additional resources than rare native and rare alien species. Whether this is also the case with regard to increasing light due to ALAN is still unknown. Here, we tested how ALAN affects the performance of common and rare alien and native plants directly and indirectly via flying insects. We grew five common alien, six rare alien, five common native and four rare native plant species under four combinations of two ALAN (no ALAN vs ALAN) and two insect-exclusion (no exclusion vs exclusion) treatments, and compared their biomass production. We found that common plant species, irrespective of whether they are alien or native, produced significantly more biomass than rare species, particularly under ALAN. Furthermore, alien species tended to show a slightly stronger positive response to ALAN than native species (marginally significant interaction between origin and ALAN, p = 0.079). Our study shows that common plant species benefited more from ALAN than rare ones. This might lead to shifts in plant diversity and vegetation composition, further propelling global biodiversity decline, when ALAN becomes more widespread. In addition, the slightly more positive response of alien species indicates that ALAN might increase the risk of alien plant invasions.

Can Trees Help Put Water Back Into the Soil?

Just to the south of the Amazon, there is a vast and biodiverse savanna that scientists believe is under even greater threat, called the Cerrado. Scientists want to understand how the plants that live in the Cerrado affect the rainfall that enters the ground to recharge the aquifer. Many of these plants are trees that capture rainwater and drain it down their bark-covered branches and trunks. This water, called stemflow, may be one way to recharge the aquifer, if the branches and bark of the trees are the right size and shape. This article will introduce the common plant species of the Cerrado, describe how they affect the way rainfall enters the ground, and discuss how bark and branches may help conserve water.

Application of Polypodiopsida Class in Nanotechnology–Potential towards Development of More Effective Bioactive Solutions

The area of phytosynthesized nanomaterials is rapidly developing, with numerous studies being published yearly. The use of plant extracts is an alternative method to reduce the toxic potential of the nanomaterials and the interest in obtaining phytosynthesized nanoparticles is usually directed towards accessible and common plant species, ferns not being explored to their real potential in this field. The developed nanoparticles could benefit from their superior antimicrobial and antioxidant properties (compared with the nanoparticles obtained by other routes), thus proposing an important alternative against health care-associated and drug-resistant infections, as well as in other types of applications. The present review aims to summarize the explored application of ferns in nanotechnology and related areas, as well as the current bottlenecks and future perspectives, as emerging from the literature data.

Automated survey of selected common plant species in Thai homegardens using Google Street View imagery and a deep neural network

Most previous studies of homegardens have used labor-intensive boots-on-the-ground plant surveys, owner questionnaires, and interviews, limiting them to at most a few hundred homegardens. We show that automated analysis of publicly available imagery can enable surveys of much greater scale that can augment these traditional data sources. Specifically, we demonstrate the feasibility of using the high-resolution street-level photographs in Google Street View and an object-detection network (RetinaNet) to create a large-scale high-resolution survey of the prevalence of at least six plant species widely grown in road-facing homegardens in Thailand. Our research team examined 4000 images facing perpendicular to the street and located within 10 m of a homestead, and manually outlined all perceived instances of eleven common plant species. A neural network trained on these tagged images was used to detect instances of these species in approximately 150,000 images constituting views of roughly one in every ten homesteads in five provinces of northern Thailand. The results for six of the plant species were visualized as heatmaps of both the average number of target species detected in each image and individual species prevalence, with spatial averaging performed at scales of 500 m and 2.5 km. Urban-rural contrasts in the average number of target species in each image are quantified, and large variations are observed even among neighboring villages. Spatial heterogeneity is seen to be more pronounced for banana and coconut than for other species. Star gooseberry and papaya are more frequently present immediately outside of towns while dracaena and mango persist into the cores of towns.