Abstract: In an effort to find antimalarial drugs, a systematic in vitro evaluation on a chloroquine-resistant strain of Plasmodium falciparum (FcB1) was undertaken on sixty plant extracts collected in French Guiana. The ethyl acetate extract obtained from the root barks of Symphonia globulifera exhibited a strong antiplasmodial activity (97% at 10 μg/ml). The phytochemical investigation of this extract led to the isolation of nine polycyclic polyprenylated acylphloroglucinol (PPAPs) compounds and two oxidized derivatives. All compounds showed antiplasmodial activity with IC(50)s ranged from 2.1 to 10.1 μM. A LC/ESI-MSn study performed on polyprenylated benzophenones previously isolated from Moronobea coccinea provided a reliable method for their detection in the extract and structural elucidation. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract: Context: Managing forests under climate change requires adaptation. The adaptive capacity of forest tree populations is huge but not limitless. Integrating evolutionary considerations into adaptive forestry practice will enhance the capacity of managed forests to respond to climate-driven changes.
Aims: Focusing on natural regeneration systems, we propose a general framework that can be used in various and complex local situations by forest managers, in combination with their own expertise, to integrate evolutionary considerations into decision making for the emergence of an evolution-oriented forestry.
Methods: We develop a simple process-based analytical grid, using few processes and parameters, to analyse the impact of forestry practice on the evolution and evolvability of tree populations.
Results: We review qualitative and, whenever possible, quantitative expectations on the intensity of evolutionary drivers in forest trees. Then, we review the effects of actual and potential forestry practice on the evolutionary processes. We illustrate the complexity of interactions in two study cases: the evolutionary consequences for forest trees of biotic interactions and of highly heterogeneous environment.
Conclusion: Evolution-oriented forestry may contribute adapting forests to climate change. It requires combining short-term and long-term objectives. We propose future lines of research and experimentation.

Abstract: Context: No efficient method is available to compare multi-locus estimates of diversity while taking into account inter-locus and inter-population stochastic variance. The advent of genome scan approaches makes the development of such tests absolutely necessary. Aims: We developed a method to compare genome-wide diversity estimates while taking into account – and factoring out – variation in census size and making use of inter-locus variance to assess significance of differences in diversity levels. Methods: An approach based on rarefaction with bootstrap re-sampling (RaBoT) was implemented into a test of multi-locus comparison of diversity coded in R. The properties of the test were studied by applying it to simulated populations with varying diversity levels and varying differences in diversity levels. The test was then applied to empirical data from disturbed and undisturbed populations of Virola michelii (Myristicaceae) genotyped at 693 amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers. Results: RaBoT was found to be rather conservative, with large numbers of false negatives when the diversity in the compared populations was similar, and false positives mostly associated to comparisons of populations with extremely high levels of diversity. When applied to empirical data, RaBoT detected higher genetic diversity in a post-disturbance than in an undisturbed population and lower genetic diversity in a seedling than in the corresponding adult population, but it also revealed differences in diversity between subgroups within the disturbed and undisturbed plots. Conclusion: RaBoT is a sensitive method to compare multi-locus levels of diversity that can be applied both at the genotype level for dominant markers (e.g. AFLP) and at the allele level for biallelic codominant markers (e.g. single-nucleotide polymorphisms). © 2013 INRA and Springer-Verlag France.

Abstract: Measures of spatial concentration and specialization in economics are similar to those of biodiversity and ubiquity of species in ecology. Entropy is the fundamental tool that originated in statistical physics and information theory. The definition of number equivalents or effective numbers, that is the number of types in an ideal, simplified distribution, is introduced along with the partitioning of the joint diversity of a bi-dimensional distribution into absolute and relative concentration or specialization and replication. The whole framework is theoretically robust and allows measuring the spatial structure of a discrete space.

Abstract: · Context Increased knowledge on diversity in wood properties would have implications both for fundamental research and for promoting a diversification of uses as material. · Aims The objective is to contribute to overcoming the critical lack of data on the diversity of wood dynamic mechanical/viscoelastic vibrational properties by testing lesser known species and categorising sources of variability. · Methods Air-dry axial specific dynamic modulus of elasticity (E′/γ) and damping coefficient (tand) were measured on a wide sampling (1,792 specimens) of 98 wood types from 79 species. An experimental device and protocol was designed for conducting systematic (i.e. rapid and reproducible) characterisations. · Results Diversity at the specimens' level corroborates the “standard” relationship between tanδ and E'/γ, which is discussed in terms of orientation of wood elements and of chemical composition. Diversity at the species level is expressed on the basis of results for normal heartwood, with specific gravity (γ) ranging from 0.2 to 1.3. Axial E'/γ ranges from 9 to 32 GPa and tand from 4×10 -3 to 19×10 -3. Properties distribution follows a continuum, but with group characteristics. The lowest values of tanδ are only found in certain tropical hardwoods. Results can also suggest alternative species for musical instruments making. · Conclusion The variations in specific gravity, in stiffness or in “viscosity” appear to be predominantly linked to different levels of diversity: between species or between wood types (reaction wood or taxonomy-related differences in heartwood extractives). © INRA/Springer-Verlag France 2011.