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Talaga, S., Dezerald, O., Carteron, A., Petitclerc, F., Leroy, C., Céréghino, R., et al. (2015). Tank bromeliads as natural microcosms: A facultative association with ants influences the aquatic invertebrate community structure. Comptes Rendus – Biologies, 338(10), 696–700.
Abstract: Many tank bromeliads have facultative relationships with ants as is the case in French Guiana between Aechmea aquilega (Salib.) Griseb. and the trap-jaw ant, Odontomachus haematodus Linnaeus. Using a redundancy analysis, we determined that the presence of O. haematodus colonies is accompanied by a greater quantity of fine particulate organic matter in the water likely due to their wastes. This increase in nutrient availability is significantly correlated with an increase in the abundance of some detritivorous taxa, suggesting a positive bottom-up influence on the aquatic macroinvertebrate communities living in the A. aquilega wells. On the other hand, the abundance of top predators is negatively affected by a lower number of available wells due to ant constructions for nesting, releasing a top-down pressure that could also favor lower trophic levels. © 2015 Académie des sciences.
Keywords: Aechmea; Ant-bromeliad associations; Aquatic communities; Odontomachus; Phytotelm
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Nirma, C., Eparvier, V., & Stien, D. (2015). Reactivation of antibiosis in the entomogenous fungus Chrysoporthe sp. SNB-CN74. Journal of Antibiotics, 68(9), 586–590.
Abstract: Chrysoporthe sp. SNB-CN74 was isolated from a Nasutitermes corniger nest, and its ethyl acetate extract was found to exhibit very strong antibacterial activity. Two antibacterial metabolites were isolated, (-)-R-skyrin (2) and (+)-rugulosin A (3). Eventually, the fungus lost its antibiotic potential when subcultured, and the use of yeast extract induced the re-expression of these two antibiotics. Yeast extract possibly activated a cryptic pathway by mimicking the presence of an ecological competitor. © 2015 Japan Antibiotics Research Association All rights reserved.
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Maréchaux, I., Bartlett, M. K., Sack, L., Baraloto, C., Engel, J., Joetzjer, E., et al. (2015). Drought tolerance as predicted by leaf water potential at turgor loss point varies strongly across species within an Amazonian forest. Functional Ecology, 29(10), 1268–1277.
Abstract: Amazonian droughts are predicted to become increasingly frequent and intense, and the vulnerability of Amazonian trees has become increasingly documented. However, little is known about the physiological mechanisms and the diversity of drought tolerance of tropical trees due to the lack of quantitative measurements. Leaf water potential at wilting or turgor loss point (π<inf>tlp</inf>) is a determinant of the tolerance of leaves to drought stress and contributes to plant-level physiological drought tolerance. Recently, it has been demonstrated that leaf osmotic water potential at full hydration (π<inf>o</inf>) is tightly correlated with π<inf>tlp</inf>. Estimating π<inf>tlp</inf> from osmometer measurements of π<inf>o</inf> is much faster than the standard pressure-volume curve approach of π<inf>tlp</inf> determination. We used this technique to estimate π<inf>tlp</inf> for 165 trees of 71 species, at three sites within forests in French Guiana. Our data set represents a significant increase in available data for this trait for tropical tree species. Tropical trees showed a wider range of drought tolerance than previously found in the literature, π<inf>tlp</inf> ranging from -1·4 to -3·2 MPa. This range likely corresponds in part to adaptation and acclimation to occasionally extreme droughts during the dry season. Leaf-level drought tolerance varied across species, in agreement with the available published observations of species variation in drought-induced mortality. On average, species with a more negative π<inf>tlp</inf> (i.e. with greater leaf-level drought tolerance) occurred less frequently across the region than drought-sensitive species. Across individuals, π<inf>tlp</inf> correlated positively but weakly with leaf toughness (R2 = 0·22, P = 0·04) and leaf thickness (R2 = 0·03, P = 0·03). No correlation was detected with other functional traits (leaf mass per area, leaf area, nitrogen or carbon concentrations, carbon isotope ratio, sapwood density or bark thickness). The variability in π<inf>tlp</inf> among species indicates a potential for highly diverse species responses to drought within given forest communities. Given the weak correlations between π<inf>tlp</inf> and traditionally measured plant functional traits, vegetation models seeking to predict forest response to drought should integrate improved quantification of comparative drought tolerance among tree species. © 2015 British Ecological Society.
Keywords: Climate change; French Guiana; Functional traits; Plant-water relations; Tropical trees; Wilting
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Paine, C. E. T., Baraloto, C., & Díaz, S. (2015). Optimal strategies for sampling functional traits in species-rich forests. Functional Ecology, 29(10), 1325–1331.
Abstract: Functional traits provide insight into a variety of ecological questions, yet the optimal sampling method to estimate the community-level distribution of plant functional trait values remains a subject of debate, especially in species-rich forests. We present a simulation analysis of the trait distribution of a set of nine completely sampled permanent plots in the lowland rain forests of French Guiana. Increased sampling intensity consistently improved accuracy in estimating community-weighted means and variances of functional trait values, whereas there was substantial variation among functional traits and minor differences among sampling strategies. Thus, investment in intensified sampling yields a greater improvement in the accuracy of estimation than does an equivalent investment in sampling design complication. Notably, 'taxon-free' strategies frequently had greater accuracy than did abundance-based strategies, which had the additional cost of requiring botanical surveys. We conclude that there is no substitute for extensive field sampling to accurately characterize the distribution of functional trait values in species-rich forests. © 2015 British Ecological Society.
Keywords: French Guiana; Functional traits; Plant traits; Sampling design; Specific leaf area; Tropical forest; Wood density
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Aubry-Kientz, M., Rossi, V., Wagner, F., & Herault, B. (2015). Identifying climatic drivers of tropical forest dynamics. Biogeosciences, 12(19), 5583–5596.
Abstract: In the context of climate change, identifying and then predicting the impacts of climatic drivers on tropical forest dynamics is becoming a matter of urgency. To look at these climate impacts, we used a coupled model of tropical tree growth and mortality, calibrated with forest dynamic data from the 20-year study site of Paracou, French Guiana, in order to introduce and test a set of climatic variables. Three major climatic drivers were identified through the variable selection procedure: drought, water saturation and temperature. Drought decreased annual growth and mortality rates, high precipitation increased mortality rates and high temperature decreased growth. Interactions between key functional traits, stature and climatic variables were investigated, showing best resistance to drought for trees with high wood density and for trees with small current diameters. Our results highlighted strong long-term impacts of climate variables on tropical forest dynamics, suggesting potential deep impacts of climate changes during the next century. © Author(s) 2015.
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Dejean, A., Ryder, S., Bolton, B., Compin, A., Leponce, M., Azémar, F., et al. (2015). How territoriality and host-tree taxa determine the structure of ant mosaics. Sci Nat, 102(33), 1–9.
Abstract: Very large colonies of territorially dominant arboreal ants (TDAAs), whose territories are distributed in a mosaic pattern in the canopies of many tropical rainforests and tree crop plantations, have a generally positive impact on their host trees. We studied the canopy of an old Gabonese rainforest (ca 4.25 ha sampled, corresponding to 206 Blarge trees) at a stage just preceding forest maturity (the Caesalpinioideae dominated; the Burseraceae were abundant). The tree crowns sheltered colonies from 13 TDAAs plus a codominant species out of the 25 ant species recorded. By mapping the TDAAs' territories and using a null model cooccurrence analysis, we confirmed the existence of an ant mosaic. Thanks to a large sampling set and the use of the self-organizing map algorithm (SOM), we show that the distribution of the trees influences the structure of the ant mosaic, suggesting that each tree taxon attracts certain TDAA species rather than others. The SOMalso improved our knowledge of the TDAAs' ecological niches, showing that these ant species are ecologically distinct from each other based on their relationships with their supporting trees. Therefore, TDAAs should not systematically be placed in the same functional group even when they belong to the same genus.We conclude by reiterating that, in addition to the role played by TDAAs' territorial competition, host trees contribute to structuring ant mosaics through multiple factors, including host-plant selection by TDAAs, the age of the trees, the presence of extrafloral nectaries, and the taxa of the associated hemipterans. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015.
Keywords: Africa; Arboreal ants; Distribution; Host-tree selection; Rainforest canopies
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Marcon, E., & Herault, B. (2015). entropart: An R package to measure and partition diversity. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(8), 1–26.
Abstract: entropart is a package for R designed to estimate diversity based on HCDT entropy or similarity-based entropy. It allows calculating species-neutral, phylogenetic and functional entropy and diversity, partitioning them and correcting them for estimation bias. © 2015, American Statistical Association. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Biodiversity; Entropy; Partitioning
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Honorio Coronado, E. N., Dexter, K. G., Pennington, R. T., Chave, J., Lewis, S. L., Alexiades, M. N., et al. (2015). Phylogenetic diversity of Amazonian tree communities. Diversity and Distributions, 21(11), 1295–1307.
Abstract: Aim: To examine variation in the phylogenetic diversity (PD) of tree communities across geographical and environmental gradients in Amazonia. Location: Two hundred and eighty-three c. 1 ha forest inventory plots from across Amazonia. Methods: We evaluated PD as the total phylogenetic branch length across species in each plot (PDss), the mean pairwise phylogenetic distance between species (MPD), the mean nearest taxon distance (MNTD) and their equivalents standardized for species richness (ses.PDss, ses.MPD, ses.MNTD). We compared PD of tree communities growing (1) on substrates of varying geological age; and (2) in environments with varying ecophysiological barriers to growth and survival. Results: PDss is strongly positively correlated with species richness (SR), whereas MNTD has a negative correlation. Communities on geologically young- and intermediate-aged substrates (western and central Amazonia respectively) have the highest SR, and therefore the highest PDss and the lowest MNTD. We find that the youngest and oldest substrates (the latter on the Brazilian and Guiana Shields) have the highest ses.PDss and ses.MNTD. MPD and ses.MPD are strongly correlated with how evenly taxa are distributed among the three principal angiosperm clades and are both highest in western Amazonia. Meanwhile, seasonally dry tropical forest (SDTF) and forests on white sands have low PD, as evaluated by any metric. Main conclusions: High ses.PDss and ses.MNTD reflect greater lineage diversity in communities. We suggest that high ses.PDss and ses.MNTD in western Amazonia results from its favourable, easy-to-colonize environment, whereas high values in the Brazilian and Guianan Shields may be due to accumulation of lineages over a longer period of time. White-sand forests and SDTF are dominated by close relatives from fewer lineages, perhaps reflecting ecophysiological barriers that are difficult to surmount evolutionarily. Because MPD and ses.MPD do not reflect lineage diversity per se, we suggest that PDss, ses.PDss and ses.MNTD may be the most useful diversity metrics for setting large-scale conservation priorities. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Keywords: Amazon basin; Eudicots; Magnoliids; Monocots; Phylogenetic diversity; Species richness
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Marcon, E., Traissac, S., Puech, F., & Lang, G. (2015). Tools to characterize point patterns: dbmss for R. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(Codesnippet3), 1–15.
Abstract: The dbmss package for R provides an easy-to-use toolbox to characterize the spatial structure of point patterns. Our contribution presents the state of the art of distance-based methods employed in economic geography and which are also used in ecology. Topographic functions such as Ripley’s K, absolute functions such as Duranton and Overman’s Kd and relative functions such as Marcon and Puech’s M are implemented. Their confidence envelopes (including global ones) and tests against counterfactuals are included in the package. © 2015, American Statistical Association. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Point patterns; R; Spatial structure
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Talaga, S., Dejean, A., Carinci, R., Gaborit, P., Dusfour, I., & Girod, R. (2015). Updated Checklist of the Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) of French Guiana. Journal of Medical Entomology, 52(5), 770–782.
Abstract: The incredible mosquito species diversity in the Neotropics can provoke major confusion during vector control programs when precise identification is needed. This is especially true in French Guiana where studies on mosquito diversity practically ceased 35 yr ago. In order to fill this gap, we propose here an updated and comprehensive checklist of the mosquitoes of French Guiana, reflecting the latest changes in classification and geographical distribution and the recognition of current or erroneous synonymies. This work was undertaken in order to help ongoing and future research on mosquitoes in a broad range of disciplines such as ecology, biogeography, and medical entomology. Thirty-two valid species cited in older lists have been removed, and 24 species have been added including 12 species (comprising two new genera and three new subgenera) reported from French Guiana for the first time. New records are from collections conducted on various phytotelmata in French Guiana and include the following species: Onirion sp. cf Harbach and Peyton (2000), Sabethes (Peytonulus) hadrognathus Harbach, Sabethes (Peytonulus) paradoxus Harbach, Sabethes (Peytonulus) soperi Lane and Cerqueira, Sabethes (Sabethinus) idiogenes Harbach, Sabethes (Sabethes) quasicyaneus Peryassú , Runchomyia (Ctenogoeldia) magna (Theobald), Wyeomyia (Caenomyiella) sp. cf Harbach and Peyton (1990), Wyeomyia (Dendromyia) ypsipola Dyar, Wyeomyia (Hystatomyia) lamellata (Bonne-Wepster and Bonne), Wyeomyia (Miamyia) oblita (Lutz), and Toxorhynchites (Lynchiella) guadeloupensis (Dyar and Knab). At this time, the mosquitoes of French Guiana are represented by 235 species distributed across 22 genera, nine tribes, and two subfamilies.
Keywords: culicid; Neotropics; South America; species checklist; vector
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