The in vitro micronucleus (MN) test (OECD TG 487) has become the gold standard in various regulatory silos for assessing compounds for their potential to cause clastogenicity. Its main advantages are the reproducibility and robustness, as well as the ability to investigate both structural and numerical chromosome damage, i.e. clastogenicity and aneuploidy. A disadvantage, however, can be seen in the resource-intensive microsco...

Aim We test the hypothesis that wind dispersal is more common among emergent tree species given that being tall increases the likelihood of effective seed dispersal. Location Americas, Africa and the Asia‐Pacific. Time period 1970–2020. Major taxa studied Gymnosperms and Angiosperms. Methods We used a dataset consisting of tree inventories from 2821 plots across three biogeographic regions (Americas, Africa and Asia‐Pacific),...

Zusammenfassung Das Projekt NIKE-MED zielt darauf ab, die Effizienz und Effektivität der Einsatzkräfte bei der Bewältigung von Notfällen insbesondere bei Großschadensereignissen zu erhöhen, um die Sicherheit der betroffenen Personen zu gewährleisten. Komplexe Einsätze unter Tage sind mit einem Massenanfall von Opfern mit sehr spezifischen Verletzungsmustern, die man aus bewaffneten Konflikten kennt (Vergiftungen, Verbrennungen...

Fishes are not only the largest, but also the most diverse group of vertebrates [...]

Currently, the authorisation process for plant protection products (PPPs) relies on the testing of acute and topological toxicity only. Contrastingly, the evaluation of active substances includes a more comprehensive set of toxicity studies. Nevertheless, mixture effects of active ingredients and co-formulants may result in increased toxicity. Therefore, we investigated effects of surface active co-formulants on the toxicity o...

It is generally accepted that the spatial distribution of neutral genetic diversity within a species’ native range mostly depends on effective population size, demographic history, and geographic position. However, it is unclear how genetic diversity at adaptive loci correlates with geographic peripherality or with habitat suitability within the ecological niche. Using exome‐wide genomic data and distribution maps of the Alpin...

Organ models are used for planning and simulation of operations, developing new surgical instruments, and training purposes. There is a substantial demand for in vitro organ phantoms, especially in urological surgery. Animal models and existing simulator systems poorly mimic the detailed morphology and the physical properties of human organs. In this paper, we report a novel fabrication process to make a human kidney phantom w...

Aim We sought to reconstruct the biogeographical structure and dynamics of a hyperdiverse ant genus, Pheidole, and to test several predictions of the taxon cycle hypothesis. Using large datasets on Pheidole geographical distributions and phylogeny, we (1) inferred patterns of biogeographical modularity (clusters of areas with similar faunal composition), (2) tested whether species in open habitats are more likely to be expandi...

Delineating microbial populations, discovering ecologically relevant phenotypes and identifying migrants, hybrids or admixed individuals have long proved notoriously difficult, thereby limiting our understanding of the evolutionary forces at play during the diversification of microbial species. However, recent advances in sequencing and computational methods have enabled an unbiased approach whereby incipient species and the g...

Global change is impacting forests worldwide, threatening biodiversity and ecosystem services including climate regulation. Understanding how forests respond is critical to forest conservation and climate protection. This review describes an international network of 59 long‐term forest dynamics research sites ( CTFS ‐Forest GEO ) useful for characterizing forest responses to global change. Within very large plots (median size...

Leucaena leucocephala (leucaena) is an important agroforestry tree of tropics and subtropics due to its protein rich foliages, ability to grow on poor soils, and high level of tolerance to various stresses including drought and diseases. We hypothesized that leucaena have a unique set of genes which confer tolerance to various abiotic and biotic stresses and these genes are either absent or not expressed in other legumes that...