CREAF

Within the scope of a biomonitoring study conducted in twelve urban agglomerations in eight European countries, the ozone-sensitive bioindicator plant Nicotiana tabacum cv. Bel-W3 was employed in order to assess the occurrence of phytotoxic ozone effects at urban, suburban, rural and traffic-exposed sites. The tobacco plants were exposed to ambient air for biweekly periods at up to 100 biomonitoring sites from 2000 to 2002. Special emphasis was placed upon methodological standardisation of plant cultivation, field exposure and injury assessment. Ozone-induced leaf injury showed a clearly increasing gradient from northern and northwestern Europe to central and southern European locations. The strongest ozone impact occurred at the exposure sites in Lyon and Barcelona, while in Edinburgh, Sheffield, Copenhagen and Düsseldorf only weak to moderate ozone effects were registered. Between-site differences within local networks were relatively small, but seasonal and inter-annual differences were strong due to the variability of meteorological conditions and related ozone concentrations. The 2001 data revealed a significant relationship between foliar injury degree and various descriptors of ozone pollution such as mean value, AOT20 and AOT40. Examining individual sites of the local monitoring networks separately, however, yielded noticeable differences. Some sites showed no association between ozone pollution and ozone-induced effects, whereas others featured almost linear relationships. This is because the actual ozone flux into the leaf, which is modified by various environmental factors, rather than ambient ozone concentration determines the effects on plants. The advantage of sensitive bioindicators like tobacco Bel-W3 is that the impact of the effectively absorbed ozone dose can directly be measured. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Previous work on primates and birds suggests that large brains require longer periods of juvenile growth, leading to reproductive constraints due to delayed maturation. However, longevity is often extended in large-brained species, possibly compensating for delayed maturation. We examined the relationship between brain size and life history periods in cetaceans, a large-brained mammalian order that has been largely ignored. We looked at males and females of twenty-five species of Odontocetes, using independent contrasts and multiple regressions to disentangle possible phylogenetic effects and inter-correlations among life history traits. We corrected all variables for body size allometry and separated life span into adult and juvenile periods. For females and both sexes combined, gestation, time to sexual maturity, time as an adult and life span were all positively associated with residual brain size in simple regressions; in multiple regressions, maximum life span and time as an adult were the best predictors of brain size. Males showed few significant trends. Our results suggest that brain size has co-evolved with extended life history periods in Odontocetes, as it has in primates and birds, and that a lengthened adult period could have been an important component of encephalization in cetaceans. Copyright © 2006 S. Karger AG.

Semiarid environments throughout the world have lost a major part of their woody vegetation and biodiversity due to the effects of wood cutting, cattle grazing and subsistence agriculture. The resulting state is typically used for cattle production, but the productivity of these systems is often very low, and erosion of the unprotected soil is a common problem. Such dry-land degradation is of great international concern, not only because the resulting state is hardly productive but also because it paves the way to desertification. The natural distribution of the genus Prosopis includes arid and semiarid zones of the Americas, Africa and Asia, but the majority of the Prosopis species are, however, native to the Americas. In order to assess a likely gradient in the response of tree species to precipitation, temperature and their connection to El Niño southern oscillation (ENSO) events, two Prosopis species were chosen along a latitudinal gradient in Latin America, from northern Peru to central Chile: Prosopis pallida from a semi-arid land in northern and southern Peru and P. chilensis from a semiarid land in central Chile. Growth rings of each species were crossdated at each sampling site using classical dendrochronological techniques. Chronologies were related with instrumental climatic records in each site, as well as with SOI and N34 series. Cross-correlation, spectral and wavelet analysis techniques were used to assess the relation of growth with precipitation and temperature. Despite the long distance among sites, the two Prosopis species presented similar responses. Thus, the two species' growth is positively correlated to precipitation, while with temperature it is not. In northern Peru, precipitation and growth of P. pallida present a similar cyclic pattern, with a period of around 3 years. On the other hand, P. pallida in southern Peru, and P. chilensis also present this cyclic pattern, but also another one with lower frequency, coinciding with the pattern of precipitation. Both cycles are within the range of the ENSO band. © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.