Piper: A Model Genus for Studies of Phytochemistry, Ecology, and Evolution
01 Jan 2004-
About: The article was published on 2004-01-01. It has received 131 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Genus.
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TL;DR: Information on the ecological and economic value of ecosystem services provided by bats can be used to inform decisions regarding where and when to protect or restore bat populations and associated habitats, as well as to improve public perception of bats.
Abstract: Ecosystem services are the benefits obtained from the environment that increase human well-being. Economic valuation is conducted by measuring the human welfare gains or losses that result from changes in the provision of ecosystem services. Bats have long been postulated to play important roles in arthropod suppression, seed dispersal, and pollination; however, only recently have these ecosystem services begun to be thoroughly evaluated. Here, we review the available literature on the ecological and economic impact of ecosystem services provided by bats. We describe dietary preferences, foraging behaviors, adaptations, and phylogenetic histories of insectivorous, frugivorous, and nectarivorous bats worldwide in the context of their respective ecosystem services. For each trophic ensemble, we discuss the consequences of these ecological interactions on both natural and agricultural systems. Throughout this review, we highlight the research needed to fully determine the ecosystem services in question. Finally, we provide a comprehensive overview of economic valuation of ecosystem services. Unfortunately, few studies estimating the economic value of ecosystem services provided by bats have been conducted to date; however, we outline a framework that could be used in future studies to more fully address this question. Consumptive goods provided by bats, such as food and guano, are often exchanged in markets where the market price indicates an economic value. Nonmarket valuation methods can be used to estimate the economic value of nonconsumptive services, including inputs to agricultural production and recreational activities. Information on the ecological and economic value of ecosystem services provided by bats can be used to inform decisions regarding where and when to protect or restore bat populations and associated habitats, as well as to improve public perception of bats.
1,084 citations
TL;DR: The goals for this review are to lay the groundwork on supporting services to facilitate future efforts to estimate their economic value, to highlight gaps in knowledge, and to point to future directions for additional research.
Abstract: Ecosystem services are natural processes that benefit humans. Birds contribute the four types of services recognized by the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment-provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services. In this review, we concentrate primarily on supporting services, and to a lesser extent, provisioning and regulating services. As members of ecosystems, birds play many roles, including as predators, pollinators, scavengers, seed dispersers, seed predators, and ecosystem engineers. These ecosystem services fall into two subcategories: those that arise via behavior (like consumption of agricultural pests) and those that arise via bird products (like nests and guano). Characteristics of most birds make them quite special from the perspective of ecosystem services. Because most birds fly, they can respond to irruptive or pulsed resources in ways generally not possible for other vertebrates. Migratory species link ecosystem processes and fluxes that are separated by great distances and times. Although the economic value to humans contributed by most, if not all, of the supporting services has yet to be quantified, we believe they are important to humans. Our goals for this review are 1) to lay the groundwork on these services to facilitate future efforts to estimate their economic value, 2) to highlight gaps in our knowledge, and 3) to point to future directions for additional research.
1,051 citations
TL;DR: This conclusion, together with the recent downward revisions of extremely high estimates of tropical species richness, suggest that tropical ecosystems may not be as biodiverse as previously thought.
Abstract: Studies of host specificity in tropical insect herbivores are evolving from a focus on insect distribution data obtained by canopy fogging and other mass collecting methods, to a focus on obtaining data on insect rearing and experimentally verified feeding patterns. We review this transition and identify persisting methodological problems. Replicated quantitative surveys of plant–herbivore food webs, based on sampling efforts of an order of magnitude greater than is customary at present, may be cost-effectively achieved by small research teams supported by local assistants. Survey designs that separate historical and ecological determinants of host specificity by studying herbivores feeding on the same plant species exposed to different environmental or experimental conditions are rare. Further, we advocate the use of host‐specificity measures based on plant phylogeny. Existing data suggest that a minority of species in herbivore communities feed on a single plant species when alternative congeneric hosts are available. Thus, host plant range limits tend to coincide with those of plant genera, rather than species or suprageneric taxa. Host specificity among tropical herbivore guilds decreases in the sequence: granivores>leaf-miners>fructivores>leaf-chewers=sap-suckers>xylophages>root-feeders, thus paralleling patterns observed in temperate forests. Differences in host specificity between temperate and tropical forests are difficult to assess since data on tropical herbivores originate from recent field studies, whereas their temperate counterparts derive from regional host species lists, assembled over many years. No major increase in host specificity from temperate to tropical communities is evident. This conclusion, together with the recent downward revisions of extremely high estimates of tropical species richness, suggest that tropical ecosystems may not be as biodiverse as previously thought.
320 citations
Cites background from "Piper: A Model Genus for Studies of..."
...Species-rich pan-tropical genera, such as Ficus, Piper or Psychotria, are promising candidates for such studies (Dyer & Palmer 2004)....
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TL;DR: The functional properties of Piper plants/extracts/active components the antiproliferative, anti-inflammatory, and neuropharmacological activities of the extracts and extract-derived bioactive constituents are thought to be key effects for the protection against chronic conditions.
Abstract: Piper species are aromatic plants used as spices in the kitchen, but their secondary metabolites have also shown biological effects on human health. These plants are rich in essential oils, which can be found in their fruits, seeds, leaves, branches, roots and stems. Some Piper species have simple chemical profiles, while others, such as Piper nigrum, Piper betle, and Piper auritum, contain very diverse suites of secondary metabolites. In traditional medicine, Piper species have been used worldwide to treat several diseases such as urological problems, skin, liver and stomach ailments, for wound healing, and as antipyretic and anti-inflammatory agents. In addition, Piper species could be used as natural antioxidants and antimicrobial agents in food preservation. The phytochemicals and essential oils of Piper species have shown strong antioxidant activity, in comparison with synthetic antioxidants, and demonstrated antibacterial and antifungal activities against human pathogens. Moreover, Piper species possess therapeutic and preventive potential against several chronic disorders. Among the functional properties of Piper plants/extracts/active components the antiproliferative, anti-inflammatory, and neuropharmacological activities of the extracts and extract-derived bioactive constituents are thought to be key effects for the protection against chronic conditions, based on preclinical in vitro and in vivo studies, besides clinical studies. Habitats and cultivation of Piper species are also covered in this review. In this current work, available literature of chemical constituents of the essential oils Piper plants, their use in traditional medicine, their applications as a food preservative, their antiparasitic activities and other important biological activities are reviewed.
241 citations
Cites background from "Piper: A Model Genus for Studies of..."
...The chemistry of these EOs has been extensively studied since the 1960s, but according to Dyer [8] only about 10% of Piper species species (112 of 1457 accepted species world-wide, www....
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...The presence of oil cells in the structures of almost all Piper species places them in the group of aromatic plants [8]....
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...The chemistry of these EOs has been extensively studied since the 1960s, but according to Dyer [8] only about 10% of Piper species species (112 of 1457 accepted species world-wide, www.theplantlist.org) has been phytochemically studied....
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TL;DR: The conclusions of the current work with Piperaceae are that Piper extracts offer a unique and useful source of biopesticide material for controlling small-scale insect out-breaks and reducing the likelihood of resistance development when applied as a synergist with other botanical insecticides such as pyrethrum.
Abstract: The tropical plant family Piperaceae has provided many past and present civilizations with a source of diverse medicines and food grade spice. The secondary plant compounds that produce these desired qualities function also as chemical defenses for many species in the genus Piper. The compounds with the greatest insecticidal activity are the piperamides. Many studies have shown the effectiveness of Piper spp. extracts for the control of stored products pests and recently studies from our laboratory group have tested the extracts of Piper. nigrum, P. guineense and P. tuberculatum against insect pests of the home and garden. These results and those from investigations that examined the biochemical and molecular modes of action of the piperamides singly or in combination will be the focus of this review. The conclusions of our current work with Piperaceae are that Piper extracts offer a unique and useful source of biopesticide material for controlling small-scale insect out-breaks and reducing the likelihood of resistance development when applied as a synergist with other botanical insecticides such as pyrethrum.
236 citations
Cites background from "Piper: A Model Genus for Studies of..."
...The phytochemistry of most of the Piper spice plants is well documented (Parmar et al. 1998; Tripathi et al. 1996; Dyer and Palmer 2004)....
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References
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TL;DR: In vivo redox biosensing resolves the spatiotemporal dynamics of compartmental responses to local ROS generation and provide a basis for understanding how compartment-specific redox dynamics may operate in retrograde signaling and stress 67 acclimation in plants.
Abstract: In experiments with tobacco tissue cultured on White's modified medium (basal meditmi hi Tnhles 1 and 2) supplemenk'd with kiticthi and hidoleacctic acid, a slrikin^' fourlo (ive-told intTease iu yield was ohtaitu-d within a three to Tour week j^rowth period on addition of an aqtteotis exlrarl of tobacco leaves (Fi^'ures 1 and 2). Subse(iueutly it was found Ihiit this jnoniotiou oi' f^rowih was due mainly though nol entirely to inorj^auic rather than organic con.stitttenls in the extract. In the isolation of Rrowth factors from plant tissues and other sources inorj '̂anic salts are fre(|uently carried along with fhe organic fraclioits. When tissue cultures are used for bioassays, therefore, il is necessary lo lake into account increases in growth which may result from nutrient elements or other known constituents of the medium which may he present in the te.st materials. To minimize interference trom rontaminaitis of this type, an altempt has heen made to de\\eh)p a nieditmi with such adequate supplies of all re(iuired tnineral nutrients and cotntnott orgattic cottslitueitls that no apprecial»le change in growth rate or yield will result from the inlroduclion of additional amounts in the range ordinarily expected to be present in tnaterials to be assayed. As a point of referetice for this work some of the culture media in mc)st common current use will he cotisidered briefly. For ease of comparis4)n Iheir mineral compositions are listed in Tables 1 and 2. White's nutrient .solution, designed originally for excised root cultures, was based on Uspeuski and Uspetiskaia's medium for algae and Trelease and Trelease's micronutrieni solution. This medium also was employed successfully in the original cttltivation of callus from the tobacco Iiybrid Nicotiana gtauca x A', tanijadorffii, atitl as further modified by White in 194̂ ^ and by others it has been used for the
63,098 citations
TL;DR: The recently‐developed statistical method known as the “bootstrap” can be used to place confidence intervals on phylogenies and shows significant evidence for a group if it is defined by three or more characters.
Abstract: The recently-developed statistical method known as the "bootstrap" can be used to place confidence intervals on phylogenies. It involves resampling points from one's own data, with replacement, to create a series of bootstrap samples of the same size as the original data. Each of these is analyzed, and the variation among the resulting estimates taken to indicate the size of the error involved in making estimates from the original data. In the case of phylogenies, it is argued that the proper method of resampling is to keep all of the original species while sampling characters with replacement, under the assumption that the characters have been independently drawn by the systematist and have evolved independently. Majority-rule consensus trees can be used to construct a phylogeny showing all of the inferred monophyletic groups that occurred in a majority of the bootstrap samples. If a group shows up 95% of the time or more, the evidence for it is taken to be statistically significant. Existing computer programs can be used to analyze different bootstrap samples by using weights on the characters, the weight of a character being how many times it was drawn in bootstrap sampling. When all characters are perfectly compatible, as envisioned by Hennig, bootstrap sampling becomes unnecessary; the bootstrap method would show significant evidence for a group if it is defined by three or more characters.
40,349 citations
TL;DR: The program MODELTEST uses log likelihood scores to establish the model of DNA evolution that best fits the data.
Abstract: Summary: The program MODELTEST uses log likelihood scores to establish the model of DNA evolution that best fits the data. Availability: The MODELTEST package, including the source code and some documentation is available at http://bioag.byu.edu/zoology/crandall―lab/modeltest.html. Contact: dp47@email.byu.edu.
20,105 citations
TL;DR: A new statistical method for estimating divergence dates of species from DNA sequence data by a molecular clock approach is developed, and this dating may pose a problem for the widely believed hypothesis that the bipedal creatureAustralopithecus afarensis, which lived some 3.7 million years ago, was ancestral to man and evolved after the human-ape splitting.
Abstract: A new statistical method for estimating divergence dates of species from DNA sequence data by a molecular clock approach is developed. This method takes into account effectively the information contained in a set of DNA sequence data. The molecular clock of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was calibrated by setting the date of divergence between primates and ungulates at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (65 million years ago), when the extinction of dinosaurs occurred. A generalized least-squares method was applied in fitting a model to mtDNA sequence data, and the clock gave dates of 92.3 +/- 11.7, 13.3 +/- 1.5, 10.9 +/- 1.2, 3.7 +/- 0.6, and 2.7 +/- 0.6 million years ago (where the second of each pair of numbers is the standard deviation) for the separation of mouse, gibbon, orangutan, gorilla, and chimpanzee, respectively, from the line leading to humans. Although there is some uncertainty in the clock, this dating may pose a problem for the widely believed hypothesis that the pipedal creature Australopithecus afarensis, which lived some 3.7 million years ago at Laetoli in Tanzania and at Hadar in Ethiopia, was ancestral to man and evolved after the human-ape splitting. Another likelier possibility is that mtDNA was transferred through hybridization between a proto-human and a proto-chimpanzee after the former had developed bipedalism.
8,124 citations