The combined impact of new computing resources and techniques with an increasing avalanche of large datasets, is transforming many research areas and may lead to technological breakthroughs that can ...be used by billions of people. In the recent years, Machine Learning and especially its subfield Deep Learning have seen impressive advances. Techniques developed within these two fields are now able to analyze and learn from huge amounts of real world examples in a disparate formats. While the number of Machine Learning algorithms is extensive and growing, their implementations through frameworks and libraries is also extensive and growing too. The software development in this field is fast paced with a large number of open-source software coming from the academy, industry, start-ups or wider open-source communities. This survey presents a recent time-slide comprehensive overview with comparisons as well as trends in development and usage of cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence software. It also provides an overview of massive parallelism support that is capable of scaling computation effectively and efficiently in the era of Big Data.
Summary
The aboveground impacts of climate change receive extensive research attention, but climate change could also alter belowground processes such as the delicate balance between free‐living ...fungal decomposers and nutrient‐scavenging mycorrhizal fungi that can inhibit decomposition through a mechanism called the Gadgil effect.
We investigated how climate change‐induced reductions in plant survival, photosynthesis and productivity alter soil fungal community composition in a mixed arbuscular/ectomycorrhizal (AM/EM) semiarid shrubland exposed to experimental warming (W) and/or rainfall reduction (RR). We hypothesised that increased EM host plant mortality under a warmer and drier climate might decrease ectomycorrhizal fungal (EMF) abundance, thereby favouring the proliferation and activity of fungal saprotrophs.
The relative abundance of EMF sequences decreased by 57.5% under W+RR, which was accompanied by reductions in the activity of hydrolytic enzymes involved in the acquisition of organic‐bound nutrients by EMF and their host plants. W+RR thereby created an enhanced potential for soil organic matter (SOM) breakdown and nitrogen mineralisation by decomposers, as revealed by 127–190% increases in dissolved organic carbon and nitrogen, respectively, and decreasing SOM content in soil.
Climate aridification impacts on vegetation can cascade belowground through shifts in fungal guild structure that alter ecosystem biogeochemistry and accelerate SOM decomposition by reducing the Gadgil effect.
Wheat (
L.) and barley (
L.) are major crops cultivated around the world, thus playing a crucial role on human diet. Remarkably, the growing human population requires a significant increase in ...agricultural production in order to feed everybody. In this context, phosphorus (P) management is a key factor as it is component of organic molecules such as nucleic acids, ATP and phospholipids, and it is the most abundant macronutrient in biomass after nitrogen (N), although being one of the scarcest elements in the lithosphere. In general, P fertilization has low efficiency, as only a fraction of the applied P is acquired by roots, leaving a substantial amount to be accumulated in soil as not readily available P. Breeding for P-efficient cultivars is a relatively low cost alternative and can be done through two mechanisms: i) improving P use efficiency (PUE), and/or ii) P acquisition efficiency (PAE). PUE is related to the internal allocation/mobilization of P, and is usually represented by the amount of P accumulated per biomass. PAE relies on roots ability to acquire P from the soil, and is commonly expressed as the relative difference of P acquired under low and high P availability conditions. In this review, plant adaptations related to improved PAE are described, with emphasis on arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis, which is generally accepted to enhance plant P acquisition. A state of the art (1980-2018) of AM growth responses and P uptake in wheat and barley is made to discuss about the commonly accepted growth promoting effect and P increased uptake by AM fungi and the contrasting evidence about the generally accepted lack of positive responses in both plant species. Finally, the mechanisms by which AM symbiosis can affect wheat and barley PAE are discussed, highlighting the importance of considering AM functional diversity on future studies and the necessity to improve PAE definition by considering the carbon trading between all the directly related PAE traits and its return to the host plant.
Arbuscular mycorrhizas are one of the most frequent mutualisms in terrestrial ecosystems. Although studies on plant mutualistic interaction networks suggest that they may leave their imprint on plant ...community structure and dynamics, this has not been explicitly assessed. Thus, in the context of plant‐fungi interactions, studies explicitly linking plant‐mycorrhizal fungi interaction networks with key ecological functions of plant communities, such as recruitment, are lacking.
In this study, we analyse, in two Mediterranean forest communities of southern Iberian Peninsula, how plant‐arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) networks modulate plant‐plant recruitment interaction networks. We use a new approach integrating plant‐AMF and plant recruitment networks into a single multilayer structure. We also develop a new metric (Interlayer Node Neighbourhood Integration, INNI) to explore the impact of a given node on the structure across layers.
The similarity of plant species in their AMF communities is positively related to the observed frequency of recruitment interactions in the field. Results reveal that properties of plant‐AMF networks, such as plant degree and centrality, can explain about the properties of plant recruitment network, such as in‐ and out‐degree (i.e. sapling bank and canopy service) and its modular structure. However, these relationships differed between the two forest communities. Finally, we identify particular AMF that contribute to integrate the neighbourhood of recruitment interactions between plants.
This multilayer network approach is useful to explore the role of plant‐AMF interactions on recruitment, a key ecosystem function enhanced by fungi. Results provide evidence that the complex structure of plant‐AMF interactions impacts functional and structurally plant‐plant interactions, which in turn may potentially influence plant community dynamics, through their effects on the structure of the recruitment network.
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
The phyllosphere is a wide and complex ecosystem that provides a key support for microbial diversity. Fungal communities inhabiting the leaf are functionally variable and play important roles on ...plant performance. Factors conditioning the arrival and colonization of fungal communities will determine the phyllosphere fungal composition. Plant identity, leaf functional traits and host plant phylogeny have been shown to be regulators of the microbial colonization of the leaves, and can be considered as biotic filters determining the assembly of phyllosphere fungal communities. By high‐throughput sequencing we analysed the phyllosphere fungal communities from 38 Mediterranean woody plant species in two forests of south‐eastern Iberian Peninsula. We analysed the effect of plant species and site on fungal community composition. We also tested the effect of leaf functional traits and plant phylogeny on plant species differences in their fungal communities, and on the structure of the plant–fungus interaction network. Plant species account for a larger proportion than site in the variability of the composition of phyllosphere fungal communities. Leaf traits and host phylogeny influence the arrival and colonization of phyllosphere fungal communities across plant species. Plants with pubescent leaves and phylogenetically closer harbour more similar communities of decomposers, pathogens and epiphytes. Leaf habit (i.e. evergreen versus deciduous) also influences the community composition of decomposer and epiphytic fungi. Leaf carbon, leaf water content and leaf mass per area affect differentially each functional guild. Plant–fungus interaction networks present a modular structure in which plants belonging to the same module share more fungal species and are phylogenetically closer. We provide evidence that even though phyllosphere fungal communities are complex ecosystems, fungi with contrasting relationships with the plant (decomposers, epiphytes and pathogens) respond similarly to a common subset of leaf traits that impose physical limitations to the assembly of phyllosphere fungal communities.
Private cloud infrastructures are now widely deployed and adopted across technology industries and research institutions. Although cloud computing has emerged as a reality, it is now known that a ...single cloud provider cannot fully satisfy complex user requirements. This has resulted in a growing interest in developing hybrid cloud solutions that bind together distinct and heterogeneous cloud infrastructures. In this paper we describe the orchestration approach for heterogeneous clouds that has been implemented and used within the INDIGO-DataCloud project. This orchestration model uses existing open-source software like OpenStack and leverages the OASIS Topology and Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) open standard as the modeling language. Our approach uses virtual machines and Docker containers in an homogeneous and transparent way providing consistent application deployment for the users. This approach is illustrated by means of two different use cases in different scientific communities, implemented using the INDIGO-DataCloud solutions.
The emergence of information and communication technologies (ICT) has generated a number of research questions, related to their use and potential risk, but also potentials for prevention or health ...promotion. Online social networks have become an important source of information for users as well as a tool for social relations. As traditional social networks, they can act as vehicles to improve the health of adolescents and youth, as well as play a key role in an educational context. The aim of this work is then to explore the theoretical relevance of ICT, particularly on online social networks, on disease prevention and health promotion of communicable diseases. Literature review points out the role of online social networks, particularly in the field of sexual health, body image, especially eating habits and overweight, as well as smoking and alcohol dependence. Data allow us to understand how online social network behavior and interaction is related to their burden and interventions developed in sexual health and addiction show positive results. More efforts in body image are needed in order to use these tools for prevention and promotion of health from early age.
Abstract Phyllosphere fungal communities participate in multiple ecological functions (litter decomposition, disease‐causing, plant defence). However, there is a lack of knowledge on whether and how ...these functions contribute to plant community dynamics under natural conditions. One of the aspects of plant dynamics in which these fungi can most clearly affect is recruitment, since the success of newly germinated plants can be seriously compromised by pathogenic activity or the absence of mutualistic interactions. To determine the relationship between phyllosphere fungal communities and plant recruitment, we combined published information on the frequency of plant–plant recruitment interactions and phyllosphere fungal communities in 38 woody species from two mixed forests in southern Spain. Our results indicate that phyllosphere pathogens and saprotrophs have a negative effect on canopy–recruit interactions, while epiphytic fungi have a positive effect. Additionally, the presence of canopy species hosting high richness of epiphytes or counting with a high diversity of saprotrophic fungi favours the formation of an abundant sapling bank. Synthesis . Our results suggest that phyllosphere fungi play a relevant role in the assembly of the sapling bank in forest communities, thus, potentially influencing plant community dynamics. Beyond the well‐known negative effect of pathogenic fungi on recruitment, our results show the mutualistic effect of fungal epiphytes and a dual role of saprotrophs as antagonistic, decreasing recruitment of certain species, or mutualistic, enhancing recruitment in the sapling bank.
Aim
Plant community assembly in tropical rain forest has been shown to be largely governed by stochastic processes, but as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi display limited host preference, they may ...not follow the same stochastic assembly pattern. Here, we determined the relative importance of environmental and spatial drivers responsible for the community assembly process of AM fungi in two types of tropical rain forest: semideciduous rain forest and dense ombrophilous forests.
Location
Atlantic rain forest in north‐eastern Brazil, South America.
Taxon
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (Glomeromycotina).
Methods
We collected root samples from eight protected areas of Atlantic forest along a 700 km transect in north‐eastern Brazil. We measured the relative importance of deterministic and stochastic processes by redundancy analysis (RDA) and variation partitioning in comparison with null expectations using ad hoc generated neutral communities. Furthermore, we accessed species associations from co‐occurrence data, at different scales using a Bayesian approach of Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities.
Results
Overall, the extent to which stochastic and deterministic processes affected community assembly depended on the forest type and the spatial scale. Specifically, we found that abiotic and biotic predictors of AM fungal community assemblages are related to environmental homogeneity in tropical rain forests.
Main conclusions
The results of the study show that dynamics in community assembly was clearly different between the two forest types, and that the difference most likely is due to differences in responses to environmental variables.
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