TY - JOUR A1 - Ayanu, Yohannes A1 - Conrad, Christopher A1 - Jentsch, Anke A1 - Koellner, Thomas T1 - Unveiling undercover cropland inside forests using landscape variables: a supplement to remote sensing image classification JF - PLoS ONE N2 - The worldwide demand for food has been increasing due to the rapidly growing global population, and agricultural lands have increased in extent to produce more food crops. The pattern of cropland varies among different regions depending on the traditional knowledge of farmers and availability of uncultivated land. Satellite images can be used to map cropland in open areas but have limitations for detecting undergrowth inside forests. Classification results are often biased and need to be supplemented with field observations. Undercover cropland inside forests in the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia was assessed using field observed percentage cover of land use/land cover classes, and topographic and location parameters. The most influential factors were identified using Boosted Regression Trees and used to map undercover cropland area. Elevation, slope, easterly aspect, distance to settlements, and distance to national park were found to be the most influential factors determining undercover cropland area. When there is very high demand for growing food crops, constrained under restricted rights for clearing forest, cultivation could take place within forests as an undercover. Further research on the impact of undercover cropland on ecosystem services and challenges in sustainable management is thus essential. KW - climate change KW - land-cover classification KW - bale mountains national park KW - sub-saharan africa KW - agroforestry systems KW - biodiversity conservation KW - ecosystem services KW - topographic aspect KW - wheat-varieties Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-151686 VL - 10 IS - 6 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Menzel, Florian A1 - Blüthgen, Nico A1 - Tolasch, Till A1 - Conrad, Jürgen A1 - Beifuss, Uwe A1 - Beuerle, Till A1 - Schmitt, Thomas T1 - Crematoenones - a novel substance class exhibited by ants functions as appeasement signal JF - Frontiers in Zoology N2 - Background: Parasitic, commensalistic, and mutualistic guests in social insect colonies often circumvent their hosts' nestmate recognition system to be accepted. These tolerance strategies include chemical mimicry and chemical insignificance. While tolerance strategies have been studied intensively in social parasites, little is known about these mechanisms in non-parasitic interactions. Here, we describe a strategy used in a parabiotic association, i.e. two mutualistic ant species that regularly share a common nest although they have overlapping food niches. One of them, Crematogaster modiglianii, produces an array of cuticular compounds which represent a substance class undescribed in nature so far. They occur in high abundances, which suggests an important function in the ant's association with its partner Camponotus rufifemur. Results: We elucidated the structure of one of the main compounds from cuticular extracts using gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, chemical derivatizations and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). The compound consists of two fused six-membered rings with two alkyl groups, one of which carries a keto functionality. To our knowledge, this is the first report on the identification of this substance class in nature. We suggest naming the compound crematoenone. In behavioural assays, crematoenones reduced interspecific aggression. Camponotus showed less aggression to allospecific cuticular hydrocarbons when combined with crematoenones. Thus, they function as appeasement substances. However, although the crematoenone composition was highly colony-specific, interspecific recognition was mediated by cuticular hydrocarbons, and not by crematoenones. Conclusions: Crematenones enable Crematogaster to evade Camponotus aggression, and thus reduce potential costs from competition with Camponotus. Hence, they seem to be a key factor in the parabiosis, and help Crematogaster to gain a net benefit from the association and thus maintain a mutualistic association over evolutionary time. To our knowledge, putative appeasement substances have been reported only once so far, and never between non-parasitic species. Since most organisms associated with social insects need to overcome their nestmate recognition system, we hypothesize that appeasement substances might play an important role in the evolution and maintenance of other mutualistic associations as well, by allowing organisms to reduce costs from antagonistic behaviour of other species. KW - cuticular hydrocarbons KW - appeasement substance KW - bees KW - ecology KW - parasitism KW - alkyloctahydronaphthalene KW - usurpation KW - venom KW - pheromone KW - crematogaster KW - parabiotic ants KW - Dufours gland KW - polyergus rufescens KW - formicidae KW - interspecific aggression KW - nestmate recognition cues KW - parabiotic association Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-122595 SN - 1742-9994 VL - 10 IS - 32 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Conrad, Thomas A1 - Albrecht, Anne-Susann A1 - Rodrigues de Melo Costa, Veronica A1 - Sauer, Sascha A1 - Meierhofer, David A1 - Andersson Ørom, Ulf T1 - Serial interactome capture of the human cell nucleus JF - Nature Communications N2 - Novel RNA-guided cellular functions are paralleled by an increasing number of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs). Here we present ‘serial RNA interactome capture’ (serIC), a multiple purification procedure of ultraviolet-crosslinked poly(A)–RNA–protein complexes that enables global RBP detection with high specificity. We apply serIC to the nuclei of proliferating K562 cells to obtain the first human nuclear RNA interactome. The domain composition of the 382 identified nuclear RBPs markedly differs from previous IC experiments, including few factors without known RNA-binding domains that are in good agreement with computationally predicted RNA binding. serIC extends the number of DNA–RNA-binding proteins (DRBPs), and reveals a network of RBPs involved in p53 signalling and double-strand break repair. serIC is an effective tool to couple global RBP capture with additional selection or labelling steps for specific detection of highly purified RBPs. KW - human cell nucleus KW - serial RNA interactome capture KW - RNA-binding proteins Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-166172 VL - 7 IS - 11212 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Usman, Muhammad A1 - Reimann, Thomas A1 - Liedl, Rudolf A1 - Abbas, Azhar A1 - Conrad, Christopher A1 - Saleem, Shoaib T1 - Inverse parametrization of a regional groundwater flow model with the aid of modelling and GIS: test and application of different approaches JF - ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information N2 - The use of inverse methods allow efficient model calibration. This study employs PEST to calibrate a large catchment scale transient flow model. Results are demonstrated by comparing manually calibrated approaches with the automated approach. An advanced Tikhonov regularization algorithm was employed for carrying out the automated pilot point (PP) method. The results indicate that automated PP is more flexible and robust as compared to other approaches. Different statistical indicators show that this method yields reliable calibration as values of coefficient of determination (R-2) range from 0.98 to 0.99, Nash Sutcliffe efficiency (ME) range from 0.964 to 0.976, and root mean square errors (RMSE) range from 1.68 m to 1.23 m, for manual and automated approaches, respectively. Validation results of automated PP show ME as 0.969 and RMSE as 1.31 m. The results of output sensitivity suggest that hydraulic conductivity is a more influential parameter. Considering the limitations of the current study, it is recommended to perform global sensitivity and linear uncertainty analysis for the better estimation of the modelling results. KW - pilot-point-approach KW - inverse parameterization KW - groundwater KW - sensitivity analysis KW - tikhonov regularization KW - PEST Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-175721 VL - 7 IS - 1 ER -