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Environment and Sustainability

New Content ItemThe thematic collection Environment and Sustainability brings together Research articles, Commentaries, Reviews, and Q&As published in BMC Biology that address questions in ecology, sustainability and the environmental challenges of the Anthropocene.

  1. The black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) is the most promising insect candidate for nutrient-recycling through bioconversion of organic waste into biomass, thereby improving sustainability of protein supplies fo...

    Authors: Cengiz Kaya, Tomas N. Generalovic, Gunilla Ståhls, Martin Hauser, Ana C. Samayoa, Carlos G. Nunes-Silva, Heather Roxburgh, Jens Wohlfahrt, Ebenezer A. Ewusie, Marc Kenis, Yupa Hanboonsong, Jesus Orozco, Nancy Carrejo, Satoshi Nakamura, Laura Gasco, Santos Rojo…
    Citation: BMC Biology 2021 19:94
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  2. More than 80% of all animal species remain unknown to science. Most of these species live in the tropics and belong to animal taxa that combine small body size with high specimen abundance and large species ri...

    Authors: Amrita Srivathsan, Emily Hartop, Jayanthi Puniamoorthy, Wan Ting Lee, Sujatha Narayanan Kutty, Olavi Kurina and Rudolf Meier
    Citation: BMC Biology 2019 17:96
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  3. Cassava is an important food crop in tropical and sub-tropical regions worldwide. In Africa, cassava production is widely affected by cassava mosaic disease (CMD), which is caused by the African cassava mosaic...

    Authors: Joel-E. Kuon, Weihong Qi, Pascal Schläpfer, Matthias Hirsch-Hoffmann, Philipp Rogalla von Bieberstein, Andrea Patrignani, Lucy Poveda, Stefan Grob, Miyako Keller, Rie Shimizu-Inatsugi, Ueli Grossniklaus, Hervé Vanderschuren and Wilhelm Gruissem
    Citation: BMC Biology 2019 17:75
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  4. Effective disease management depends on timely and accurate diagnosis to guide control measures. The capacity to distinguish between individuals in a pathogen population with specific properties such as fungic...

    Authors: Guru V. Radhakrishnan, Nicola M. Cook, Vanessa Bueno-Sancho, Clare M. Lewis, Antoine Persoons, Abel Debebe Mitiku, Matthew Heaton, Phoebe E. Davey, Bekele Abeyo, Yoseph Alemayehu, Ayele Badebo, Marla Barnett, Ruth Bryant, Jeron Chatelain, Xianming Chen, Suomeng Dong…
    Citation: BMC Biology 2019 17:65
    Content type: Methodology article Published on:

  6. Farmers around the world have recently experienced significant crop losses due to severe heat and drought. Such extreme weather events and the need to feed a rapidly growing population have raised concerns for...

    Authors: Kai P. Voss-Fels, Andreas Stahl and Lee T. Hickey
    Citation: BMC Biology 2019 17:18
    Content type: Question and Answer Published on:

  7. Two of the most widely cultivated rice strains are Oryza sativa indica and O. sativa japonica, and understanding the genetic basis of their agronomic traits is of importance for crop production. These two species...

    Authors: Xiukun Li, Lian Wu, Jiahong Wang, Jian Sun, Xiuhong Xia, Xin Geng, Xuhong Wang, Zhengjin Xu and Quan Xu
    Citation: BMC Biology 2018 16:102
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  8. The interaction between oomycete plant pathogen Phytophthora sojae and soybean is characterized by the presence of avirulence (Avr) genes in P. sojae, which encode for effectors that trigger immune responses and ...

    Authors: Geneviève Arsenault-Labrecque, Humira Sonah, Amandine Lebreton, Caroline Labbé, Geneviève Marchand, Allen Xue, François Belzile, Brian J. Knaus, Niklaus J. Grünwald and Richard R. Bélanger
    Citation: BMC Biology 2018 16:80
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  9. Fungal plant pathogens pose major threats to crop yield and sustainable food production if they are highly adapted to their host and the local environment. Variation in gene expression contributes to phenotypi...

    Authors: Parvathy Krishnan, Lukas Meile, Clémence Plissonneau, Xin Ma, Fanny E. Hartmann, Daniel Croll, Bruce A. McDonald and Andrea Sánchez-Vallet
    Citation: BMC Biology 2018 16:78
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  13. Structural variation contributes substantially to polymorphism within species. Chromosomal rearrangements that impact genes can lead to functional variation among individuals and influence the expression of ph...

    Authors: Clémence Plissonneau, Fanny E. Hartmann and Daniel Croll
    Citation: BMC Biology 2018 16:5
    Content type: Research Article Published on:

  14. Climate change causes the breakdown of the symbiotic relationships between reef-building corals and their photosynthetic symbionts (genus Symbiodinium), with thermal anomalies in 2015–2016 triggering the most wid...

    Authors: Stephanie G. Gardner, Jean-Baptiste Raina, Matthew R. Nitschke, Daniel A. Nielsen, Michael Stat, Cherie A. Motti, Peter J. Ralph and Katherina Petrou
    Citation: BMC Biology 2017 15:117
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  15. California is a world floristic biodiversity hotspot where the terms neo- and paleo-endemism were first applied. Using spatial phylogenetics, it is now possible to evaluate biodiversity from an evolutionary st...

    Authors: Andrew H. Thornhill, Bruce G. Baldwin, William A. Freyman, Sonia Nosratinia, Matthew M. Kling, Naia Morueta-Holme, Thomas P. Madsen, David D. Ackerly and Brent D. Mishler
    Citation: BMC Biology 2017 15:96
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  16. Root and tuber crops are a major food source in tropical Africa. Among these crops are several species in the monocotyledonous genus Dioscorea collectively known as yam, a staple tuber crop that contributes enorm...

    Authors: Muluneh Tamiru, Satoshi Natsume, Hiroki Takagi, Benjamen White, Hiroki Yaegashi, Motoki Shimizu, Kentaro Yoshida, Aiko Uemura, Kaori Oikawa, Akira Abe, Naoya Urasaki, Hideo Matsumura, Pachakkil Babil, Shinsuke Yamanaka, Ryo Matsumoto, Satoru Muranaka…
    Citation: BMC Biology 2017 15:86
    Content type: Research Published on:

  18. Amaranth (Amaranthus hypochondriacus) was a food staple among the ancient civilizations of Central and South America that has recently received increased attention due to the high nutritional value of the seeds, ...

    Authors: D. J. Lightfoot, D. E. Jarvis, T. Ramaraj, R. Lee, E. N. Jellen and P. J. Maughan
    Citation: BMC Biology 2017 15:74
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  19. Helicoverpa armigera and Helicoverpa zea are major caterpillar pests of Old and New World agriculture, respectively. Both, particularly H. armigera, are extremely polyphagous, and H. a...

    Authors: S. L. Pearce, D. F. Clarke, P. D. East, S. Elfekih, K. H. J. Gordon, L. S. Jermiin, A. McGaughran, J. G. Oakeshott, A. Papanikolaou, O. P. Perera, R. V. Rane, S. Richards, W. T. Tay, T. K. Walsh, A. Anderson, C. J. Anderson…
    Citation: BMC Biology 2017 15:63
    Content type: Research article Published on:

    The Erratum to this article has been published in BMC Biology 2017 15:69

  20. Plant-pathogenic oomycetes are responsible for economically important losses in crops worldwide. Phytophthora palmivora, a tropical relative of the potato late blight pathogen, causes rotting diseases in many tro...

    Authors: Edouard Evangelisti, Anna Gogleva, Thomas Hainaux, Mehdi Doumane, Frej Tulin, Clément Quan, Temur Yunusov, Kévin Floch and Sebastian Schornack
    Citation: BMC Biology 2017 15:39
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  22. Most agronomic traits in rice are complex and polygenic. The identification of quantitative trait loci (QTL) for grain length is an important objective of rice genetic research and breeding programs.

    Authors: Jianping Yu, Haiyan Xiong, Xiaoyang Zhu, Hongliang Zhang, Huihui Li, Jinli Miao, Wensheng Wang, Zuoshun Tang, Zhanying Zhang, Guoxin Yao, Qiang Zhang, Yinghua Pan, Xin Wang, M. A. R. Rashid, Jinjie Li, Yongming Gao…
    Citation: BMC Biology 2017 15:28
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  23. Plants are exposed to diverse pathogens and pests, yet most plants are resistant to most plant pathogens. Non-host resistance describes the ability of all members of a plant species to successfully prevent col...

    Authors: David C. Prince, Ghanasyam Rallapalli, Deyang Xu, Henk-jan Schoonbeek, Volkan Çevik, Shuta Asai, Eric Kemen, Neftaly Cruz-Mireles, Ariane Kemen, Khaoula Belhaj, Sebastian Schornack, Sophien Kamoun, Eric B. Holub, Barbara A. Halkier and Jonathan D. G. Jones
    Citation: BMC Biology 2017 15:20
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  24. Understanding the patterns of biodiversity distribution and what influences them is a fundamental pre-requisite for effective conservation and sustainable utilisation of biodiversity. Such knowledge is increas...

    Authors: Marc S. M. Sosef, Gilles Dauby, Anne Blach-Overgaard, Xander van der Burgt, Luís Catarino, Theo Damen, Vincent Deblauwe, Steven Dessein, John Dransfield, Vincent Droissart, Maria Cristina Duarte, Henry Engledow, Geoffrey Fadeur, Rui Figueira, Roy E. Gereau, Olivier J. Hardy…
    Citation: BMC Biology 2017 15:15
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  26. The whitefly Bemisia tabaci (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) is among the 100 worst invasive species in the world. As one of the most important crop pests and virus vectors, B. tabaci causes substantial crop losses and p...

    Authors: Wenbo Chen, Daniel K. Hasegawa, Navneet Kaur, Adi Kliot, Patricia Valle Pinheiro, Junbo Luan, Marcus C. Stensmyr, Yi Zheng, Wenli Liu, Honghe Sun, Yimin Xu, Yuan Luo, Angela Kruse, Xiaowei Yang, Svetlana Kontsedalov, Galina Lebedev…
    Citation: BMC Biology 2016 14:110
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  28. Arbovirus transmission by the mosquito Aedes aegypti can be reduced by the introduction and establishment of the endosymbiotic bacteria Wolbachia in wild populations of the vector. Wolbachia spreads by increasing...

    Authors: Penelope A. Hancock, Vanessa L. White, Scott A. Ritchie, Ary A. Hoffmann and H. Charles J. Godfray
    Citation: BMC Biology 2016 14:96
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  29. A common symbiont of insects, the bacterium Wolbachia has been implicated in phenomena as diverse as sex determination, pathogen defence and speciation and is being used in public health programs to prevent mosqu...

    Authors: Francis M. Jiggins
    Citation: BMC Biology 2016 14:92
    Content type: Comment Published on:

  30. In February 2016, a new fungal disease was spotted in wheat fields across eight districts in Bangladesh. The epidemic spread to an estimated 15,000 hectares, about 16 % of the cultivated wheat area in Banglade...

    Authors: M. Tofazzal Islam, Daniel Croll, Pierre Gladieux, Darren M. Soanes, Antoine Persoons, Pallab Bhattacharjee, Md. Shaid Hossain, Dipali Rani Gupta, Md. Mahbubur Rahman, M. Golam Mahboob, Nicola Cook, Moin U. Salam, Musrat Zahan Surovy, Vanessa Bueno Sancho, João Leodato Nunes Maciel, Antonio NhaniJúnior…
    Citation: BMC Biology 2016 14:84
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  33. The New World screwworm, Cochliomyia hominivorax, is a devastating pest of livestock endemic to subtropical and tropical regions of the Western hemisphere. The larvae of this species feed on the tissue of living ...

    Authors: Carolina Concha, Azhahianambi Palavesam, Felix D. Guerrero, Agustin Sagel, Fang Li, Jason A. Osborne, Yillian Hernandez, Trinidad Pardo, Gladys Quintero, Mario Vasquez, Gwen P. Keller, Pamela L. Phillips, John B. Welch, W. Owen McMillan, Steven R. Skoda and Maxwell J. Scott
    Citation: BMC Biology 2016 14:72
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  34. The Cry6 family of proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis represents a group of powerful toxins with great potential for use in the control of coleopteran insects and of nematode parasites of importance to agricult...

    Authors: Alexey Dementiev, Jason Board, Anand Sitaram, Timothy Hey, Matthew S. Kelker, Xiaoping Xu, Yan Hu, Cristian Vidal-Quist, Vimbai Chikwana, Samantha Griffin, David McCaskill, Nick X. Wang, Shao-Ching Hung, Michael K. Chan, Marianne M. Lee, Jessica Hughes…
    Citation: BMC Biology 2016 14:71
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  35. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) plays an important role in the adaptation of lineages to changing environments. The extent of this process in eukaryotes, however, remains controversial. The most well-known and ...

    Authors: Huan Qiu, Guohong Cai, Jing Luo, Debashish Bhattacharya and Ning Zhang
    Citation: BMC Biology 2016 14:41
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  37. Plants deploy immune receptors to detect pathogen-derived molecules and initiate defense responses. Intracellular plant immune receptors called nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins contain a c...

    Authors: Panagiotis F. Sarris, Volkan Cevik, Gulay Dagdas, Jonathan D. G. Jones and Ksenia V. Krasileva
    Citation: BMC Biology 2016 14:8
    Content type: Research article Published on: