Okay, everybody knows how plants can cope with adverse conditions, especially when it comes to dormant organs just waiting to resprout when spring or whatever environmental trigger lights on, and then “whoot whoot”, I’m here. I’m alive and well. This is a sign of resprouting, or let’s pretend. It’s been far too long this blog’s been dormant. Water in, light on, nutrients duh?
It’s been a long time there wasn’t much shameless self promotion here, so Seeds Aside is back whoot-whooting blatantly with open access science. I know, this isn’t the first time I get published in an OA venue, but this time it’s with a well known and almost historical part of OA. The ONE that turned what is called a science mega-journal (currently publishing over 23,000 papers a year): PLOSONE.Long ago, at the very beginning of both my scientific career and the very birth of this journal, I had been suggested to go PLOS1, really just at the starting start, almost when nobody had even published in it. Some co-authors advised me against this move, because PLOS1 was really just a bet (it proved a relatively safe bet then, but we simply couldn’t know) and I better had to secure publishing in a journal of demonstrated famousness. As a young trainee, I took the advice, and actually never went on trying PLOS1. Now, I had a beautiful study (sorry, my inflated opinon) left without truly logical venue to publish into (to my defence I am not completely familiar with current phytopathological outlets and it didn’t seem that the subject was really fitting anywhere -I might be wrong but that’s it), so going PLOS1 was probably the right move.
And there it is:
Direct Splash Dispersal Prevails over Indirect and Subsequent Spread during Rains in Colletotrichum gloeosporioides Infecting Yams
Abstract
Plant pathogens have evolved many dispersal mechanisms, using biotic or abiotic vectors or a combination of the two. Rain splash dispersal is known from a variety of fungi, and can be an efficient driver of crop epidemics, with infectious strains propagating rapidly among often genetically homogenous neighboring plants. Splashing is nevertheless a local dispersal process and spores taking the droplet ride seldom move farther than a few decimeters. In this study, we assessed rain splash dispersal of conidia of the yam anthracnose agent, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, in an experimental setting using a rain simulator, with emphasis on the impact of soil contamination (i.e., effect of re-splashing events). Spores dispersed up to 50 cm from yam leaf inoculum sources, though with an exponential decrease with increasing distance. While few spores were dispersed via re-splash from spore-contaminated soil, the proportion deposited via this mechanism increased with increasing distance from the initial source. We found no soil contamination carryover from previous rains, suggesting that contamination via re-splashing from contaminated soils mainly occurred within single rains. We conclude that most dispersal occurs from direct splashing, with a weaker contribution of indirect dispersal via re-splash.
I guess more on this is coming soon. But you can already go and figure yourself! :)
