The south-east asian genus Cryptocoryne has been shown to hybridize more frequently than expected. Data are presented on the known naturally occurring hybrids including information on their discovery, naming, and recognition as hybrids. Many artificial hybrids produced over the years indicate that there are only relatively few barriers to crossing. a heterosis effect is prevalent in many encountered Cryptocoryne hybrids. Vegetative propagation is clearly an advantage in the establishment of hybrid populations and also in detecting the hybrids, since inferior hybrids have disappeared naturally. our results on Cryptocoryne also suggest that when the south-east asian floras become as well-known as temperate ones, the number of natural hybrids will be similar to those presently known from temperate regions.

The black morel Morchella sextelata (Morchellaceae, Pezizales) is a valuable edible mushroom that can be cultivated on a large scale, but a severe yield decline is observed during continuous cropping. The effect of long-term cropping on soil-borne diseases and the dysbiosis of the microbiome and how these biotic factors affect the morel yield are not well understood. To help fill this knowledge gap, we designed an indoor experiment to investigate the influence of black morel cropping regimes on soil physicochemical properties, richness and distribution of fungal community, and morel primordial production. In this study, we employed rDNA metabarcoding and microbial network analysis to evaluate the effect of non-continuous and continuous cropping regimes on the fungal community during three developmental stages of black morel production, namely, the bare soil mycelium, mushroom conidial, and primordial stages. The results showed that during the first year, M. sextelata mycelium overwhelmed the resident soil fungal community by reducing the alpha diversity and niche breadth of soil fungal patterns by a greater amount compared to the continuous cropping regime, leading to high crop yield of 12.39 ± 6.09/quadrat but less complex soil mycobiome. To sustain continuous cropping, exogenous nutrition bags and morel mycelial spawn were consecutively added to the soil. The additional nutrient input stimulated the growth of fungal saprotrophic decomposers. The degrading activity of soil saprotrophs, including M.sextelata, caused a significant increase in soil nutrient content. This led to an inhibitory effect on the formation of morel primordia, resulting in a sharp decline to 0.29 ± 0.25/quadrat and 0.17 ± 0.24/quadrat, respectively, in the final morel cropping. Our findings provided a dynamic overview of the soil fungal community during morel mushroom production, allowing us to identify beneficial and detrimental fungal taxa in the soil mycobiome involved in morel cultivation. The information acquired from this study can be applied to mitigate the adverse impact of continuous cropping on the yield of black morel.

The ecological changes in vegetation and land of an area can be monitored and managed through the assessment of its past and present land use and land cover (LULC). In this study, we assessed the changes in the LULC of Penang Island between 2010 and 2021. We also determined the corresponding impacts on the land surface temperature (LST) and vegetation index in the form of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Landsat-5 and Landsat-8 were selected for the study. The LULC types were classified using both supervised and unsupervised multivariate maximum likelihood techniques. The LULC change analysis revealed a considerable increase in the urbanized areas (45.71%), a slight increase in the forests (1.57%) and a sizeable reduction in the agricultural/herbaceous areas (− 33.49) of the city within the stipulated period. The urbanized areas were observed to have the highest LST in 2010 and 2021 (28.75–34.0 °C) followed by the bare land (29.76–29 °C). The increase in temperature could have been driven by the reduction in the greenness of the city coupled with the openness of vegetation cover. Similarly, strong positive correlations were observed between the LST and NDVI in the urbanized areas (R2 = 0.92), and bare lands (R2 = 0.86). We, therefore, hypothesize that urbanization is the main driver of the LULC changes on Penang Island.

This article documents the addition of 112 microsatellite marker loci and 24 pairs of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) sequencing primers to the Molecular Ecology Resources Database. Loci were developed for the following species: Agelaius phoeniceus, Austrolittorina cincta, Circus cyaneus, Circus macrourus, Circus pygargus, Cryptocoryne • purpurea Ridl. nothovar. purpurea, Mya arenaria, Patagioenas squamosa, Prochilodus mariae, Scylla serrata and Scytalopus speluncae. These loci were cross-tested on the following species: Cryptocoryne • purpurea nothovar. purpurea, Cryptocoryne affinis, Cryptocoryne ciliata, Cryptocoryne cordata var. cordata, Cryptocoryne elliptica, Cryptocoryne griffithii, Cryptocoryne minima, Cryptocoryne nurii and Cryptocoryne schulzei. This article also documents the addition of 24 sequencing primer pairs and 24 allele-specific primers or probes for Aphis glycines.

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This study provided data on the diversity of Hoya species reported to occur in some parts of the northern region of Peninsular Malaysia. Seven locations were chosen between two states, Kedah (Lata Celak, Sedim, and Bukit Hijau) and Perak (Mahang, Belukar Semang, Sungai Rui, and Pondok Tanjung). This extensive fieldwork was carried out from 2018 until the end of 2019 to provide a baseline checklist for this genus in this northern region. All living specimens found were recorded, and some species were cultivated for further identification and ex-situ conservation purposes. A total of 27 species and one variety were recorded, out of which 15 species were newly reported for the northern region of Peninsular Malaysia. The newly described species, Hoya peninsularis Rodda & Zakaria, was also reported in this study. One unknown species was found and labelled as Hoya sp. cf. scortechinii. Further identification process together with molecular analysis of this plant is still ongoing. The most diverse forests are Sungai Rui and Lata Celak, having the Shannon index of 2.741 and 2.622, respectively. Both forests possess the richest in Hoya species, but with low dominance index. The Sorenson similarity index is 6.74%, indicating a very low similarity of Hoya species between the studied sites. Due to the high diversity recorded, the number of Hoya species in the country is expected to increase if the genus is explored continuously. However, most of the study areas were exposed to extreme logging activities and had a high degree of human disturbances, indicating the need for intensive conservation efforts in this genus.

Natural hybridization has been considered a source of taxonomic complexity in Cryptocoryne. A combined study of DNA sequencing data from the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) of nuclear ribosomal DNA and the trnK-matK region of chloroplast DNA was used to identify the parents of Cryptocoryne putative hybrids from Peninsular Malaysia. Based on the intermediate morphology and sympatric distribution area, the plants were tentatively identified as the hybrid Cryptocoryne ×purpurea nothovar. purpurea. The plants were pollen sterile and had long been considered as hybrids, supposedly between two related and co-existing species, C. cordata var. cordata and C. griffithii. The status of C. ×purpurea nothovar. purpurea was independently confirmed by the presence of an additive ITS sequence pattern from these two parental species in hybrid individuals. An analysis of the chloroplast trnK-matK sequences showed that the hybridization is bidirectional with the putative hybrids sharing identical sequences from C. cordata var. cordata and C. griffithii, indicating that both putative parental species had been the maternal parent in different accessions.

Research on fern ecology has gained attention in the last decade, yet there is a paucity of information on the comparison of ferns communities across continents. This study focused on comparing the ferns community assemblages in some tropical forests of Malaysia and Nigeria, thereby assessing the patterns of species richness (SR) and phylogenetic diversity (PD) in relation to the bioclimatic drivers across the continents. The diversity and taxonomic compositions of ferns were assessed using 180 plots of 10 m × 10 m in each country. The species richness and other diversity indices were determined using the combined forests data for each country and for the individual forests. Also, the phylogenetic diversity of the ferns was assessed using the genus‐based molecular sequences downloaded from the GeneBank. The patterns of the ferns SR and PD in the two countries as driven by some bioclimatic factors were evaluated using the regression analysis. The observed and rarefied–extrapolated fern species richness is significantly higher in Malaysian forests than in Nigerian forests. Also, the other diversity indices are significantly higher in Malaysian forests except for the Shannon index which showed no significant difference between the two biogeographic regions. There is a very low similarity (7.41%) in the taxonomic composition of ferns between the two biogeographic areas, although the similarity in composition increased with increasing taxonomic levels (species: 7.41%, genus: 12.77%, family: 70.96%). Terrestrial and epiphytic ferns are more dominant than the other life forms in the two countries. The precipitation variables drive the phylogenetic structure of ferns in Nigeria, whereas both precipitation and temperature variables drive the phylogenetic structure of ferns in Malaysia. This indicates that ferns assemblages in Nigeria and Malaysia are driven by both climatic variables. Besides, we also hypothesize that these observed differences could be due to other historical and evolutionary processes.