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    Forage Rotations Conserve Diversity of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi and Soil Fertility

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    In the Mediterranean, long-term impact of typical land uses on soil fertility have not been quantified yet on replicated mixed crop-livestock farms and considering the variability of soil texture. Here, we report the effects, after 15 years of practice, of two legume-winter cereal rotations, olive orchards and vineyards on microbiological and chemical indicators of soil fertility and the communities of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). We compare the changes among these four agricultural land-use types to woodland reference sites. Root colonization by AMF of English ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.), a grass that occurred under all land use types, was only half as heavy in biannual berseem clover (Trifolium alexandrinum L.)-winter cereal rotations than in 4-year alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.)-winter cereal rotations. In olive (Olea europaea L.) orchards and vineyards (Vitis vinifera L.), where weeds are controlled by frequent surface tillage, the AMF root colonization of ryegrass was again much lower than in the legume-cereal rotations and at the woodland reference sites. All the microbial parameters and soil organic carbon correlated most strongly with differences in occurrence and relative abundance (β-diversity) of AMF genera in soil. The soil pH and mineral nutrients in soil strongly correlated with differences in AMF root colonization and AMF genus richness (α-diversity) in soil. Diversity of AMF was much less affected by soil texture than land use, while the opposite was true for microbial and chemical soil fertility indicators. Land uses that guaranteed a continuous ground cover of herbaceous plants and that involved only infrequent tillage, such as multiyear alfalfa-winter cereal rotation, allowed members of the AMF genus Scutellospora to persist and remain abundant. On the contrary, under land uses accompanied by frequent tillage and hence discontinuous presence of herbaceous plants, such as tilled olive orchard and vineyard, members of the genus Funneliformis dominated. These results suggest that multiyear alfalfa-winter cereal rotation with active plant growth throughout the year is the least detrimental agricultural land use in soil carbon and AMF abundance and diversity, relative to the woodland reference

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

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    HyLength: a semi-automated digital image analysis tool for measuring the length of roots and fungal hyphae of dense mycelia

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    In plant-fungus phenotyping, determining fungal hyphal and plant root lengths by digital image analysis can reduce labour and increase data reproducibility. However, the degree of software sophistication is often prohibitive and manual measuring is still used, despite being very time-consuming. We developed the HyLength tool for measuring the lengths of hyphae and roots in in vivo and in vitro systems. The HyLength was successfully validated against manual measures of roots and fungal hyphae obtained from all systems. Compared with manual methods, the HyLength underestimated Medicago sativa roots in the in vivo system and Rhizophagus irregularis hyphae in the in vitro system by about 12 cm per m and allowed to save about 1 h for a single experimental unit. As regards hyphae of R. irregularis in the in vivo system, the HyLength overestimated the length by about 21 cm per m compared with manual measures, but time saving was up to 20.5 h per single experimental unit. Finally, with hyphae of Aspergillus oryzae, the underestimation was about 8 cm per m with a time saving of about 10 min for a single germinating spore. By benchmarking the HyLength against the AnaMorf plugin of the ImageJ/Fiji, we found that the HyLength performed better for dense fungal hyphae, also strongly reducing the measuring time. The HyLength can allow measuring the length over a whole experimental unit, eliminating the error due to sub-area selection by the user and allowing processing a high number of samples. Therefore, we propose the HyLength as a useful freeware tool for measuring fungal hyphae of dense mycelia
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