Native Plant Species: a Tool for Restoration of Mined Lands.

The COVID-19 epidemic, food and water insecurity, and the climate emergency have impacted the lives of billions of people worldwide. Ecosystems play a crucial role in tackling these problems. Hence, it is a prime necessity to keep the ecosystems safe and sustainably manage the resources. But this would not suffice for the protection and sustainable management of our surviving natural landscapes and oceans; we also need to restore the planet's devastated ecosystems and the enormous benefits they give. Mining exerts a lot of pressure on the land resources further depleting the fertility of the soil. The overburdened dumps are devoid of the nutrients which turns natural succession at a slow pace. The restoration of the degraded mined areas is essential to re-establish the ecological balance so that a self-sustaining ecosystem can be maintained. The plantation of selected species of plants could be a sustainable and organic tool for the restoration of the degraded mined land. In today's context, various ways regarding ecological restoration are suggested, but the native plant species plantation is the best tool for restoring the degraded land at a quicker pace. The present paper reviews the importance of the native plant species and their efficacy in restoring degraded mined land based on area and time of succession and climax.

Genetic Differentiation and Origin of Naturalized Rainbow Trout Populations From Southern Chile, Revealed by the mtDNA Control Region Marker.

Numerous self-sustaining naturalized or introduced populations of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) are widely distributed throughout the freshwaters of southern Chile. In this study, analysis of the mitochondrial DNA control region (CR) marker was conducted to investigate the level of genetic divergence among populations and their phylogenetic relationships with respect to native lineages. This information provided a framework to interpret the genetic structure and origin that was shaped during historical trout introduction efforts. To this end, we analyzed eleven naturalized populations of lakes and rivers from five basins. The CR marker revealed five haplotypes. The overall haplotype (H) and nucleotide (Π) diversities were 0.684 ± 0.030 and 0.00460 ± 0.00012, respectively. Global F ST was 0.169, with several pairwise F ST estimates showing significant differences (P < 0.05). The exact test of population differentiation corroborated this result (P < 0.001). Significant geographic structure was found (P < 0.05), with variations explained primarily by differences within populations (61.65%) and among group basins (20.82%). Maximum likelihood phylogenetic analysis resolved two distinct clades with medium bootstrap support when naturalized populations were aligned in conjunction with reference native lineages. The haplotype network revealed a close association between naturalized populations and four main haplotypes representative of three native ecotypes or lineages from western North America (rainbow trout, steelhead trout and redband trout). These results indicate a genetic population structuring for naturalized rainbow trout from southern Chile and an origin probably represented by multiple lineages sources. Thus, mitochondrial DNA data strongly suggest that stocking of rainbow trout from different origins may have occurred during or after the initial introduction efforts.

New insights in photosynthetic microbial fuel cell using anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria.

Anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria (APB) pay a key role in biogeochemical cycles, and it can convert light energy to chemical energy by photosynthesis process. Photosynthetic microbial fuel cell (photo-MFC) is regarded as a promising energy-harvesting technology, which is also applied to environment treatment in recent years. The previous studies show that photo-MFC with APB have higher power putout than other bioelectrochemical systems. However, photo-MFC with APB is not reviewed due to some limited factors in the development process. In this review, photo-MFC with APB is treated according to its electron transfer pathways, the current understanding, APB strains, application, influence of substrates, and economic assessment. Meanwhile, knowledge of photosynthesis components and electron transfer pathways of APB is crucial for developing new energy and easing the serious energy crisis. Moreover, some new insights (the optimization of light source and self-sustaining bioelectricity generation) are proposed for the future explorations.