Advances in Aquatic Plants Research

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Ecology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 October 2023) | Viewed by 9428

Special Issue Editors

Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430074, China
Interests: aquatic plants; polyploidy; gene duplication; epigenomics; gene network
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Guest Editor
Aquatic Plant Research Center, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430074, China
Interests: submerged photosynthesis; plant physiology; aquatic toxicology
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Guest Editor
Aquatic Plant Research Center, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430074, China
Interests: biogeography; aquatic plant; adaptive evolution

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Aquatic plants are a polyphyletic group of plants that have evolved to adapt to aquatic environments, such as sacred lotus, water lily, and seagrass. In this issue, we refer to aquatic plants as hydrophytes or macrophytes which exclude plant groups from algae and other microphytes. Aquatic plants are typically classified as emergent, submergent, or floating plants. They play a crucial role in the ecosystem, providing habitats, oxygen and food for aquatic animals. Even though they are essential to the ecosystem, aquatic plants have been relatively less studied than their terrestrial counterparts due to many reasons (such as the difficulty of laboratory growth and sampling).

Due to the dramatic differences in physical and chemical properties between the air and water, aquatic plants change their morphology (such as whorled, dissected whorled, dissected, linear, linear strap-like, and filiform leaves), anatomic structure (such as aerenchyma, epidermal cells containing chloroplasts, the simple structure of leaves, and lacking mechanical tissue), and physiology (such as low light adaptation, bicarbonate use, C4-like pathway, and CAM photosynthesis) adapting to aquatic environments.

In this issue, we focus on the evolutionary, genomic, physiological, and ecological studies of aquatic plants, hoping to uncover how this diverse polyphyletic group of plants interacts with and adapts to the aquatic environment.

Dr. Tao Shi
Dr. Hongsheng Jiang
Dr. Jinming Chen
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • aquatic plant
  • comparative genomics
  • population genetics
  • morphological adaptation
  • physiological study
  • aquatic ecology

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 2802 KiB  
Article
Purification Effect of Water Eutrophication Using the Mosaic System of Submerged–Emerged Plants and Growth Response
by Baoliang Chang, Yingchun Xu, Ze Zhang, Xiaowen Wang, Qijiang Jin and Yanjie Wang
Plants 2024, 13(4), 560; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13040560 - 19 Feb 2024
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1900
Abstract
Aquatic plants play a crucial role in the sustainable management of eutrophic water bodies, serving as a valuable tool for water purification. However, the effectiveness of using aquatic plants for improving water quality is influenced by landscape considerations. In practical applications, challenges arise [...] Read more.
Aquatic plants play a crucial role in the sustainable management of eutrophic water bodies, serving as a valuable tool for water purification. However, the effectiveness of using aquatic plants for improving water quality is influenced by landscape considerations. In practical applications, challenges arise concerning low purification efficiency and compromised aesthetic appeal when utilizing plants for water purification. To address these issues, this study aimed to examine the impact of aquatic plants on the purification of simulated landscape water bodies, specifically focusing on the effectiveness of the mosaic system of submerged–emerged plants in remediating eutrophic water bodies. Our findings indicated that individual aquatic plants exhibited limited efficacy in pollutant (total nitrogen, total phosphorus, ammonia nitrogen, and chemical oxygen demand) removal. However, when combined in appropriate proportions, submerged plants could enhance species growth and improve the purification efficiency of polluted water bodies. Notably, the mosaic system of submerged–emerged plants neither significantly promoted nor inhibited the growth of each other, but it effectively removed pollutants from the simulated water bodies and inhibited turbidity increase. The comprehensive evaluation ranked the purification capacity as Canna indica-submerged plants combination (C + S) > Thalia dealbata-submerged plants combination (T + S) > Iris pseudacorus-submerged plants combination (I + S) > Lythrum salicaria-submerged plants combination (L + S). Both C + S and T + S configurations effectively mitigated the rise of water turbidity and offered appealing landscape benefits, making them viable options for practical applications in urban landscape water bodies. Our study highlights that a submerged–emerged mosaic combination is a means of water purification that combines landscape aesthetics and purification efficiency. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Aquatic Plants Research)
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13 pages, 2893 KiB  
Article
Evaluation of Climate Change Impacts on the Potential Distribution of Wild Radish in East Asia
by Qingxiang Han, Ye Liu, Hongsheng Jiang, Xietian Chen and Huizhe Feng
Plants 2023, 12(18), 3187; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12183187 - 6 Sep 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1500
Abstract
Climate change can exert a considerable influence on the geographic distribution of many taxa, including coastal plants and populations of some plant species closely related to those used as agricultural crops. East Asian wild radish, Raphanus raphanistrum subsp. sativus, is an annual [...] Read more.
Climate change can exert a considerable influence on the geographic distribution of many taxa, including coastal plants and populations of some plant species closely related to those used as agricultural crops. East Asian wild radish, Raphanus raphanistrum subsp. sativus, is an annual coastal plant that is a wild relative of the cultivated radish (R. sativus). It has served as source of genetic material that has been helpful to develop and improve the quality and yield of radish crops. To assess the impact of climate change on wild radish in East Asia, we analyzed its distribution at different periods using the maximum entropy model (MaxEnt). The results indicated that the precipitation of the driest month (bio14) and precipitation seasonality (bio15) were the two most dominant environmental factors that affected the geographical distribution of wild radish in East Asia. The total potential area suitable for wild radish is 102.5574 × 104 km2, mainly located along the seacoasts of southern China, Korea, and the Japanese archipelago. Compared with its current distribution regions, the potentially suitable areas for wild radish in the 2070s will further increase and expand northwards in Japan, especially on the sand beach habitats of Hokkaido. This research reveals the spatiotemporal changes for the coastal plant wild radish under global warming and simultaneously provides a vital scientific basis for effective utilization and germplasm innovation for radish cultivars to achieve sustainable agriculture development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Aquatic Plants Research)
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17 pages, 7154 KiB  
Article
Blue Light Enhances Cadmium Tolerance of the Aquatic Macrophyte Potamogeton crispus
by Shanwei Wang, Liyuan Wang, Miao Zhang, Wei Li, Zuoming Xie and Wenmin Huang
Plants 2023, 12(14), 2667; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12142667 - 17 Jul 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1560
Abstract
Cadmium (Cd) is highly toxic and widely distributed in aquatic systems due to its high solubility and mobility in water, which can severely inhibit the survival of aquatic macrophytes. The phytotoxicity of Cd depends on environmental factors; however, it remains unclear whether and [...] Read more.
Cadmium (Cd) is highly toxic and widely distributed in aquatic systems due to its high solubility and mobility in water, which can severely inhibit the survival of aquatic macrophytes. The phytotoxicity of Cd depends on environmental factors; however, it remains unclear whether and how light quality affects its toxicity on aquatic macrophytes. In this study, we investigated the effects of Cd on aquatic macrophytes Potamogeton crispus under different light qualities (white, blue, and red light). We evaluated morphological and photo-physiological traits, as well as the cellular antioxidant defense system. Our findings indicate that P. crispus under Cd stress showed notable damage in leaf morphology, decreased photosynthetic efficiency, inhibited HCO3 uptake, and reduced antioxidant enzyme activities, as well as oxidative damage indicated by MDA accumulation and superoxide (O2) overproduction. However, compared with white or red light under Cd stress, blue light reduced structural damage and oxidative stress caused by Cd while increasing pigment synthesis and photosynthetic efficiency, as well as increasing ascorbate peroxidase (APX) activity. In conclusion, the changes induced by blue light in P. crispus’s photosynthesis and antioxidant system strengthen its tolerance to Cd. Further research on signal transmission in relation to light quality in Cd-exposed aquatic plants is still needed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Aquatic Plants Research)
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18 pages, 2670 KiB  
Article
6mA DNA Methylation on Genes in Plants Is Associated with Gene Complexity, Expression and Duplication
by Yue Zhang, Qian Zhang, Xingyu Yang, Xiaofeng Gu, Jinming Chen and Tao Shi
Plants 2023, 12(10), 1949; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12101949 - 10 May 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3038
Abstract
N6-methyladenine (6mA) DNA methylation has emerged as an important epigenetic modification in eukaryotes. Nevertheless, the evolution of the 6mA methylation of homologous genes after species and after gene duplications remains unclear in plants. To understand the evolution of 6mA methylation, we [...] Read more.
N6-methyladenine (6mA) DNA methylation has emerged as an important epigenetic modification in eukaryotes. Nevertheless, the evolution of the 6mA methylation of homologous genes after species and after gene duplications remains unclear in plants. To understand the evolution of 6mA methylation, we detected the genome-wide 6mA methylation patterns of four lotus plants (Nelumbo nucifera) from different geographic origins by nanopore sequencing and compared them to patterns in Arabidopsis and rice. Within lotus, the genomic distributions of 6mA sites are different from the widely studied 5mC methylation sites. Consistently, in lotus, Arabidopsis and rice, 6mA sites are enriched around transcriptional start sites, positively correlated with gene expression levels, and preferentially retained in highly and broadly expressed orthologs with longer gene lengths and more exons. Among different duplicate genes, 6mA methylation is significantly more enriched and conserved in whole-genome duplicates than in local duplicates. Overall, our study reveals the convergent patterns of 6mA methylation evolution based on both lineage and duplicate gene divergence, which underpin their potential role in gene regulatory evolution in plants. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Aquatic Plants Research)
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