Variation and plasticity in life-history traits and fitness of wild Arabidopsis thaliana populations are not related to their genotypic and ecological diversity.

Background: Despite its implications for population dynamics and evolution, the relationship between genetic and phenotypic variation in wild populations remains unclear. Here, we estimated variation and plasticity in life-history traits and fitness of the annual plant Arabidopsis thaliana in two common garden experiments that differed in environmental conditions. We used up to 306 maternal inbred lines from six Iberian populations characterized by low and high genotypic (based on whole-genome sequences) and ecological (vegetation type) diversity.

The trichome pattern diversity of Cardamine shares genetic mechanisms with Arabidopsis but differs in environmental drivers.

Natural variation in trichome pattern (amount and distribution) is prominent among populations of many angiosperms. However, the degree of parallelism in the genetic mechanisms underlying this diversity and its environmental drivers in different species remain unclear. To address these questions, we analyzed the genomic and environmental bases of leaf trichome pattern diversity in Cardamine hirsuta, a relative of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana).

Ali-Bey - an open collaborative georeferencing web application.

Background: Georeferencing preserved specimens represents a major effort at the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona (MCNB), given the available resources and limited staff that can be allocated to the task. Georeferencing is a labour-intensive and hard-to-automate task that requires software tools that can help in making it as efficient as possible. The tool we present, Ali-Bey, has been slowly developed over 15 years and its functionalities have been gradually built in a process of development, testing, use in production and refinement, rather than as a single development cycle out of a comprehensive specifications requirement document.

Unravelling plant diversification: Intraspecific genetic differentiation in hybridizing Anacyclus species in the western Mediterranean Basin.

Premise: The interfertile species Anacyclus clavatus, A. homogamos, and A. valentinus represent a plant complex coexisting in large anthropic areas of the western Mediterranean Basin with phenotypically mixed populations exhibiting a great floral variation.