Publications by authors named "Carles Cardona"
Insights on physiological, antioxidant and flowering response to salinity stress of two candidate ornamental species: the native coastal geophytes L. and L.
Physiol Mol Biol Plants
September 2024
Article Synopsis
- Coastal areas face rising seawater influence, impacting gardening practices, particularly with exotic species that may introduce invasive plants.
- This study evaluated the salinity tolerance of native geophytes to explore their potential as ornamental plants in salty coastal environments.
- Results showed that while both species exhibit some tolerance to low to moderate salinity, they do not qualify as halophytes; their ornamental use may be viable in these conditions.
Herbivory of insular plant communities by introduced animals has been widely studied for decades. Though their diet mainly includes palatable and highly nutritive species, goats will also eat plants that are toxic to other animals. Thus, severe affection of toxic species may indicate high herbivore pressure or a low quality of vegetative food.
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- The study investigates how plants adapt to damage from herbivores, focusing on two species: the rare Medicago citrina and the more common M. arborea.
- Researchers simulated herbivory by removing 80% of the plants' aerial biomass and assessed how each species coped with this damage.
- Findings show that tolerance to herbivory varies between the species, with M. citrina exhibiting lower tolerance and greater stress response than M. arborea, highlighting the impact of evolutionary history and species exposure to herbivores on plant resilience.
The expansion of agriculture is a major driver of biodiversity loss worldwide, through changes generated in the landscape. Despite this, very little is still known about the complex relationships between landscape composition and heterogeneity and plant taxonomical and functional diversity in Mediterranean ecosystems that have been extensively managed during millennia. Although according to the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis (IDH) plant richness might peak at intermediate disturbance levels, functional diversity might increase with landscape heterogeneity and decrease with the intensity of disturbance.
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