Publications by authors named "D B McKey"

Article Synopsis
  • The Great Green Wall initiative's restoration efforts in the northern Sahel focus primarily on plants and often overlook key plant-animal interactions crucial for ecosystem health, particularly those involving flower-visiting insects.
  • Research indicates that many insects, especially bees, rely heavily on diverse floral resources for pollination, which is vital for maintaining biodiversity and ecological sustainability in the region, despite the challenges posed by extensive pastoralism.
  • The study emphasizes the need for more research on insect-flower interactions to fill knowledge gaps and enhance the effectiveness of restoration strategies, highlighting the importance of trees and floral visitors in sustaining food webs and ecosystem resilience.
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The present study assesses the phylogenetic position of certain Thai members of Gymnema, Gymnemopsis, and Sarcolobus in relation to other known Marsdenieae species. Fifteen accessions newly sequenced from Thailand were added to the dataset of the homologous sequences of 125 accessions of Marsdenieae downloaded from GenBank. In our molecular phylogeny, almost all the delimited major clades and their relationships are largely congruent with those revealed in previous studies.

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Specialized pollination systems frequently match a particular set of floral characteristics. Vincetoxicum spp. (Apocynaceae, Asclepiadoideae) have disk-shaped flowers with open access to rewards and reproductive organs.

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Intraspecific variation in plants is a major ecological mechanism whose local determinants are still poorly understood. In particular, the relationship between this variation and human practices may be key to understanding human-nature relationships. We argue that it is necessary to consider how human practices both influence and depend on the phenotypic variability of species of interest.

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An updated phylogeny of the genus Vincetoxicum s.l. based on DNA sequences of the nuclear internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and three plastid markers is presented.

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