Afro-alpine flagships revisited: Parallel adaptation, intermountain admixture and shallow genetic structuring in the giant senecios (Dendrosenecio).

Distantly related lineages of the enigmatic giant rosette plants of tropical alpine environments provide classical examples of convergent adaptation. For the giant senecios (Dendrosenecio), the endemic landmarks of the East African sky islands, it has also been suggested that parallel adaptation has been important for within-lineage differentiation. To test this hypothesis and to address potential gene flow and hybridization among the isolated sky islands, we organized field expeditions to all major mountains.

Geographic factors predict wild food and nonfood NTFP collection by households across four African countries.

Wild foods and other nonfood NTFPs are important for improving food security and supplementing incomes in rural peoples' livelihoods. However, studies on the importance of NTFPs to rural communities are often limited to a few select sites and are conducted in areas that are already known to have high rates of NTFP use. To address this, we examined the role of geographic and household level variables in determining whether a household would report collecting wild foods and other nonfood NTFP across 25 agro-ecological landscapes in Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Ghana.

Genetic structuring, dispersal and taxonomy of the high-alpine populations of the Geranium arabicum/kilimandscharicum complex in tropical eastern Africa.

The scattered eastern African high mountains harbor a renowned and highly endemic flora, but the taxonomy and phylogeographic history of many plant groups are still insufficiently known. The high-alpine populations of the Geranium arabicum/kilimandscharicum complex present intricate morphological variation and have recently been suggested to comprise two new endemic taxa. Here we aim to contribute to a clarification of the taxonomy of these populations by analyzing genetic (AFLP) variation in range-wide high-alpine samples, and we address whether hybridization has contributed to taxonomic problems.

Sweet vernal grasses (Anthoxanthum) colonized African mountains along two fronts in the Late Pliocene, followed by secondary contact, polyploidization and local extinction in the Pleistocene.

High tropical mountains harbour remarkable and fragmented biodiversity thought to a large degree to have been shaped by multiple dispersals of cold-adapted lineages from remote areas. Few dated phylogenetic/phylogeographic analyses are however available. Here, we address the hypotheses that the sub-Saharan African sweet vernal grasses have a dual colonization history and that lineages of independent origins have established secondary contact.

Colonization and diversification in the African 'sky islands': insights from fossil-calibrated molecular dating of Lychnis (Caryophyllaceae).

The flora on the isolated high African mountains or 'sky islands' is remarkable for its peculiar adaptations, local endemism and striking biogeographical connections to remote parts of the world. Ages of the plant lineages and the timing of their radiations have frequently been debated but remain contentious as there are few estimates based on explicit models and fossil-calibrated molecular clocks. We used the plastid region maturaseK (matK) and a Caryophylloflora paleogenica fossil to infer the age of the genus Lychnis, and constructed a data set of three plastid (matK; a ribosomal protein S16 (rps16); and an intergenic spacer (psbE-petL)) and two nuclear (internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and a region spanning exon 18-24 in the second largest subunit of RNA polymerase II (RPB2)) loci for joint estimation of the species tree and divergence time of the African representatives.