Phylogenomics and phylogeographic model testing using convolutional neural networks reveal a history of recent admixture in the Canarian Kleinia neriifolia.

Multiple-island endemics (MIE) are considered ideal natural subjects to study patterns of island colonization that involve recent population-level genetic processes. Kleinia neriifolia is a Canarian MIE widespread across the archipelago, which exhibits a close phylogenetic relationship with species in northwest Africa and at the other side of the Sahara Desert. Here, we used target sequencing with plastid skimming (Hyb-Seq), a dense population-level sampling of K.

The sweet tabaiba or there and back again: phylogeographical history of the Macaronesian Euphorbia balsamifera.

Background And Aims: Biogeographical relationships between the Canary Islands and north-west Africa are often explained by oceanic dispersal and geographical proximity. Sister-group relationships between Canarian and eastern African/Arabian taxa, the 'Rand Flora' pattern, are rare among plants and have been attributed to the extinction of north-western African populations. Euphorbia balsamifera is the only representative species of this pattern that is distributed in the Canary Islands and north-west Africa; it is also one of few species present in all seven islands.

Phylogenomics sheds new light on the drivers behind a long-lasting systematic riddle: the figwort family Scrophulariaceae.

The figwort family, Scrophulariaceae, comprises c. 2000 species whose evolutionary relationships at the tribal level have proven difficult to resolve, hindering our ability to understand their origin and diversification. We designed a specific probe kit for Scrophulariaceae, targeting 849 nuclear loci and obtaining plastid regions as by-products.

A road map for phylogenetic models of species trees.

The field of phylogenetics has burgeoned into a great diversity of statistical models, providing researchers with a vast amount of analytical tools for investigating the evolutionary theory. This abundance of theoretical work has the merit that many different aspects of evolution can be investigated using various types of data. However, empiricists may sometimes struggle to find the right model for their needs amid such variety.

Congruent evolutionary responses of European steppe biota to late Quaternary climate change.

Quaternary climatic oscillations had a large impact on European biogeography. Alternation of cold and warm stages caused recurrent glaciations, massive vegetation shifts, and large-scale range alterations in many species. The Eurasian steppe biome and its grasslands are a noteworthy example; they underwent climate-driven, large-scale contractions during warm stages and expansions during cold stages.

Macroevolutionary dynamics in the transition of angiosperms to aquatic environments.

Angiosperm lineages in aquatic environments are characterized by high structural and functional diversity, and wide distributions. A long-standing evolutionary riddle is what processes have caused the relatively low diversity of aquatic angiosperms compared to their terrestrial relatives. We use diversification and ancestral reconstruction models with a comprehensive > 10 000 genus angiosperm phylogeny to elucidate the macroevolutionary dynamics associated with transitions of terrestrial plants to water.

Cyphoderia ampulla (Cyphoderiidae: Rhizaria), a tale of freshwater sailors: The causes and consequences of ecological transitions through the salinity barrier in a family of benthic protists.

The salinity barrier that separates marine and freshwater biomes is probably the most important division in biodiversity on Earth. Those organisms that successfully performed this transition had access to new ecosystems while undergoing changes in selective pressure, which often led to major shifts in diversification rates. While these transitions have been extensively investigated in animals, the tempo, mode, and outcome of crossing the salinity barrier have been scarcely studied in other eukaryotes.

Mitogenomics and hidden-trait models reveal the role of phoresy and host shifts in the diversification of parasitoid blister beetles (Coleoptera: Meloidae).

Changes in life history traits are often considered speciation triggers and can have dramatic effects on the evolutionary history of a lineage. Here, we examine the consequences of changes in two life history traits, host-type and phoresy, in the hypermetamorphic blister beetles, Meloidae. Subfamilies Nemognathinae and Meloinae exhibit a complex life cycle involving multiple metamorphoses and parasitoidism.

Rare and widespread: integrating Bayesian MCMC approaches, Sanger sequencing and Hyb-Seq phylogenomics to reconstruct the origin of the enigmatic Rand Flora genus Camptoloma.

Premise: Genera that are widespread, with geographically discontinuous distributions and represented by few species, are intriguing. Is their achieved disjunct distribution recent or ancient in origin? Why are they species-poor? The Rand Flora is a continental-scale pattern in which closely related species appear codistributed in isolated regions over the continental margins of Africa. Genus Camptoloma (Scrophulariaceae) is the most notable example, comprising three species isolated from each other on the northwest, eastern, and southwest Africa.

Modelling the tempo and mode of lineage dispersal.

Lineage dispersal is a basic macroevolutionary process shaping the distribution of biodiversity. Probabilistic approaches in biogeography, epidemiology, and macroecology often model dispersal as a background process to explain extant or infer past distributions. We propose framing questions around the mode, timing, rate, and direction of lineage dispersal itself, from a lineage- or geography-centric perspective.

Degradation of 2-mercaptobenzothizaole in microbial electrolysis cells: Intermediates, toxicity, and microbial communities.

The compound 2-mercaptobenzothizaole (MBT) has been frequently detected in wastewater and surface water and is a potential threat to both aquatic organisms and human health (its mutagenic potential has been demonstrated). This study investigated the degradation routes of MBT in the anode of a microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) and the involved microbial communities. The results indicated that graphene-modified anodes promoted the presence of more enriched, developed, and specific communities compared to bare anodes.

Long-term isolation of European steppe outposts boosts the biome's conservation value.

The European steppes and their biota have been hypothesized to be either young remnants of the Pleistocene steppe belt or, alternatively, to represent relicts of long-term persisting populations; both scenarios directly bear on nature conservation priorities. Here, we evaluate the conservation value of threatened disjunct steppic grassland habitats in Europe in the context of the Eurasian steppe biome. We use genomic data and ecological niche modelling to assess pre-defined, biome-specific criteria for three plant and three arthropod species.

Exploring the power of Bayesian birth-death skyline models to detect mass extinction events from phylogenies with only extant taxa.

Mass extinction events (MEEs), defined as significant losses of species diversity in significantly short time periods, have attracted the attention of biologists because of their link to major environmental change. MEEs have traditionally been studied through the fossil record, but the development of birth-death models has made it possible to detect their signature based on extant-taxa phylogenies. Most birth-death models consider MEEs as instantaneous events where a high proportion of species are simultaneously removed from the tree ("single pulse" approach), in contrast to the paleontological record, where MEEs have a time duration.

Morphological Innovations and Vast Extensions of Mountain Habitats Triggered Rapid Diversification Within the Species-Rich Irano-Turanian Genus (Plumbaginaceae).

The Irano-Turanian floristic region spans a topographically complex and climatically continental territory, which has served as a source of xerophytic taxa for neighboring regions and is represented by a high percent of endemics. Yet, a comprehensive picture of the abiotic and biotic factors that have driven diversification within this biota remains to be established due to the scarcity of phylogenetic studies. is an important component of the subalpine steppe flora of the Irano-Turanian region, containing c.

Understanding nitrogen recovery from wastewater with a high nitrogen concentration using microbial electrolysis cells.

This study was aimed at understanding the effect of applied voltage, catholyte and reactor scale on nitrogen recovery from two different organic wastes (digestate and pig slurry) by means of microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) technology. For this purpose, MEC sizes of 100, 500 and 1000 mL were tested at applied voltages of 0.6, 1 and 1.

Contrasting patterns of diversification between Amazonian and Atlantic forest clades of Neotropical lianas (Amphilophium, Bignonieae) inferred from plastid genomic data.

The mechanisms and processes underlying patterns of species distributions have intrigued ecologists and biogeographers for a long time. The Neotropics is the most species-rich region in the World, representing an excellent model for studying the drivers of diversification. In this study, we used a phylogenomic approach to infer relationships and examine the role of major geological and climatic events in shaping biogeographic patterns within Amphilophium (Bignonieae, Bignoniaceae), a genus of Neotropical lianas.

Conceptual and empirical advances in Neotropical biodiversity research.

The unparalleled biodiversity found in the American tropics (the Neotropics) has attracted the attention of naturalists for centuries. Despite major advances in recent years in our understanding of the origin and diversification of many Neotropical taxa and biotic regions, many questions remain to be answered. Additional biological and geological data are still needed, as well as methodological advances that are capable of bridging these research fields.

High extinction rates and non-adaptive radiation explains patterns of low diversity and extreme morphological disparity in North American blister beetles (Coleoptera, Meloidae).

Untangling the relationship between morphological evolution and lineage diversification is key to explain global patterns of phenotypic disparity across the Tree of Life. Few studies have examined the relationship between high morphological disparity and extinction. In this study, we infer phylogenetic relationships and lineage divergence times within Eupomphini (Meloidae), a tribe of blister beetles endemic to the arid zone of North America, which exhibits a puzzling pattern of very low species richness but wild variation in morphological diversity across extant taxa.

Pilot-scale bioelectrochemical system for simultaneous nitrogen and carbon removal in urban wastewater treatment plants.

This study aims to characterize the performance of a 150 L bioelectrochemical system-based plant, during the simultaneous carbon and nitrogen removal from several waste streams of wastewater treatment plants. The bioelectrochemical system (BES) contained five electrode pairs (operated hydraulically and electrically in parallel) and was fed with either wastewater, centrate (nutrient-rich liquid stream produced during the dewatering of digested biomass), or a mixture of both over 63 days, with a hydraulic retention time of one day. Total organic carbon and total nitrogen removal rates averaged 80% and 70%, respectively, with a specific energy consumption of 0.

Bridging the micro- and macroevolutionary levels in phylogenomics: Hyb-Seq solves relationships from populations to species and above.

Reconstructing phylogenetic relationships at the micro- and macroevoutionary levels within the same tree is problematic because of the need to use different data types and analytical frameworks. We test the power of target enrichment to provide phylogenetic resolution based on DNA sequences from above species to within populations, using a large herbarium sampling and Euphorbia balsamifera (Euphorbiaceae) as a case study. Target enrichment with custom probes was combined with genome skimming (Hyb-Seq) to sequence 431 low-copy nuclear genes and partial plastome DNA.

A tale of two forests: ongoing aridification drives population decline and genetic diversity loss at continental scale in Afro-Macaronesian evergreen-forest archipelago endemics.

Background And Aims: Various studies and conservationist reports have warned about the contraction of the last subtropical Afro-Macaronesian forests. These relict vegetation zones have been restricted to a few oceanic and continental islands around the edges of Africa, due to aridification. Previous studies on relict species have generally focused on glacial effects on narrow endemics; however, little is known about the effects of aridification on the fates of previously widespread subtropical lineages.

Testing the Role of the Red Queen and Court Jester as Drivers of the Macroevolution of Apollo Butterflies.

In macroevolution, the Red Queen (RQ) model posits that biodiversity dynamics depend mainly on species-intrinsic biotic factors such as interactions among species or life-history traits, while the Court Jester (CJ) model states that extrinsic environmental abiotic factors have a stronger role. Until recently, a lack of relevant methodological approaches has prevented the unraveling of contributions from these 2 types of factors to the evolutionary history of a lineage. Herein, we take advantage of the rapid development of new macroevolution models that tie diversification rates to changes in paleoenvironmental (extrinsic) and/or biotic (intrinsic) factors.

Bipolar distributions in vascular plants: A review.

Bipolar disjunct distributions are a fascinating biogeographic pattern exhibited by about 30 vascular plants, whose populations reach very high latitudes in the northern and southern hemispheres. In this review, we first propose a new framework for the definition of bipolar disjunctions and then reformulate a list of guiding principles to consider how to study bipolar species. Vicariance and convergent evolution hypotheses have been argued to explain the origin of this fragmented distribution pattern, but we show here that they can be rejected for all bipolar species, except for Carex microglochin.

Opposite trends in the genus Monsonia (Geraniaceae): specialization in the African deserts and range expansions throughout eastern Africa.

The African Austro-temperate Flora stands out by its important species richness. A distinctive element of this flora is Monsonia (Geraniaceae), mostly found in the Namib-Karoo but also in the Natal-Drakensberg, the Somalian Zambezian and the Saharo-Arabian regions. Here, we reconstruct the evolution and biogeographic history of Monsonia based on nuclear and plastid markers, and examine the role of morphological and niche evolution in its diversification using species distribution modeling and macroevolutionary models.

Geographic barriers and Pleistocene climate change shaped patterns of genetic variation in the Eastern Afromontane biodiversity hotspot.

The Eastern African Afromontane forest is getting increased attention in conservation studies because of its high endemicity levels and shrinking geographic distribution. Phylogeographic studies have found evidence of high levels of genetic variation structured across the Great Rift System. Here, we use the epiphytic plant species Canarina eminii to explore causal explanations for this pattern.