Adaptive responses to living in stressful habitats: Do invasive and native plant populations use different strategies?

Plants inhabit stressful environments characterized by a variety of stressors, including mine sites, mountains, deserts, and high latitudes. Populations from stressful and reference (non-stressful) sites often have performance differences. However, while invasive and native species may respond differently to stressful environments, there is limited understanding of the patterns in reaction norms of populations from these sites.

Microplastics and cadmium affect invasion success by altering complementarity and selection effects in native community.

The diversity-invasibility hypothesis predicts that native plant communities with high biodiversity should be more resistant to invasion than low biodiversity communities. However, observational studies have found that there is often a positive relationship between native community diversity and invasibility. Pollutants were not tested for their potential to cause this positive relationship.

Where to draw the boundaries? Using landscape genomics to disentangle the scribbly gum species complex.

Premise: Species delimitation is an integral part of evolution and ecology and is vital in conservation science. However, in some groups, species delimitation is difficult, especially where ancestral relationships inferred from morphological or genetic characters are discordant, possibly due to a complicated demographic history (e.g.

Floristic composition of Jandaf Mountain as biodiversity hotspot area in southwestern Saudi Arabia.

Arid environments around the world are characterized by lower plant diversity. However, some specific locations have relatively high species richness and have significant importance in terms of vegetation structure and plant diversity. Jabal Al-Jandaf is located in an arid area within the eastern side of mountainous region in the southwest of Saudi Arabia.

Pathogen resistance in Sphagneticola trilobata (Singapore daisy): molecular associations and differentially expressed genes in response to disease from a widespread fungus.

Understanding the molecular associations underlying pathogen resistance in invasive plant species is likely to provide useful insights into the effective control of alien plants, thereby facilitating the conservation of native biodiversity. In the current study, we investigated pathogen resistance in an invasive clonal plant, Sphagneticola trilobata, at the molecular level. Sphagneticola trilobata (i.

Looks can be deceiving: speciation dynamics of co-distributed Angophora (Myrtaceae) species in a varying landscape.

Understanding the mechanisms underlying species divergence remains a central goal in evolutionary biology. Landscape genetics can be a powerful tool for examining evolutionary processes. We used genome-wide scans to genotype samples from populations of eight Angophora species.

Cadmium hyperaccumulation as an inexpensive metal armor against disease in Crofton weed.

Invasive plants readily invade metal-contaminated areas. The hyperaccumulation of toxic heavy metals is not an uncommon feature among plant species. Although several hypotheses were proposed to explain this phenomenon, it is currently unclear how hyperaccumulation may benefit plants.

Allelopathy confers an invasive Wedelia higher resistance to generalist herbivore and pathogen enemies over its native congener.

The Novel Defense Hypothesis predicts that introduced plants may possess novel allelochemicals which act as a defense against native generalist enemies. Here, we aim to test if the chemicals involved in allelopathy in the invasive plant Wedelia trilobata can contribute to higher resistance against generalist herbivore and pathogen enemies by comparing with its native congener W. chinensis in controlled laboratory conditions.