Publications by authors named "Maria Guerrina"

Article Synopsis
  • In February 2024, a course on cytotaxonomy took place in Pisa, Italy, where scientists used image analysis software to see if different people could give different results when measuring plant cells.
  • They found that people measuring short arms of cell structures might make them look longer than they really are.
  • To get more accurate and consistent measurements, they suggested making a standard way to measure these cell parts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Breast cancer (BC) and its treatment can impair patient quality of life (QoL), and those undergoing more aggressive treatments may be more severely impacted. Objective: Assess the level of perception of the QoL of patients treated for BC at the Hospital de Clínicas and the Departmental Hospital of Soriano.

Materials And Methods: A questionnaire for cancer patients (EORTC, QLQ-C30) and one specific for BC (EORTC QLQ-BR23) were used.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Adjuvant treatment with aromatase inhibitors (AI) in oestrogen receptor-positive and/or progesterone receptor-positive breast cancer (BC) has been shown to increase overall survival. However, arthralgias and myalgias are common adverse effects in patients treated with AI.

Objective: To evaluate the frequency and characteristics of arthralgias and myalgias in patients with early BC-treated adjuvantly with AI in the Mastology Unit of the Oncology Service of the Hospital de Clínicas and the Departmental Hospital of Soriano.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Species distribution models are the most widely used tool to predict species distributions for species conservation and assessment of climate change impact. However, they usually do not consider intraspecific ecological variation exhibited by many species. Overlooking the potential differentiation among groups of populations may lead to misplacing any conservation actions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how self-fertilization and genetic traits (like polyploidy) affect the competitive ability and fitness of different Capsella species, with a focus on the differences between selfers and outcrossers.
  • In outdoor experiments, outcrossing species showed better performance and fitness compared to self-fertilizing species, though polyploid selfers did not significantly outperform diploid selfers in terms of survival and reproduction.
  • Controlled experiments reinforced these findings, demonstrating that outcrossers had a competitive edge and were less impacted by competition, while polyploid selfers showed more resilience in competition than diploid selfers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how genetic variation of species relates to their geographical location, questioning the traditional center-periphery hypothesis, which suggests decreased genetic diversity at range edges.
  • Findings show that while genetic differentiation increases at range limits, genetic diversity does not necessarily decline towards geographical peripheries, indicating that other factors, like habitat availability, influence genetic diversity.
  • The research highlights a disconnect between geographical and environmental gradients, emphasizing that low-quality habitats might affect genetic diversity differently than geographical distance, challenging established concepts in population genetics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Geographical limits of species' distributions are assumed to be coincident with ecological margins, although this assumption might not always be true. Indeed, harsh environments such as Alpine and Mediterranean ecosystems may favour high phenotypic variability among populations, especially those in peripheral sites. Floral traits are often found to be less variable and less affected by environmental heterogeneity than vegetative traits because variation in the former may have negative effects on fitness.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Allopolyploidy is generally perceived as a major source of evolutionary novelties and as an instantaneous way to create isolation barriers. However, we do not have a clear understanding of how two subgenomes evolve and interact once they have fused in an allopolyploid species nor how isolated they are from their relatives. Here, we address these questions by analyzing genomic and transcriptomic data of allotetraploid Capsella bursa-pastoris in three differentiated populations, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pollination ecology and breeding system of Lilium pomponium L. were studied, and their effect on the reproductive outcome was assessed. This species has high conservation interest in Europe, because it is included in Annex V of the EU Habitat Directive and it is one out of the five Lilium species listed in IUCN Global Red List.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Berardia subacaulis Vill. is a monospecific genus that is endemic to the South-western Alps, where it grows on alpine screes, which are extreme habitats characterized by soil disturbance and limiting growth conditions. Root colonization by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is presumably of great importance in these environments, because of its positive effect on plant nutrition and stress tolerance, as well as on structuring the soil.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Climate change is known to have a profound influence on plant reproduction, mainly because it affects plant/pollinator interactions, sometimes driving plants to extinction. Starting from the Neogene, the European climate was subjected to severe alterations. Nevertheless, several genera, including Berardia, survived these climatic changes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Reduction of pollen flow can affect plant abundance and population viability and cause selection on plant mating system and floral traits. Little is known on the effect of this phenomenon in species naturally restricted to small and isolated habitats, that may have developed strategies to cope with long-term isolation and small population size. We investigated the pollination ecology of the endemic distylous winter-flowering P.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF