Rapid upwards spread of non-native plants in mountains across continents.

High-elevation ecosystems are among the few ecosystems worldwide that are not yet heavily invaded by non-native plants. This is expected to change as species expand their range limits upwards to fill their climatic niches and respond to ongoing anthropogenic disturbances. Yet, whether and how quickly these changes are happening has only been assessed in a few isolated cases.

Evolution of Lomandroideae: Multiple origins of polyploidy and biome occupancy in Australia.

Asparagaceae: Lomandroideae are a species-rich and economically important subfamily in the monocot order Asparagales, with a center of diversity in Australia. Lomandroideae are ecologically diverse, occupying mesic and arid biomes in Australia and possessing an array of key traits, including sexual dimorphism, storage organs and polyploidy that are potentially adaptive for survival in seasonally arid and fire-dependent habitats. The Lomandroideae phylogeny was reconstructed using maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference criteria, based on plastome data from genome-skimming to infer relationships.

Testing efficacy of distance and tree-based methods for DNA barcoding of grasses (Poaceae tribe Poeae) in Australia.

In Australia, Poaceae tribe Poeae are represented by 19 genera and 99 species, including economically and environmentally important native and introduced pasture grasses [e.g. Poa (Tussock-grasses) and Lolium (Ryegrasses)].

On the biogeography of Centipeda: a species-tree diffusion approach.

Reconstructing the biogeographic history of groups present in continuous arid landscapes is challenging due to the difficulties in defining discrete areas for analyses, and even more so when species largely overlap both in terms of geography and habitat preference. In this study, we use a novel approach to estimate ancestral areas for the small plant genus Centipeda. We apply continuous diffusion of geography by a relaxed random walk where each species is sampled from its extant distribution on an empirical distribution of time-calibrated species-trees.

Species tree phylogeny and character evolution in the genus Centipeda (Asteraceae): evidence from DNA sequences from coding and non-coding loci from the plastid and nuclear genomes.

A species tree phylogeny of the Australian/New Zealand genus Centipeda (Asteraceae) is estimated based on nucleotide sequence data. We analysed sequences of nuclear ribosomal DNA (ETS, ITS) and three plasmid loci (ndhF, psbA-trnH, and trnL-F) using the multi-species coalescent module in BEAST. A total of 129 individuals from all 10 recognised species of Centipeda were sampled throughout the species distribution ranges, including two subspecies.

Physaloside A, an acylated sucrose ester from Physalis viscosa.

Chemical investigations of the crude MeOH extract of Physalis viscosa led to the identification of the novel acylated sucrose ester physaloside A (1). The structure of 1 was determined by 2D NMR analysis, and the absolute configuration was determined by chemical degradation and comparison with authentic standards.

Globoidnan A: a lignan from Eucalyptus globoidea inhibits HIV integrase.

An HTS campaign aimed at the identification of inhibitors of HIV integrase showed that the methanol extract from the buds of a Eucalyptus globoidea was active. Bioassay guided fractionation of this extract resulted in the purification and structural elucidation of the lignan, globoidnan A (1) as the only compound in the extract responsible for the inhibition of HIV integrase. The compound was found to inhibit the combined 3' processing and strand transfer activity of HIV integrase with an IC50=0.