Publications by authors named "Patricio Lopez-Sepulveda"

Background: The genus Robinsonia DC. (tribe Senecioneae, Asteraceae) endemic to the Juan Fernández Islands in Chile is one of the most conspicuous insular plant groups in the world. Unlike typical herbaceous Asteraceae plants, these plants demonstrate spectacular and unusual rosette tree growth forms as shown by the alpine giant senecios (genus Dendrosenecio, tribe Senecioneae) endemic to the East African mountains.

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Loss of genetic diversity reduces the ability of species to evolve and respond to environmental change. Araucaria araucana is an emblematic conifer species from southern South America, with important ethnic value for the Mapuche people (Pehuenche); the Chilean Government has catalogued its conservation status as vulnerable. Climatic fluctuations were potentially a major impact in the genetic variation within many tree species.

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D. Don comprises 11 species endemic to the Juan Fernández islands in Chile. They demonstrate spectacular and unusual growth forms of rosette trees with extremely variable morphology and occupy wide ecological ranges on the islands.

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The article Factors driving adaptive radiation in plants of oceanic islands: a case study from the Juan Fernández Archipelago, written by Koji Takayama, Daniel J. Crawford, Patricio López‑Sepúlveda, Josef Greimler, Tod F. Stuessy was originally published electronically on the publisher's internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on 13 March 2018 without open access.

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Adaptive radiation is a common evolutionary phenomenon in oceanic islands. From one successful immigrant population, dispersal into different island environments and directional selection can rapidly yield a series of morphologically distinct species, each adapted to its own particular environment. Not all island immigrants, however, follow this evolutionary pathway.

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Oceanic islands are vulnerable ecosystems and their flora has been under pressure since the arrival of the first humans. Human activities and both deliberately and inadvertently introduced biota have had and continue to have a severe impact on island endemic plants. The number of alien plants has increased nearly linearly on many islands, perhaps resulting in extinction-based saturation of island floras.

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Adaptive radiation is a common mode of speciation among plants endemic to oceanic islands. This pattern is one of cladogenesis, or splitting of the founder population, into diverse lineages in divergent habitats. In contrast, endemic species have also evolved primarily by simple transformations from progenitors in source regions.

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A common mode of speciation in oceanic islands is by anagenesis, wherein an immigrant arrives and through time transforms by mutation, recombination, and drift into a morphologically and genetically distinct species, with the new species accumulating a high level of genetic diversity. We investigate speciation in Drimys confertifolia, endemic to the two major islands of the Juan Fernández Archipelago, Chile, to determine genetic consequences of anagenesis, to examine relationships among populations of D. confertifolia and the continental species D.

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This study analyses and compares the genetic signatures of anagenetic and cladogenetic speciation in six species of the genus Robinsonia (Asteraceae, Senecioneae), endemic to the Juan Fernández Islands, Chile. Population genetic structure was analyzed by amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and microsatellite (simple sequence repeat, SSR) markers from 286 and 320 individuals, respectively, in 28 populations. Each species is genetically distinct.

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Oceanic islands offer special opportunities for understanding the patterns and processes of evolution. The availability of molecular markers in recent decades has enhanced these opportunities, facilitating the use of population genetics to reveal divergence and speciation in island systems. A common pattern seen in taxa on oceanic islands is a decreased level of genetic variation within and among populations, and the founder effect has often been invoked to explain this observation.

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Premise Of The Study: Anagenesis (or phyletic evolution) is one mode of speciation that occurs in the evolution of plants on oceanic islands. Of two endemic species on the Juan Fernández Islands (Chile), Myrceugenia fernandeziana and M. schulzei (Myrtaceae), believed to have originated anagenetically from different continental progenitors, the first is endemic to Robinson Crusoe Island and has no clear tie to continental relatives; the last is endemic to the younger island, Alejandro Selkirk Island, and has close affinity to M.

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Ten microsatellite markers were developed for (Asteraceae), a genus endemic to the Juan Fernández Archipelago, Chile. Polymorphisms of these markers were tested using one population each of , , and . The number of alleles for these markers ranged from 2 to 17 per locus, and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0 to 0.

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Premise Of The Study: Microsatellite markers were developed in Erigeron rupicola and tested by amplification in six Erigeron species endemic to the Juan Fernández Archipelago, Chile, to investigate genetic diversity and population structure. •

Methods And Results: Using 454 pyrosequencing, 24 primer pairs were developed in E. rupicola, 12 of which amplified and presented polymorphism among endemic species of Erigeron in the Archipelago.

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