Extensive pollen-mediated gene flow across intensively managed landscapes in an insect-pollinated shrub native to semiarid habitats.

Our knowledge of the impact of landscape fragmentation on gene flow patterns is mainly drawn from tropical and temperate ecosystems, where landscape features, such as the distance of a tree to the forest edge, drive connectivity and mating patterns. Yet, the structure of arid and semiarid plant communities - with open canopies and a scattered distribution of trees - differs greatly from those that are well-characterized in the literature. As a result, we ignore whether the documented consequences of landscape fragmentation on plant mating and gene flow patterns also hold for native plant communities in arid and semiarid regions.

Variation in functional responses to water stress and differentiation between natural allopolyploid populations in the Brachypodium distachyon species complex.

Background And Aims: Some polyploid species show enhanced physiological tolerance to drought compared with their progenitors. However, very few studies have examined the consistency of physiological drought response between genetically differentiated natural polyploid populations, which is key to evaluation of the importance of adaptive evolution after polyploidization in those systems where drought exerts a selective pressure.

Methods: A comparative functional approach was used to investigate differentiation of drought-tolerance-related traits in the Brachypodium species complex, a model system for grass polyploid adaptive speciation and functional genomics that comprises three closely related annual species: the two diploid parents, B.

Development and characterization of microsatellite primers in the endangered Mediterranean shrub (Rhamnaceae).

Premise Of The Study: Microsatellite primers were developed to characterize and evaluate patterns of genetic diversity and structure in the endangered Mediterranean shrub (Rhamnaceae).

Methods And Results: Twenty microsatellite primers were developed for , of which 14 were polymorphic. We evaluated microsatellite polymorphism in 97 specimens from 18 Spanish and seven Moroccan populations.