Soil Seed Bank of the Alpine Endemic Carnation, Tausch (Piedmont, Italy), a Useful Model for the Study of Host-Pathogen Dynamics.

Soil seedbanks are particularly important for the resiliency of species living in habitats threatened by climate change, such as alpine meadows. We investigated the germination rate and seedbank potential for the endemic species , a carnation native to the Maritime Alps that is used as model system for disease in natural populations due to its frequent infections by a sterilizing anther-smut pathogen. We aimed to ascertain whether this species can create a persistent reserve of viable seeds in the soil which could impact coevolutionary dynamics.

Comparative Germination Ecology of Two Endemic Species () in Different Climatic Zones of the Ligurian and Maritime Alps (Piedmont, Italy).

Comparative studies of seed germination of closely related taxa can help increase our understanding of the ecological limitations of cold-adapted plants and forecast how they might respond to global warming. No studies exist on the relationship between thermoclimatic belts that classify mountain life zones according to bioclimatic criteria and the germination strategy of alpine plants. The aim of this study was to assess this relationship using two closely related species growing in different thermotypes and to test whether their germination responses were related to the climate at natural sites.

The role of infectious disease in the evolution of females: Evidence from anther-smut disease on a gynodioecious alpine carnation.

In flowering plants, the evolution of females is widely hypothesized to be the first step in the evolutionary pathway to separate male and female sexes, or dioecy. Natural enemies have the potential to drive this evolution if they preferentially attack hermaphrodites over females. We studied sex-based differences in exposure to anther-smut (Microbotryum), a sterilizing pollinator-transmitted disease, in Dianthus pavonius, a gynodioecious perennial herb.