Influence of ecological characteristics and phylogeny on native plant species' commercial availability.

Plant vendors generate a commercial species pool, the subset of species in a regional flora that is purchasable. The availability of plant species from commercial vendors can influence the composition and outcomes of conservation, landscaping, and restoration plantings. Although previous research suggests that most plant species are unavailable, there is little information that identifies the plant characteristics associated with commercial availability.

Roads are partial barriers to foraging solitary bees in an urban landscape.

Understanding how animals navigate novel heterogeneous landscapes is key to predicting species responses to land-use change. Roads are pervasive features of human-altered landscapes, known to alter movement patterns and habitat connectivity of vertebrates like small mammals and amphibians. However, less is known about how roads influence movement of insects, a knowledge gap that is especially glaring in light of recent investments in habitat plantings for insect pollinators along roads verges and medians.

The conservation value of small population remnants: variability in inbreeding depression and heterosis of a perennial herb, the narrow-leaved purple coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia).

Anthropogenically fragmented populations may have reduced fitness due to loss of genetic diversity and inbreeding. The extent of such fitness losses due to fragmentation and potential gains from conservation actions are infrequently assessed together empirically. Controlled crosses within and among populations can identify whether populations are at risk of inbreeding depression and whether interpopulation crossing alleviates fitness loss.

Conservation genomics assessment of Tharp's bluestar () with comparisons to widespread () and narrowly endemic () congeners.

Land-use change and habitat fragmentation are threats to biodiversity. The decrease in available habitat, increase in isolation, and mating within populations can lead to elevated inbreeding, lower genetic diversity, and poor fitness. Here we investigate the genetics of two rare and threatened plant species, and , and we compare them to a widespread congener .

Voltinism of a solitary bee was influenced by temperature but not provision size.

Changes in the timing and duration of life cycles are distinctive fingerprints of environmental change. Yet, the biotic and abiotic cues underpinning phenology and voltinism, i.e.

Juvenile survival increases with dispersal distance and varies across years: 15 years of evidence in a prairie perennial.

Juvenile survival is critical to population persistence and evolutionary change. However, the survival of juvenile plants from emergence to reproductive maturity is rarely quantified. This is especially true for long-lived perennials with extended pre-reproductive periods.

Adaptive generalization in pollination systems: Hawkmoths increase fitness to long-tubed flowers, but secondary pollinators remain important.

Selection on floral traits by animal pollinators is important in the evolution of flowering plants, yet whether floral divergence requires specialized pollination remains uncertain. Longer floral tubes, a trait associated with long-tongued pollinators, can also exclude other pollinators from accessing rewards, a potential mechanism for specialization. Across most of its range, displays much longer corollas than most species, though tube length varies geographically and correlates partially with hawkmoth visitation.

Aphid Resistance Segregates Independently of Cardenolide and Glucosinolate Content in an (Wormseed Wallflower) F2 Population.

Plants in the genus produce both glucosinolates and cardenolides as a defense mechanism against herbivory. Two natural isolates of (wormseed wallflower) differed in their glucosinolate content, cardenolide content, and their resistance to (green peach aphid), a broad generalist herbivore. Both classes of defensive metabolites were produced constitutively and were not further induced by aphid feeding.

Masting, fire-stimulated flowering, and the evolutionary ecology of synchronized reproduction.

Synchronized episodic reproduction among long-lived plants shapes ecological interactions, ecosystem dynamics, and evolutionary processes worldwide. Two active scientific fields investigate the causes and consequences of such synchronized reproduction: the fields of masting and fire-stimulated flowering. While parallels between masting and fire-stimulated flowering have been previously noted, there has been little dialogue between these historically independent fields.

Demography and threats to population growth of , a threatened dune plant, in Wisconsin.

Multi-year and multi-site demographic data for rare plants allow researchers to observe threats and project population growth rates and thus long-term persistence of the species, generating knowledge, which allows for effective conservation planning. Demographic studies across more than a decade are extremely rare but allow for the effects of threats to be observed and assessed within the context of interannual environmental variation. We collected demographic data on the Threatened plant in two sites from 2011-2022.

Aphid resistance segregates independently of cardiac glycoside and glucosinolate content in an (wormseed wallflower) F2 population.

Plants in the genus produce both glucosinolates and cardiac glycosides as defense against herbivory. Two natural isolates of (wormseed wallflower) differed in their glucosinolate content, cardiac glycoside content, and resistance to (green peach aphid), a broad generalist herbivore. Both classes of defensive metabolites were produced constitutively and were not induced further by aphid feeding.

Predicting plant-pollinator interactions: concepts, methods, and challenges.

Plant-pollinator interactions are ecologically and economically important, and, as a result, their prediction is a crucial theoretical and applied goal for ecologists. Although various analytical methods are available, we still have a limited ability to predict plant-pollinator interactions. The predictive ability of different plant-pollinator interaction models depends on the specific definitions used to conceptualize and quantify species attributes (e.

Species-specific effects of production practices on genetic diversity in plant reintroduction programs.

Plant production practices can influence the genetic diversity of cultivated plant materials and, ultimately, their potential to adapt to a reintroduction site. A common step in the plant production process is the application of seed pretreatment to alleviate physiological seed dormancy and successfully germinate seeds. In production settings, the seeds that germinate more rapidly may be favored in order to fill plant quotas.

A phylogeny of the evening primrose family (Onagraceae) using a target enrichment approach with 303 nuclear loci.

Background: The evening primrose family (Onagraceae) includes 664 species (803 taxa) with a center of diversity in the Americas, especially western North America. Ongoing research in Onagraceae includes exploring striking variation in floral morphology, scent composition, and breeding system, as well as the role of these traits in driving diversity among plants and their interacting pollinators and herbivores. However, these efforts are limited by the lack of a comprehensive, well-resolved phylogeny.

Habitat fragmentation decouples fire-stimulated flowering from plant reproductive fitness.

Many plant species in historically fire-dependent ecosystems exhibit fire-stimulated flowering. While greater reproductive effort after fire is expected to result in increased reproductive outcomes, seed production often depends on pollination, the spatial distribution of prospective mates, and the timing of their reproductive activity. Fire-stimulated flowering may thus have limited fitness benefits in small, isolated populations where mating opportunities are restricted and pollination rates are low.

Reproductive strategies and their consequences for divergence, gene flow, and genetic diversity in three taxa of Clarkia.

Differences in reproductive strategies can have important implications for macro- and micro-evolutionary processes. We used a comparative approach through a population genetics lens to evaluate how three distinct reproductive strategies shape patterns of divergence among as well as gene flow and genetic diversity within three closely related taxa in the genus Clarkia. One taxon is a predominantly autonomous self-fertilizer and the other two taxa are predominantly outcrossing but vary in the primary pollinator they attract.

Evolutionary history shapes grassland productivity through opposing effects on complementarity and selection.

Phylogenetic diversity (PD), the evolutionary history of the organisms comprising a community, is increasingly recognized as an important driver of ecosystem function. However, biodiversity-ecosystem function experiments have rarely included PD as an a priori treatment. Thus, PD's effects in existing experiments are often confounded by covarying differences in species richness and functional trait diversity (FD).

Pollinators differ in their contribution to the male fitness of a self-incompatible composite.

Premise: Reproductive fitness in plants is often determined by the quantity and quality of pollen transferred by pollinators. However, many fitness studies measure only female fitness or rely on proxies for male fitness. Here we assessed how five bee taxon groups affect male fitness in a prairie plant by quantifying pollen removal, visitation, and siring success using paternity assignments and a unique pollinator visitation experiment.

Fire effects on plant reproductive fitness vary among individuals, reflecting pollination-dependent mechanisms.

Premise: Fire induces flowering in many plant species worldwide, potentially improving reproductive fitness via greater availability of resources, as evident by flowering effort, and improved pollination outcomes, as evident by seed set. Postfire increases in flowering synchrony, and thus mating opportunities, may improve pollination. However, few studies evaluate fire effects on multiple components of fitness.

Hawkmoth and bee pollinators impact pollen dispersal at the landscape but not local scales in two species of Oenothera.

Premise: Animal pollinators play an important role in pollen dispersal. Here, we assessed differences in pollen and seed dispersal and the role of pollinator functional groups with different foraging behaviors in generating patterns of genetic diversity over similar geographic ranges for two closely related taxa. We focused on two members of Oenothera section Calylophus (Onagraceae) that co-occur on gypsum outcrops throughout the northern Chihuahuan Desert but differ in floral phenotype and primary pollinator: Oenothera gayleana (bee) and O.

 (Solanaceae), a newly-described dioecious bush tomato from Judbarra/Gregory National Park, Northern Territory, Australia.

A new species of functionally dioecious bush tomato of SolanumsubgenusLeptostemonum is described. Martine & T.M.

Linking breadfruit cultivar names across the globe connects histories after 230 years of separation.

Every crop has a story. The story of breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis), an increasingly valued staple crop in tropical agroforestry systems, is filled with intrigue, oppression, and remains incomplete. The Caribbean is a major producer and consumer of breadfruit, yet most breadfruit there came from a single 1793 introduction aimed at providing a cheap food source for slaves forced to work on British plantations.

Genotype accounts for intraspecific variation in the timing and duration of multiple, sequential life-cycle events in a willow species.

Premise: Phenological variation among individuals within populations is common and has a variety of ecological and evolutionary consequences, including forming the basis for population-level responses to environmental change. Although the timing of life-cycle events has genetic underpinnings, whether intraspecific variation in the duration of life-cycle events reflects genetic differences among individuals is poorly understood.

Methods: We used a common garden experiment with 10 genotypes of Salix hookeriana (coastal willow) from northern California, United States to investigate the extent to which genetic variation explains intraspecific variation in the timing and duration of multiple, sequential life-cycle events: flowering, leaf budbreak, leaf expansion, fruiting, and fall leaf coloration.

Supporting long-term sustainability of ex situ collections using a pedigree-based population management approach.

Premise: Living collections maintained for generations are at risk of diversity loss, inbreeding, and adaptation to cultivation. To address these concerns, the zoo community uses pedigrees to track individuals and implement crosses that maximize founder contributions and minimize inbreeding. Using a pedigree management approach, we demonstrate how conducting strategic crosses can minimize genetic issues that have arisen under current practices.