PREMISE: Plants and pollinators closely interact with each other to form complex networks of species interactions. Metabarcoding of pollen collections has recently been proposed as an advantageous method for the construction of such networks, but the extent to which diversity and community analyses depend on the extraction method and pollen concent...
Published in Nature plants
Currents are unique drivers of oceanic phylogeography and thus determine the distribution of marine coastal species, along with past glaciations and sea-level changes. Here we reconstruct the worldwide colonization history of eelgrass (Zostera marina L.), the most widely distributed marine flowering plant or seagrass from its origin in the Northwes...
status: published
The kiwi is a highly insect-pollinated dependent crop and is the cornerstone of the Greek agricultural sector, rendering the country as the fourth biggest kiwi producer worldwide, with an expected increase in national production the following years. This extensive transformation of the Greek arable land to Kiwi monocultures in combination with a wo...
ContextTo date, managing honey bees and wild bees within crop fields remains challenging. Landscape structure is often overlooked when studying the pollination contribution of honey bees. Increasing our understanding on how to predict honey bee visitation in crops is crucial for sustainable management of agroecosystems. ObjectivesWith this study we...
The figwort family, Scrophulariaceae, comprises c. 2000 species whose evolutionary relationships at the tribal level have proven difficult to resolve, hindering our ability to understand their origin and diversification. center dot We designed a specific probe kit for Scrophulariaceae, targeting 849 nuclear loci and obtaining plastid regions as by-...
On the island of Hispaniola, five endemic species of Magnolia occur, all of which are threatened with extinction. Little is known about their distribution and genetic health, hampering targeted conservation actions. The objective of this study is to assess the potential distribution and the genetic health of the Magnolias of Hispaniola, to inform c...
Published in International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife
Nearly two fifths of the Earth's land area is currently used for agriculture, substantially impacting the environment and ecosystems. Besides the direct impact through land use change, intensive agriculture can also have an indirect impact, for example by changing wildlife epidemiology. We review here the potential effects of mass-flowering crops (...
Brood diseases and pesticides can reduce the survival of bee larvae, reduce bee populations, and negatively influence ecosystem biodiversity. However, major gaps persist in our knowledge regarding the routes and implications of co-exposure to these stressors in managed and wild bee brood. In this review, we evaluate the likelihood for co-exposure t...
Hybridization in flowering plants depends, in the first place, on the delivery of pollen to a receptive stigma and the subsequent growth of pollen tubes through the style to the ovary, where the sperm nucleus of the pollen grain can ultimately fertilize the egg cell. However, reproductive failure is often observed in distant crosses and is caused b...
