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The conservation of agrobiodiversity begins by its characterisation to know it. On this knowledge, we must study the interactions of the different species with their abiotic and biotic context. However, as a consequence of the effects of... more
The conservation of agrobiodiversity begins by its characterisation to know it. On this knowledge, we must study the interactions of the different species with their abiotic and biotic context. However, as a consequence of the effects of climate change, the abiotic context is variable and extreme. Therefore, abiotic stress induced by climate change jeopardises both the biodiversity and plant genetic resources, therefore, food security. The latter is more drastic in developing communities. Thus, given the predictions of the effects of climate change at different geographical levels, it is urgent to develop strategies that might improve the management of biodiversity and promote resilience against said effects. On the one hand, preserving and describing the agrobiodiversity allows us to identify the genetic material most appropriate under different abiotic contexts. On the other hand, plants, including crops, are not isolated species and develop in a very heterogeneous biotic context that can enhance plant tolerance to abiotic stress. In this work, we review key concepts, threats, challenges, and strategies to improve agrobiodiversity management.
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THESIS 8106I have empirically explored the impact of different factors on the coevolution of a multihost-parasite system consisting of a gut trypanosomatid and its bumble bee host species assemblage. I have studied the potential impact of... more
THESIS 8106I have empirically explored the impact of different factors on the coevolution of a multihost-parasite system consisting of a gut trypanosomatid and its bumble bee host species assemblage. I have studied the potential impact of different factors on the epidemiology of the parasite, and thus, I have explored both the within host and among host species dynamics: host heterogeneity (host nutrition, host sex, host caste, host species), the potential for parasite intra- and inter-specific transmission, and the genetic structure of the parasite population at both geographical and temporal scales. While most of these factors have been previously suggested as determinant of the coevolutionary dynamics between host and parasites other factors were studied as a logical extension of some findings or because they are potentially important to further understand the evolution of this system. I found that: (i) the parasite has been forced to adopt a generalist strategy; (ii) the driving force in this multihost-parasite system is the host; and (iii) queens are responsible for the evolution of parasite generalism. I further discuss the consequences of my findings in other social insect systems
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As access to irrigation water becomes increasingly limited, introgression of relevant genomic regions from drought-tolerant wild genotypes is a promising breeding strategy for crop plants. In this study, nine eggplant (Solanum melongena)... more
As access to irrigation water becomes increasingly limited, introgression of relevant genomic regions from drought-tolerant wild genotypes is a promising breeding strategy for crop plants. In this study, nine eggplant (Solanum melongena) introgression lines (ILs) covering altogether 71.6% of the genome of the donor wild relative parentS. incanumwere evaluated for drought tolerance under water stress conditions. Plants at the five true leaves stage were irrigated at either 100% (control) or 30% (water stress) field capacity for 14 days, and growth and biochemical traits were measured. Reduced irrigation resulted in decreased growth and increased levels of stress markers such as proline and malondialdehyde. Most ILs had lower growth and biomass production than the cultivated parent under both conditions. However, the wild alleles for two QTLs related to stem and root dry weight (dwt8anddwr6%) conferred improved tolerance to water stress. In addition, severalS. incanumalleles had a pos...
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Background: Climate change affects every region across the globe with heterogeneous effects on local temperatures and precipitation patterns. In plants, sessile organisms, climate change imposes more drastic effects leading to loss of... more
Background: Climate change affects every region across the globe with heterogeneous effects on local temperatures and precipitation patterns. In plants, sessile organisms, climate change imposes more drastic effects leading to loss of yield or even death. However, plants establish mutualistic interactions with microorganisms that boost plant tolerance against abiotic stresses or strengthen the plant immune system against pathogens, thus, enhancing their survival and fitness. Moreover, in the wild, microbial endophytes provide important ecosystem services. Purpose and scope: Little we know about the mechanisms of response against the adverse effects of climate change on natural populations of wild plants and even less about the potential role played by microbial biostimulants. In this article, we review the effects of biostimulants on plant responses against abiotic stresses, with a particular focus on the role of mycorrhizas and leaf endophytes. Results: We have reviewed the effects...
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Living in a social group increases the risks of parasitism, especially in highly-related groups. In homogenous groups, with no reproductive division of labour, the impact of parasitism is unlikely to vary with host identity. Many social... more
Living in a social group increases the risks of parasitism, especially in highly-related groups. In homogenous groups, with no reproductive division of labour, the impact of parasitism is unlikely to vary with host identity. Many social systems, however, do exhibit division of reproductive labour, most famously in social insects with their reproductive queens and generally infertile workers. In such systems, the impact of parasitism will differ for each group. Consequently, we predict that susceptibility to parasites will vary to reflect such differential impact. We tested this prediction using a trypanosome-bumble bee system, where Crithidia bombi infects both gynes and workers of Bombus terrestris. We studied both susceptibility to the parasite and relevant measures of the immune function. As predicted, gynes were significantly less susceptible to the parasite than workers, but while gynes and workers expressed different immune profiles, how these link to differential susceptibili...
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The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution is considered the most powerful theory to understand the evolutionary behavior of proteins. One of the main predictions of this theory is that essential proteins should evolve slower than... more
The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution is considered the most powerful theory to understand the evolutionary behavior of proteins. One of the main predictions of this theory is that essential proteins should evolve slower than dispensable ones owing to increased selective constraints. Comparison of genomes of different species, however, have revealed only small differences between the rates of evolution of essential and non-essential proteins. In some analyses, these differences vanish once confounding factors are controlled for, whereas in other cases essentiality seems to have an independent, albeit small, effect. It has been argued that comparing relatively distant genomes may entail a number of limitations. For instance, many of the genes that are dispensable in controlled lab conditions may be essential in some of the conditions faced in nature. Moreover, essentiality can change during evolution, and rates of protein evolution are simultaneously shaped by a variety of factor...
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Females social insects are widely investigated, while males are often neglected. Previous work on the morphology of the bumble bee male alimentary tract has described the presence of swollen proventriculi as a character with taxonomic... more
Females social insects are widely investigated, while males are often neglected. Previous work on the morphology of the bumble bee male alimentary tract has described the presence of swollen proventriculi as a character with taxonomic value. New observations suggest that the abnormal proventriculus might be an abnormal condition. Here, I identify a potential health issue in bumble bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Bombus) male alimentary tracts that consists of a swollen and strongly melanized proventriculus, thereby preventing the normal passage of food through the esophageal valve. Males from three bumble bee species exhibited the abnormal proventriculus with an overall prevalence of 31.1% across two years. This finding challenges previous research that suggested the swollen and melanized proventriculus of Bombus males as a taxonomic character.
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Abstract. Type 1 (archaeal) rhodopsins and related rhodopsin-like proteins had been described in a few halophile archaea, c-proteobacteria, a single cyano-bacteria, some fungi, and a green alga. In exhaustive database searches, we... more
Abstract. Type 1 (archaeal) rhodopsins and related rhodopsin-like proteins had been described in a few halophile archaea, c-proteobacteria, a single cyano-bacteria, some fungi, and a green alga. In exhaustive database searches, we detected rhodopsin-related se-quences derived not only from additional fungal species but also from organisms belonging to three groups in which opsins had hitherto not been de-scribed: the a-proteobacterium Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum, the cryptomonad alga Guillardia theta, and the dinoflagellate Pyrocystis lunula. Puta-tive plant and human type 1 rhodopsin sequences found in the databases are demonstrated to be con-taminants of fungal origin. However, a highly di-verged sequence supposedly from the plant Oryza sativa was found that is, together with the Pyrocystis sequence, quite similar to c-proteobacterial rhodop-sins. These close relationships suggest that at least one horizontal gene transfer event involving rho-dopsin genes occurred between pro...
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Resumenes de Ponencias presentadas en el I Congreso de Apicultura y Meliponicultura en Ecuador, realizado del 21-22 Febrero 2015. Lugar: Machala (UTMACH; CCE-EO; GADPEO), Provincia El Oro
Ionizing radiation has been shown to produce negative effects on organisms, although little is known about its ecological and evolutionary effects. As a study model, we isolated bacteria associated with feathers from barn swallows Hirundo... more
Ionizing radiation has been shown to produce negative effects on organisms, although little is known about its ecological and evolutionary effects. As a study model, we isolated bacteria associated with feathers from barn swallows Hirundo rustica from three study areas around Chernobyl differing in background ionizing radiation levels and one control study site in Denmark. Each bacterial community was exposed to four different γ radiation doses ranging from 0.46 to 3.96 kGy to test whether chronic exposure to radiation had selected for resistant bacterial strains. Experimental radiation duration had an increasingly overall negative effect on the survival of all bacterial communities. After exposure to γ radiation, bacteria isolated from the site with intermediate background radiation levels survived better and produced more colonies than the bacterial communities from other study sites with higher or lower background radiation levels. Long-term effects of radiation in natural popula...
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Ant-associated microorganisms can play crucial and often overlooked roles, and given the diversity of interactions that ants have developed, the study of the associated microbiomes is of interest. We focused here on specialist plant-ant... more
Ant-associated microorganisms can play crucial and often overlooked roles, and given the diversity of interactions that ants have developed, the study of the associated microbiomes is of interest. We focused here on specialist plant-ant species of the genus Allomerus that grow a fungus to build galleries on their host-plant stems. Allomerus-inhabited domatia, thus, might be a rich arena for microbes associated with the ants, the plant, and the fungus. We investigated the microbial communities present in domatia colonised by four arboreal ants: Allomerus decemarticulatus, A. octoarticulatus, A. octoarticulatus var. demerarae, and the non-fungus growing plant-ant Azteca sp. cf. depilis, inhabiting Hirtella physophora or Cordia nodosa in French Guiana. We hypothesized that the microbial community will differ among these species. We isolated microorganisms from five colonies of each species, sequenced the 16S rRNA or Internal TranscribedSpacer (ITS) regions, and described both the alpha...
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Comparison of the proteins of thermophilic, mesophilic, and psychrophilic prokaryotes has revealed several features characteristic to proteins adapted to high temperatures, which increase their thermostability. These characteristics... more
Comparison of the proteins of thermophilic, mesophilic, and psychrophilic prokaryotes has revealed several features characteristic to proteins adapted to high temperatures, which increase their thermostability. These characteristics include a profusion of disulfide bonds, salt bridges, hydrogen bonds, and hydrophobic interactions, and a depletion in intrinsically disordered regions. It is unclear, however, whether such differences can also be observed in eukaryotic proteins or when comparing proteins that are adapted to temperatures that are more subtly different. When an organism is exposed to high temperatures, a subset of its proteins is overexpressed (heat-induced proteins), whereas others are either repressed (heat-repressed proteins) or remain unaffected. Here, we determine the expression levels of all genes in the eukaryotic model system Arabidopsis thaliana at 22 and 37 °C, and compare both the amino acid compositions and levels of intrinsic disorder of heat-induced and heat...
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Changing climatic conditions impose a challenge both to biodiversity and food security. The effects of climate change affect different aspects of the plant or crop, such as morphological and phenological aspects, as well as yield. The... more
Changing climatic conditions impose a challenge both to biodiversity and food security. The effects of climate change affect different aspects of the plant or crop, such as morphological and phenological aspects, as well as yield. The effects of greenhouse conditions might be comparable in some cases to a permanent extreme disturbance in climate and weather, thus, contributing to our knowledge on climate change impacts on plant species. We have investigated the differences for 23 traits in two cultivar groups of an Andean traditional crop, Solanum betaceum, under two different environmental conditions that correspond to the traditional practices in the open field and three cultural managements under greenhouse conditions (no fertilization or control, organic, and mineral). We found that traditional practices in the open field are the less productive. Moreover, in warmer and drier conditions the treatment with organic fertilization was the most productive. Greenhouse conditions, howe...
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Research Interests: Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Molecular Evolution, Fungi, Horizontal Gene Transfer, and 14 morePhylogeny, Sequence alignment, Close relationships, Archaea, Bacteria, Cluster Analysis, Oryza Sativa, Green Algae, Evolutionary History, Amino Acid Sequence, Chlorophyta, Likelihood Functions, Biochemistry and cell biology, and Molecular Sequence Data
Research Interests: Pharmacology, Biochemistry, Bioinformatics, Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, and 51 moreMarine Biology, Neuroscience, Environmental Science, Geophysics, Physics, Materials Science, Quantum Physics, Developmental Biology, Immunology, Climate Change, Molecular Biology, Structural Biology, Genomics, RNA, Computational Biology, Genetic Drift, Transcriptomics, Biotechnology, Systems Biology, Cancer, Symbiosis, Biology, Metabolomics, Cell Cycle, Proteomics, Ecology, Drug Discovery, Evolution, Nanotechnology, Astrophysics, Neurobiology, Medicine, Gene expression, Multidisciplinary, Palaeobiology, Functional Genomics, Nature, Molecular Mechanics, Signal Transduction, Astronomy, DNA, Molecular chaperones, Mutagenesis, Mutation, Escherichia coli, Endocytosis, Cell Signalling, Medical Research, Heat Shock Protein, Vertical Transmission, and Earth Science
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Research Interests: Pharmacology, Biochemistry, Bioinformatics, Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, and 51 moreMarine Biology, Neuroscience, Environmental Science, Geophysics, Physics, Materials Science, Quantum Physics, Developmental Biology, Immunology, Climate Change, Molecular Biology, Structural Biology, Genomics, RNA, Computational Biology, Genetic Drift, Transcriptomics, Biotechnology, Systems Biology, Cancer, Symbiosis, Biology, Metabolomics, Cell Cycle, Proteomics, Ecology, Drug Discovery, Evolution, Nanotechnology, Astrophysics, Neurobiology, Medicine, Gene expression, Multidisciplinary, Palaeobiology, Functional Genomics, Nature, Molecular Mechanics, Signal Transduction, Astronomy, DNA, Molecular chaperones, Mutagenesis, Mutation, Escherichia coli, Endocytosis, Cell Signalling, Medical Research, Heat Shock Protein, Vertical Transmission, and Earth Science
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Research Interests: Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Molecular Evolution, Fungi, Horizontal Gene Transfer, and 13 morePhylogeny, Sequence alignment, Close relationships, Archaea, Bacteria, Cluster Analysis, Oryza Sativa, Green Algae, Evolutionary History, Amino Acid Sequence, Chlorophyta, Likelihood Functions, and Biochemistry and cell biology
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The evolutionary ecology of multihost parasites is predicted to depend upon patterns of host quality and the dynamics of transmission networks. Depending upon the differences in host quality and transmission asymmetries, as well as the... more
The evolutionary ecology of multihost parasites is predicted to depend upon patterns of host quality and the dynamics of transmission networks. Depending upon the differences in host quality and transmission asymmetries, as well as the balance between intra- and interspecific transmission, the evolution of specialist or generalist strategies is predicted. Using a trypanosome parasite of bumblebees, we ask how host quality and transmission networks relate to parasite population structure across host species, and thus the potential for the evolution of specialist strains adapted to different host species. Host species differed in quality, with parasite growth varying across host species. Highly asymmetric transmission networks, together with differences in host quality, likely explain local population structure of the parasite across host species. However, parasite population structure across years was highly dynamic, with parasite populations varying significantly from one year to the next within individual species at a given site. This suggests that, while host quality and transmission may provide the opportunity for short-term host specialization by the parasite, repeated bottlenecking of the parasite, in combination with its own reproductive biology, overrides these smaller scale effects, resulting in the evolution of a generalist parasite.