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Article
Better integration of chemical pollution research will further our understanding of biodiversity loss
Chemical pollution research should be better integrated with other drivers of biodiversity loss and the assessment of human impacts on ecosystems, to more effectively guide management strategies for biodiversi...
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Article
Open AccessRecent evolution of flowering time across multiple European plant species correlates with changes in aridity
Ongoing global warming and increasing drought frequencies impact plant populations and potentially drive rapid evolutionary adaptations. Historical comparisons, where plants grown from seeds collected in the p...
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Article
Open AccessAraDiv: a dataset of functional traits and leaf hyperspectral reflectance of Arabidopsis thaliana
Data from functional trait databases have been increasingly used to address questions related to plant diversity and trait-environment relationships. However, such databases provide intraspecific data that com...
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Article
Open AccessRock climbing affects cliff-plant communities by reducing species diversity and altering species coexistence patterns
Cliffs are unique ecosystems with an outstanding but relatively unknown plant diversity, harboring rare, endemic and threatened species, but also rock-specialist or generalist species that can become locally c...
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Article
Species-specific effects of thermal stress on the expression of genetic variation across a diverse group of plant and animal taxa under experimental conditions
Assessing the genetic adaptive potential of populations and species is essential for better understanding evolutionary processes. However, the expression of genetic variation may depend on environmental condit...
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Article
Founder effects, post-introduction evolution and phenotypic plasticity contribute to invasion success of a genetically impoverished invader
Multiple mechanisms may act synergistically to promote success of invasive plants. Here, we tested the roles of three non-mutually exclusive mechanisms—founder effects, post-introduction evolution and phenotyp...
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Article
Plant populations of three threatened species experience rapid evolution under ex situ cultivation
Many botanic gardens keep ex situ collections of rare species to prevent their extinction and to enable their reintroduction into the wild. A potential problem with ex situ collections is that relaxed selectio...
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Article
Local adaptation is stronger between than within regions in alpine populations of Anthyllis vulneraria
Plant populations can be locally adapted and the strength of local adaptation is predicted to increase with increasing environmental distance, e.g. to be larger across than within regions. Meta-analyses compar...
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Article
Open AccessHigh intraspecific phenotypic variation, but little evidence for local adaptation in Geum reptans populations in the Central Swiss Alps
The Alpine landscape is characterized by high spatiotemporal heterogeneity in environmental variables, such as climate and soil characteristics. This may lead to divergent selection pressures across plant popu...
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Article
Relationship between phenotypic differentiation and glacial history in a widespread Alpine grassland herb
In the European Alps, alpine species were able to survive periods of glaciation by retreating to lower-lying refugia surrounding the Alps. This temporary separation of populations in refugia has often led to g...
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Article
Adaptation of flowering phenology and fitness-related traits across environmental gradients in the widespread Campanula rotundifolia
Plant populations need to adjust to climate warming through phenotypic plasticity or evolution of trait means. We performed a common-garden experiment with European populations of Campanula rotundifolia to inves...
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Article
Open AccessAn objective method based on assemblages of subfossil plant macro-remains to reconstruct past natural vegetation: a case study at Swifterbant, The Netherlands
We present a new method of identifying past plant communities based on a palaeobotanical dataset. The dataset used as a case study consists of plant macro-remains retrieved from the Neolithic settlement Swifte...
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Article
Flowering phenology and reproductive fitness along a mountain slope: maladaptive responses to transplantation to a warmer climate in Campanula thyrsoides
In many biomes, global warming has resulted in advanced and longer growing seasons, which has often led to earlier flowering in plant taxa. Elevational gradients are ideal to study the effects of global warmin...
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Article
Elevational adaptation and plasticity in seedling phenology of temperate deciduous tree species
Phenological events, such as the initiation and the end of seasonal growth, are thought to be under strong evolutionary control because of their influence on tree fitness. Although numerous studies highlighted...
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Article
High genetic differentiation in populations of the rare alpine plant species Campanula thyrsoides on a small mountain
Changes in climate and traditional land use have contributed to a loss and fragmentation of suitable habitats for many alpine plant species. Despite the importance of these changes, our knowledge of the conseq...
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Article
Dispersal and microsite limitation of a rare alpine plant
Knowledge on the limitation of plant species’ distributions is important for preserving alpine biodiversity, particularly when the loss of alpine habitats because of global warming or land use changes is faste...
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Article
Differentiation in morphology and flowering phenology between two Campanula thyrsoides L. subspecies
Subspecies are usually characterised by sets of morphological discontinuities. By means of common garden experiments, we investigated genetic differentiation in morphological and phenological traits in two geo...
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Article
Open AccessVariability of protistan and bacterial communities in two Arctic fjords (Spitsbergen)
Krossfjorden and Kongsfjorden are Arctic fjords on the western side of Spitsbergen. These fjords share a common mouth to the open sea, and both are influenced by the input of sediment-rich glacial meltwater le...
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Article
Genotypic and environmental variation in specific leaf area in a widespread Alpine plant after transplantation to different altitudes
Specific leaf area (SLA) is an important plant functional trait as it is an indicator of ecophysiological characteristics like relative growth rate, stress tolerance and leaf longevity. Substantial intraspecif...
