Effects of roads on plant communities are not well known in cold-climate mountain ecosystems, where road building and development are expected to increase in future decades. Knowledge of the sensitivity of mountain plant communities to disturbance by roads is however important for future conservation purposes. We investigate the effects of roads on species richness and composition, including th...

The search for traits that make alien species invasive has mostly concentrated on comparing successful invaders and different comparison groups with respect to average trait values. By contrast, little attention has been paid to trait variability among invaders. Here, we combine an analysis of trait differences between invasive and non-invasive species with a comparison of multidimensional trai...

Floodplain lakes and associated wetlands in tropical dry climates are controlled by pronounced and severe seasonal hydrologic fluctuations. We examined the plant community response to a bimodal flooding pattern in the Zapatosa Floodplain Lake Complex (ZFLC), Northern Colombia. We measured floristic and quantitative change in four sampling periods emphasizing seasonal differences in plant abunda...

Strong environmental gradients can affect the genetic structure of plant populations, but little is known as to whether closely related species respond similarly or idiosyncratically to ecogeographic variation. We analysed the extent to which gradients in temperature and rainfall shape the genetic structure of four Stipa species in four bioclimatic regions in Jordan. Genetic diversity, differen...

Abstract Pollen types present in samples from corbiculae of Melipona capixaba (Moure and Camargo) (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Meliponina) worker bees were analyzed, as well as pollen samples from food pots inside the hives in three sites located at the bees' original habitat. The aim was to find out the sources used as a trophic resource by this species. The dominant pollen grains in the spectrum of ...

Urban novel ecosystems were sampled across vacant sites in two Portuguese urban regions. The flora studied with a focus on species’ origin, life form, ecological, chorological and naturalisation types. A multivariate constrained ordination technique was used to identify relationships between plant composition environmental factors. vegetation of the regions shows differences, highlighting biome...

We evaluated the net outcome of the interaction between the shrub Retama sphaerocarpa, our target plant, and different herbaceous neighbours in response to changes in the magnitude and frequency of rainfall events during three years. The experiment was conducted in natural and anthropogenic grasslands dominated by a perennial stress-tolerator and ruderal annual species, respectively. In spite o...

Individual plant species that modify ecosystem properties have traditionally been thought to be uncommon in natural systems. I hypothesize that many invasive nonindigenous species do alter these properties at several scales. The non-indigenous plant species in Florida considered the most invasive by the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council are examined for this capability through review of the ava...

Glyphosate, one of the most applied herbicides globally, has been extensively studied for its effects on non-target organisms. In the field, following precipitation, glyphosate runs off into agricultural ditches where it infiltrates into the soil and thus may encounter the roots of vegetation. These edge-of-field ditches share many characteristics with wetlands, including the ability to reduce ...