Analyses among animal species have found that reproductive isolation increases monotonically with genetic distance, evolves more quickly for prezygotic than postzygotic traits, and is stronger among sympatric than allopatric species pairs. The latter pattern is consistent with expectations under the reinforcement hypothesis. To determine whether similar trends are found among plant species, pat...

Host ecological traits may limit exposure to infectious disease, thereby generating the wide variation in disease incidence observed between host populations or species. The exclusion of disease by ecological traits may then allow selection to act against physiological defenses when they are costly to maintain in the absence of disease. This study investigates ecological resistance in the Silen...

Theoretical arguments suggest that mutation rates influence the proliferation and maintenance of RNA editing. We identified RNA editing sites in five species within the angiosperm genus Silene that exhibit highly divergent mitochondrial mutation rates. We found that mutational acceleration has been associated with rapid loss of mitochondrial editing sites. In contrast, we did not find a signifi...

This study partitions selection in a natural metapopulation of a riparian plant species, Silene tatarica, into individual- and patch-level components by using contextual analysis, in which a patch refers to a spatially distinct stand of individual plants. We estimated selection gradients for two morphological characters (plant height and number of stems), their respective patch means, and plant...

Dioecious plants in the Caryophyllaceae family are susceptible to infection by members of the anthericolous smut fungi. In our studies of the Silene latifolia/Microbotryum lychnidis-dioicae pathosystem, we were interested in characterizing the plant-pathogen interaction at the molecular level before and during teliosporogenesis. This takes place during floral bud development, and we hoped to ca...

The mechanism for the photochemical isomerization reaction is investigated theoretically using a model system of a five-membered-ring silene and the CAS(8,8)/6-311G(d) and MP2-CAS-(8,8)/6-311++G(3df,3pd)//CAS(8,8)/6-311G(d) methods. These model investigations indicate that the preferred reaction route for a five-membered-ring silene, which leads to the photorearrangement product, is as follows:...

Two intramolecularly donor-stabilized silenes, l-(8-dimethylamino-l-naphthyl)-l,2,2-tris(trimethylsilyl)silene (1 ), and l-[bis-2 ,6 -(dimethylaminomethyl)phenyl]-l,2 ,2 -tris(trimethylsilyl)silene 2, were studied by 2 9 Si and C NMR spectroscopy, using polarization transfer techniques in order to determine coupling constants V (2 9 Si,2 9 Si) in = 1,2, 3) and '/ ( 2 9 Si,l3 C) together with is...

The genus Silene, with more than 100 species in Iran is an important genus of Iranian flora. According to available data on the northwestern parts of Iran, including three provinces of Ardabil, East and West Azarbaijan are considered as a major diversity center of perennial species of the genus Silene in Iran. In the course of a revision of Silene in this area, some interesting specimens were c...

Plant-insect interactions often are important for plant reproduction, but the outcome of these interactions may vary with environmental context. Pollinating seed predators have positive and negative effects on host plant reproduction, and the interaction outcome is predicted to vary with density or abundance of the partners. We studied the interaction between Silene stellata, an herbaceous pere...