Many specialist herbivores eat foods that are apparently low quality. The compensatory benefits of a poor diet may include protection from natural enemies. Several bee lineages specialize on pollen of the plant family Asteraceae, which is known to be a poor-quality food. Here we tested the hypothesis that specialization on Asteraceae pollen protects bees from parasitism. We compared rates of br...

Asteraceae Bremer, K. 1994. Asteraceae: cladistics and classification. Portland, OR. Timber Press. Esselman, E.J., Crawford, D.J., Brauner, S., Stuessy, T.F., Anderson, G.J. & Silva, M. 2000. RAPD marker diversity within and divergence among species of Dendroseris (Asteraceae : Lactuceae). Am. J. Bot., 87: 591-596. Sang, T., Crawford, D.J., Kim, S.C. & Stuessy, T.F. 1994. Radiation of the Endem...

Hymenoclea salsola, Asteraceae, Resin Flavonoids, 2',4',6 'OH Chalcone Hymenoclea salsola (Asteraceae), a dominant shrub of the desert areas of California and Baja California, Mexico, secretes high amounts of resin on the leaf surface. Chemi­ cal analysis of the resin revealed the presence of a complex mixture of flavonoid aglycones. Among the compounds identified is the rare 2',4',6'-OH chalco...

A backbone phylogeny that fully resolves all subfamily and deeper nodes of Asteraceae was constructed using 14 chloroplast DNA loci. The recently named genus Famatinanthus was found to be sister to the Mutisioideae-Asteroideae clade that represents more than 99% of Asteraceae and was found to have the two chloroplast inversions present in all Asteraceae except the nine genera of Barnadesioideae...

BACKGROUND Pollen-pistil interactions are an essential prelude to fertilization in angiosperms and determine compatibility/incompatibility. Pollen-pistil interactions have been studied at a molecular and cellular level in relatively few families. Self-incompatibility (SI) is the best understood pollen-pistil interaction at a molecular level where three different molecular mechanisms have been i...

We determined the distribution of a chloroplast DNA inversion among 80 species representing 16 tribes of the Asteraceae and 10 putatively related families. Filter hybridizations using cloned chloroplast DNA restriction fragments of lettuce and petunia revealed that this 22-kilobase-pair inversion is shared by 57 genera, representing all tribes of the Asteraceae, but is absent from the subtribe ...

Nine eriophyoid mites, including two new species and five new records, from Iran are described and illustrated. They are Aceria acroptiloni Shevchenko & Kacalev, 1974, rec. n. on Rhaponticum repens (L.) Hidalgo (Asteraceae); Aceria anthocoptes (Nalepa, 1892), rec. n. on Cirsium arvense (L.) Scop. (Asteraceae); Aceria lactucae (Canestrini, 1893), rec. n. on Lactuca virosa L. (Asteraceae); Aceria...

The flora of Mexico includes about 119 endemic or nearly endemic genera of Asteraceae. In this study, the genera are listed and their distribution patterns among the floristic provinces of Mexico analyzed. Results indicate strong affinities of the endemic genera for mountainous and arid or semiarid regions. Since its first appearance in Mexico, the Asteraceae diversified into these kinds of hab...

The purpose of this review is to survey the antiparasitic plants of the Asteraceae family and their applicability in the treatment of parasites. This review is divided into three major parts: (a) literature on traditional uses of Asteraceae plants for the treatment of parasites; (b) description of the major classes of chemical compounds from Asteraceae and their antiparasitic effects; and (c) a...

Plant resistance to many types of pathogens and pests can be achieved by the presence of disease resistance (R) genes. The nucleotide binding site-leucine rich repeat (NBS-LRR) class of R-genes is the most commonly isolated class of R-genes and makes up a super-family, which is often arranged in the genome as large multi-gene clusters. The NBS domain of these genes can be targeted by polymerase...