Mehr lesen
Christel has been intrigued by the phenomenon of invasions since her studies as an undergraduate student in botany at Goettingen University where she took several of my courses and where I supervised her diploma thesis. Her diploma thesis already addressed the possible impact of hybridization for the invasiveness of plant species. By using molecular markers, she studied North American and European Rhododendron species. We were also in close contact while she was working on her PhD thesis at the Department of Community Ecology at the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research UFZ in Halle. Having been one of the reviewers of her PhD thesis, I readily agreed when she asked me to write a short preface to this publication. While the main line of research on the role of evolutionary processes for plant invasions has mainly been on the response to a different natural selection pressures exerted by the abiotic and biotic site factors of the new environment, Christel has asked to which degree breeding efforts might have contributed to such pressures. She chose a very apt study object to address this topic, Mahonia aquifolium, a species native to North America and introduced to Europe as an ornamental plant, together with some other species of the same genus. Christel's basic question was whether invasive populations of Mahonia aquifolium in Europe originate from planted cultivars or from hybrids with M. repens und M. pinnata.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Isolation and characterisation of microsatellite markers in the invasive shrub Mahonia aquifolium (Berberidaceae) and their applicability in related species.- Genetic relationships among three native North-American Mahonia species, invasive Mahonia populations from Europe, and commercial cultivars.- Invasive Mahonia plants outgrow their native relatives.- Mahonia invasions in different habitats: local adaptation or general-purpose genotypes?.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Dr. Christel Anne Ross completed her doctoral thesis at the Department of Community Ecology at the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ in Halle, Germany. She now works as a junior editor in a specialist publishing house.
Zusammenfassung
Invasive species are a major threat to global biodiversity and cause significant economic costs. Studying biological invasions is both essential for preventing future invasions and is also useful in order to understand basic ecological processes.
Christel Ross investigates whether evolutionary changes by plant breeding are a relevant factor for the invasion success of Mahonia aquifolium in Germany. Her findings show that invasive populations differ from native populations in quantitative-genetic traits and molecular markers, whereas their genetic diversity is similar. She postulates that these evolutionary changes are rather a result of plant breeding, which includes interspecific hybridisation, than the result of a genetic bottleneck or the releases from specialist herbivores.
