Pedoanthracology and dendroecology: two complementary approaches applied to old forest history

Impact of polyploidy on fertility variation of Mediterranean Arundo L. (Poaceae)

International audience; Failure of seed production in the genus Arundo L. (Poaceae) is often attributed to polyploidy. This study tested the impact of two ploidy levels (2n = 12 and 18x) on the fertility of four Mediterranean Arundo. Viable pollen was screened from its production to its germination, and seed occurrence was monitored in admixture or isolated conditions. In addition, insights on restructuration of polyploid genornes were analysed using molecular cytogenetics. Our results show that high ploidy levels do not automatically induce failure of sexual reproduction. The two ploidy levels are able to produce viable pollen and seed set depending on species and cultural conditions. The …

A minimalist macroparasite diversity in the round goby of the Upper Rhine reduced to an exotic acanthocephalan lineage.

AbstractThe round goby, Neogobius melanostomus, is a Ponto-Caspian fish considered as an invasive species in a wide range of aquatic ecosystems. To understand the role that parasites may play in its successful invasion across Western Europe, we investigated the parasitic diversity of the round goby along its invasion corridor, from the Danube to the Upper Rhine rivers, using data from literature and a molecular barcoding approach, respectively. Among 1666 parasites extracted from 179 gobies of the Upper Rhine, all of the 248 parasites barcoded on the c oxidase subunit I gene were identified as Pomphorhynchus laevis. This lack of macroparasite diversity was interpreted as a loss of parasites…