Search results for "Grasses"
showing 5 items of 25 documents
Searching for the competitive ability of the alien seagrass Halophila stipulacea with the autochthonous species Cymodocea nodosa
2023
The tropical seagrass Halophila stipulacea (Forsskål) Ascherson, 1867 entered in the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal more than 100 years ago. In coastal-marine ecosystems the spatial niche of H. stipulacea is often overlapped with that of native Mediterranean Sea seagrasses and therefore it might out-compete them. Aiming to better understand its invasiveness potential, we monitored a Southern Mediterranean shallow coastal-marine water habitat from August 2010 to August 2011, where H. stipulacea co-occurred with the native seagrass Cymodocea nodosa (Ucria) Ascherson, 1870. Besides, the year-round dynamics of H. stipulacea was also monitored in four periods. To test the hypothesis th…
Vulnerability of algae and seagrasses to climate change
2013
Biodiversity is undergoing rapid and worrying changes, partially driven by anthropogenic activities. Human impacts and climate change (e.g. increasing temperature and ocean acidification) represent the most serious threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Aim of this study was to assess, analysing the scientific literature and published data, how climate change can affect algae and seagrasses, evaluating their vulnerability and the possibility to use these organisms as indicators. Algae and seagrasses have a central role for several important ecological processes in aquatic ecosystems, and their loss can lead repercussions for the ecological function. Climate stressors affected ac…
New Bioactive Peptides from the Mediterranean Seagrass Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile and Their Impact on Antimicrobial Activity and Apoptosis of Hum…
2023
The demand for new molecules to counter bacterial resistance to antibiotics and tumor cell resistance is increasingly pressing. The Mediterranean seagrass Posidonia oceanica is considered a promising source of new bioactive molecules. Polypeptide-enriched fractions of rhizomes and green leaves of the seagrass were tested against Gram-positive (e.g., Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecalis) and Gram-negative bacteria (e.g., Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli), as well as towards the yeast Candida albicans. The aforementioned extracts showed indicative MIC values, ranging from 1.61 μg/mL to 7.5 μg/mL, against the selected pathogens. Peptide fractions were further analyzed thr…
Heritable Epichloë symbiosis shapes fungal but not bacterial communities of plant leaves
2019
Keystone microbial species have driven eco-evolutionary processes since the origin of life. However, due to our inability to detect the majority of microbiota, members of diverse microbial communities of fungi, bacteria and viruses have largely been ignored as keystone species in past literature. Here we tested whether heritable Epichloë species of pooidae grasses modulate microbiota of their shared host plant. peerReviewed
A Synopsis of the Genus Stipa (Poaceae) in Middle Asia, Including a Key to Species Identification, an Annotated Checklist, and Phytogeographic Analys…
2020
The genus Stipa L. comprises over 150 species, all native to the Old World, where they grow in warm temperate regions throughout Europe, Asia, and North Africa. It is one of the largest genera in the family Poaceae in Middle Asia, where one of its diversity hotspots is located. However, identification of Middle Asian Stipa species is difficult because of the lack of new, comprehensive taxonomic studies including all of the species recorded in the region. We present a critical review of the Mid-Asian representatives of Stipa, together with an identification key and taxonomic listing. We relied on both published and unpublished information for the taxa involved, many of which are poorly known…