Fabiana Esposito

• Post-Doc Researcher
• PostDoc Position at Université Libre de Bruxelles

The native biodiversity of oceanic islands is threatened by human-driven disturbance and by the growing number of species introductions which often interfere with natural ecological processes. Here, we aim to evaluate the effect of anthropogenic disturbance on plant–pollinator interactions in the native forest communities of an oceanic island (Terc...

This study presents the first palynological characterisation of the five endemic plant genera of the Madeira archipelago: Chamaemeles Lindl, Melanoselinum Hoffm., Monizia Lowe, Musschia Dumort and Sinapidendron Lowe. Pollen grain morphology of ten endemic species was studied using light and scanning electron microscopy techniques. The size and shap...

Orchidaceae is a flowering plant family worldwide distributed known for producing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which can act as olfactory signals for pollinators. Despite the importance of VOCs in the different reproductive strategies, in the literature there are only a few publications on the characterization of orchids’ volatile profiles. In...

The study of flower visitor behavior and pollen transport dynamics within and between plants can be of great importance, especially for threatened or rare plant species. In this work, we aim to assess the flower visitor assemblage of the Madeiran endemic Echium candicans and evaluate the performance of the most common visitors through the analysis...

Pollinators represent one of the main agents of selection on floral traits. Here, we estimated phenotypic selection on floral morphology and phenology in a sympatric population of two orchid species, Platanthera bifolia and P. chlorantha , including enigmatic individuals with intermediate column morphology (as reflected by the distance between visc...

Platanthera bifolia and P. chlorantha are terrestrial and rewarding orchids with a wide Eurasian distribution. Although genetically closely related, they exhibit significant morphological, phenological and ecological differences that maintain reproductive isolation between the species. However, where both species co-occur, individuals with intermed...

Number of seeds (total and viable—see text)

Morphological data from allopatric populations (summarized in Table 2)

Viability index (calculated from the data in the previous file—see text)

Morphological data from Botton sympatric population (summarized in Table 2)

Morphological data from Bois Niau sympatric population (summarized in Table 2)

Genotype frequencies of species-specific markers in P. bifolia, P. chlorantha species and intermediate morphotypes of two sympatric zones (Table 3)

Floral scent profile (Table 4)

Zoophilous flowering plants communicate with pollinators to ensure pollen transfer. Pin-pointing which species are effective pollinators is not only essential to better understand plant-pollinator networks, but equally so to better understand the potential of hybridization in plant systems, such as in orchids. As a case study, we studied two sympat...

Platanthera bifolia and P. chlorantha are terrestrial and rewarding orchids with a wide Eurasian distribution. Although genetically closely related, they exhibit significant morphological, phenological and ecological differences that maintain reproductive isolation between the species. However, where both species co-occur, individuals with intermed...

Platanthera bifolia and P. chlorantha are terrestrial and rewarding orchids with a wide Eurasian distribution. Although genetically closely related, they exhibit significant morphological, phenological and ecological differences that maintain reproductive isolation between the species. However, where both species co-occur, individuals with intermed...

Although bee-plant associations are generally maintained through speciation processes, host shifts have occurred during evolution. Understanding shifts between both phylogenetically and morphologically unrelated plants (i.e., host-saltation) is especially important since they could have been key processes in the origin and radiation of bees. Probab...

While it is generally acknowledged that orchid species rely on mycorrhizal fungi for completion of their life cycle, little is yet known about how mycorrhizal fungal diversity and community composition vary within and between closely related orchid taxa. In this study, we used 454 amplicon pyrosequencing to investigate variation in mycorrhizal comm...

List of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) corresponding to orchid-associating mycorrhizal families discovered in this study. (DOCX)