Francesco Boscutti

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Verified

Francesco verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Udine

Enhanced shrub growth and expansion are widespread responses to climate warming in many arctic and alpine ecosystems. Warmer temperatures and shrub expansion could cause major changes in plant community structure, affecting both species composition and diversity. To improve our understanding of the ongoing changes in plant communities in alpine tun...

Questions Understanding the mechanisms underlying the impacts of exotic plant invasions is a central issue in plant ecology. Considering the invasion process, any alteration of the nutrient cycle is of fundamental importance. We hypothesized that the woody N‐fixing invasive Amorpha fruticosa is indirectly depleting plant diversity by altering ecosy...

Exotic plant invasions are considered one of the major threats to biodiversity causing important impacts at the population, community, and ecosystem levels. Understanding the drivers of plant invasions across multiple spatial and temporal scales often requires a landscape approach. The effect of landscape composition on biological invasion has been...

Seagrass meadows play a vital role for lagoon ecosystems and their biota, sustaining multiple ecosystem services. Their distribution and functioning are closely tied to the environmental pressures induced by global changes. Long-term monitoring of seagrass species and communities is, hence, important to depict their response to past and future scen...

Coastal dunes are dynamic ecosystems characterized by steep environmental gradients that impose significant stress on plant communities. These stressors, such as salinity, drought, and nutrient-poor soils, create a mosaic of plant communities with strong functional trait identity. Several studies have focused on plant functional responses to enviro...

Many intensively managed agricultural landscapes of Europe are extremely poor in forests, which are among fundamental habitats for pollinating insects. To compensate for ongoing forest loss, compensatory afforestation is being widely implemented, especially in deforested areas, although empirical knowledge about its effectiveness for biodiversity c...

Plant phenotyping on morpho‐anatomical traits through image analysis, from microscope images to large‐scale acquisitions through remote sensing, represents a low‐invasive tool providing insight into physiological and structural trait variation, as well as plant–environment interactions. High phenotype diversity in the genus Amaranthus includes annu...

Background Wildfires are increasingly impacting ecosystems worldwide especially in temperate dry habitats, often interplaying with other global changes (e.g., alien plant invasions). Understanding the ecological consequences of wildfires is crucial for effective conservation and management strategies. The aim of this study was to investigate the im...

Climate warming is altering snowpack permanence in alpine tundra, modifying shrub growth and distribution. Plant acclimation to snowpack changes depends on the capability to guarantee growth and carbon storage, suggesting that the content of non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) in plant organs can be a key trait to depict the plant response under dif...

Cover crops can perform multiple ecosystem functions, including weed control, soil quality enhancement and support to pollinators. While the contribution of individual cover crop species or mixtures to each of these functions has been extensively investigated, experiments testing all these ecosystem functions simultaneously to select the best speci...

Green infrastructure (GI) networks comprising multiple natural and artificial habitats are important tools for the management of ecosystem services. However, even though ecosystem services are deeply linked with the state of biodiversity, many approaches to GI network planning do not explicitly consider the ecological needs of biotic communities, w...

Trait‐based ecology has already revealed main independent axes of trait variation defining trait spaces that summarize plant adaptive strategies, but often ignoring intraspecific trait variability (ITV). By using empirical ITV‐level data for two independent dimensions of leaf form and function and 167 species across five habitat types (coastal dune...

Understanding the response of salt marshes to flooding is crucial to foresee the fate of these fragile ecosystems, requiring an upscaling approach. In this study we related plant species and community response to multispectral indices aiming at parsing the power of remote sensing to detect the environmental stress due to flooding in lagoon salt mar...

Eleocharis carniolica W.D.J. Koch (Cyperaceae) is an endangered wetland spike rush mainly threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation. Understanding the germination ecology of this species is essential to perform successful conservation and restoration actions. In this study, we investigated the effect of vernalization (i.e. cold stratification),...

Tidal marshes store large amounts of organic carbon in their soils. Field data quantifying soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks provide an important resource for researchers, natural resource managers, and policy-makers working towards the protection, restoration, and valuation of these ecosystems. We collated a global dataset of tidal marsh soil organ...

Rising temperatures due to climate change are expected to interplay with biological invasions, and may enhance the spread and growth of some alien species upon arrival in new areas. To successfully invade, a plant species needs to overcome multiple biological barriers. Among the crucial life stages, seed germination greatly contributes to the final...

The taxonomic status of many Southern European taxa of the Ranunculus auricomus complex remains uncertain despite this region’s proximity to the native ranges of the sexual progenitor species of the complex. We investigated whether additional sexual progenitor species are present in the Mediterranean region. Utilizing target enrichment of 736 singl...

The plant species Erechtites hieraciifolius (Asteraceae) is here reported for the first time in Italy as a naturalized neophyte in the Classical Karst. The species was observed in 2023 in post-fire forest areas burnt by wildfires in the summer 2022. The features of findings suggest for a naturalization of the species with putative invasive characte...

This paper presents a phytosociological study of dry and mesophilous meadows and pastures in the Locarnese region (Insubria-Southern Switzerland). Seventy-one vegetation relevés were analysed using both hierarchical classification and nonmetric multi-dimensional scaling (NMDS) ordination. Seven main clusters were identified and described as follows...

Eleocharis carniolica W.D.J. Koch (Cyperaceae) is an endangered wetland spike rush mainly threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation. Understanding the germination ecology of this species is essential to perform successful conservation and restoration actions. In this study, we investigated the effect of vernalization (i.e. cold stratification),...

Le conoscenze floristiche ricoprono un ruolo di grande utilità non solo dal punto di vista culturale ma anche applicativo per il controllo di parametri quali la biodiversità e la vivibilità ambientali, assunti ormai da diversi anni come elementi universali di valutazione dei territori. A partire da questi presupposti, dopo circa 15 anni di lavoro,...

Questions Land use change, habitat fragmentation and biological invasion represent major drivers of global change that strongly interact to alter ecosystems. Following the breaking apart of forests into smaller fragments or the afforestation of former agricultural lands, biodiversity experiences drastic changes due to species loss and turnover over...

Xylem embolism is one of the possible outcomes of decreasing xylem pressure when plants face drought. Recent studies have proposed a role for non-structural carbohydrates in osmotic pressure generation, required for refilling embolized conduits. Potted cuttings of grapevine Grenache and Barbera, selected for their adaptation to different climatic c...

Simple Summary Kaolin application and bunch-zone leaf removal are two cultural practices that contribute to the control of main pests in vineyards, such as leafhoppers and the European grapevine moth. In the context of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), a two-year study on the side effects of these practices on generalist predators was conducted in...

The Italian seed bank network (RIBES) aims to improve the quality and safety of the germplasm reserves of native plant species in Italy to ensure the long-term conservation of endangered and/or endemic flora. The strategy includes traditional methods to secure seed conservation. A comprehensive priority list for seed collection is being defined, it...

Vuerich, M., Pasquini, S., Casolo, V., Boscutti, F. & Petrussa, E.: Seed germination of the endemic Armeria helodes (Plumbaginaceae) in Italy [In Magrini, S. & Salmeri, C. (eds), Mediterranean plant germination reports-4]. Fl. Medit. 32: 227-232. 2022. https://doi.org10.7320/FlMedit32.227 Armeria helodes is a narrow endemic species of Friuli Venezi...

Ecological restoration is one of the most promising strategies to combat historical wetland losses caused by land use changes. Restored areas are ideal sites to study plant succession and changes in ecosystem functions over time. However, little is known about the influence of restoration on plant succession along environmental stress gradients. Kn...

Global warming is rapidly altering our ecosystem in terms of biodiversity, functions and services loss. The rising temperatures have often shown the ability to enhance biological invasion by facilitating spread and growth of alien species in the new lands. The success of plant invasion requires the overcome of multiple biological barriers. Among th...

Predicting the consequences of climate change is of utmost importance to mitigate impacts on vulnerable ecosystems; plant hydraulic traits are particularly useful proxies for predicting functional disruptions potentially occurring in the near future. This study assessed the current and future regional patterns of leaf water potential at turgor loss...

The stress gradient hypothesis (SGH) states that plant-plant interactions shift from competition to facilitation in increasing stress conditions. In salt marshes, edaphic properties can weaken the application of the SGH by amplifying the intensity of flooding and controlling plant zonation. We identified facilitative and competitive interactions al...

Sea level rise is considered a prominent aftermath of the ongoing global warming, which is expected to seriously treat the worldwide coasts. Among coastal environments, saltmarshes harbor plant communities particularly sensitive to the increase of flooding. Although saltmarshes might contrast sea level rise by accretion and niche shifting, sea rise...

Natural habitats in rural and urban areas are increasingly fragmented and altered by human impacts that are limiting the animal and plant dispersal process. Fragmentation and isolation can be reversed by restoring landscape connectivity through effective Ecological Network (EN) planning. However, most of the studies analyzing the influence of conne...

With the recent climate warming, tundra ecotones are facing a progressive acceleration of spring snowpack melting and extension of the growing season, with evident consequences to vegetation. Along with summer temperature, winter precipitation has been recently recognised as a crucial factor for tundra shrub growth and physiology. However, gaps of...

In intensively used and human-modified landscapes, biodiversity is often confined to remnants of natural habitats. Thus, identifying ecological networks (ENs) necessary to connect these patches and maintain high levels of biodiversity, not only for conservation but also for the effective management of the landscape, is required. However, ENs are of...

Sand shore ecosystems are extremely vulnerable to alien plant invasions. While most of the abiotic drivers of alien success have been identified, less is known on the role of biological processes driving the invasion. Studying the interactions between alien and native plant communities across different habitats and along the ecological succession (...

Intensification of agricultural landscapes represent a major threat for biodiversity conservation also affecting several ecosystem services. The natural and semi-natural remnants, available in the agricultural matrix, represent important sites for small mammals and rodents, which are fundamental for sustaining various ecosystem functions and trophi...

The N2-fixing shrub Amorpha fruticosa L. is rapidly spreading in the dry riparian natural grasslands of Europe, altering ecosystem functions and depleting plant diversity. Alteration of the N cycle represents the key factor involved in invasions by N2-fixing plants with cascading effects on plant species richness. We hypothesized that A. fruticosa...

Studying changes in partitioning of dry matter and nonstructural carbohydrates (NSC) content in both aboveground and underground perennial tissues in drought-affected grapevines could provide insights into plant response and carbon allocation strategies during stress periods. The analysis of soluble NSC and starch content in leaf petioles, due to t...

Unveiling the processes driving exotic plant invasion represent a central issue in taking decisions aimed at constraining the loss of biodiversity and related ecosystem services. The invasion success is often linked to anthropogenic land uses and warming due to climate change. We studied the responses of native versus casual and naturalised exotic...

Although arthropods are among the most diverse, abundant and ecologically important animals in terrestrial ecosystems, they are generally neglected in most biodiversity inventories due to their complex systematics and overwhelming diversity, coupled with the current decline in the number of taxonomists. For this reason, several surrogate groups for...

In mountains, current land-use changes are altering plant communities of semi-natural grasslands with potential cascading effects on associated herbivores. Besides vegetation changes, temperature is also a key driver of insect diversity, and in the European Alps is predicted to increase by 0.25 °C per decade. Understanding herbivore responses to te...

Aim Climate warming and increasing human disturbance are expected to promote non‐native plant invasions in mountain ecosystems. Although biological invasions are also expected to be modulated by biotic interactions, it is still not clear how invertebrate herbivores can affect plant invasion dynamics. Using a large manipulative experiment, we aimed...

The Chameleon plant (Houttuynia cordata Thunb.-Saururaceae) was introduced across all continents from Asia for ornamental and medicinal purposes at least two centuries ago. H. cordata is deemed a strong invader thanks to its great ability for rapid vegetative propagation by means of rhizomes and stolons (and their fragments) coupled with a high res...

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of vascular flora alien to Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations, exclusions, and status changes for Italy or for Italian administrative regions. Nomenclatural and distribution updates published elsewhere are provided as Suppl. material 1.

Measuring habitat specialisation is pivotal for predicting species extinctions and for understanding consequences on ecosystem functioning. Here, we sampled pollinator and natural enemy communities in all major habitat types occurring across multiple agricultural landscapes and used species–habitat networks to determine how habitat specialisation c...

(1) The study of morphological and physiological responses of shrubs to climate is crucial in the understanding of future scenarios regarding climate change. In this light, studying shrub growth and physiological acclimation along elevation gradient might be insightful. Phenolic metabolic pathway represents a powerful tool to interpret such process...

The effect of different management techniques for plant control in the vineyard were compared in the present work, focusing on plant diversity preservation and management efficacy in a two-year experiment on vineyard row weed community. Biomass-fueled flame weeding (with two intensities) was applied as an innovative plant control technique in contr...

Aims Among terrestrial ecosystems, coastal sandy dunes are particularly prone to alien plant invasion. Many studies related the invasion of dune habitats to anthropic causes, but less is known about the role of soil properties and plant traits in plant invasion. In this study we tested the relationships between soil features and alien plant invasi...

In plant species, the effects of flooding and salinity are commonly studied under controlled conditions in order to understand their acclimation to environmental stresses. Nevertheless, each stress is usually considered separately and laboratory conditions cannot encompass the complexity of the natural ecosystem, often concealing the true plant res...

The ragweed leaf beetle, Ophraella communa LeSage (Coleoptera Chrysomelidae), is of North American origin and is associated with the Asteraceae, and especially with the invasive neophyte Ambrosia artemisiifolia L., which is native to North and Central America and currently naturalized in many parts of Europe, including Italy. The presence of the be...

PREMISE: Despite great attention given to the relationship between plant growth and carbon balance in alpine tree species, little is known about shrubs at the treeline. We hypothesized that the pattern of main nonstructural carbohydrates (NSCs) across elevations depends on the interplay between phenotypic trait plasticity, plant–plant interaction,...

In grapevine, the anatomy of xylem conduits and the non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs) content of the associated living parenchyma are expected to influence water transport under water limitation. In fact, both NSC and xylem features play a role in plant recovery from drought stress. We evaluated these traits in petioles of Cabernet Sauvignon (CS)...

Identification of center of endemism is a crucial issue to improve the understanding on overall biodiversity distribution and related conservation actions. Despite the well-known distribution of global endemic areas, less effort has been devoted in defining local hotspots and their ecological determinants. In this study, we analyzed the distributio...

The reduction of synthetic chemistry use in modern viticulture relies on either the biological control of microorganisms or the induction of pathogenesis-related proteins. In the present study, the effects of hydro-alcoholic plant extracts (PEs) (i.e., by-products of Vitis vinifera L., leaves of Olea europaea L. and Ailanthus altissima (Mill.) Swin...

The main goal of this work is to understand the interactions between primary producers (plants) and consumers (herbivore birds) for the conservation of ecosystems such as lagoons, in the view of plant-herbivore interactions. We studied the relationships between the abundance of the herbivore bird Eurasian Wigeon (Anas penelope) and the distribution...

Riassunto-Viene presentata la checklist aggiornata delle specie esotiche per il territorio del Friuli Venezia Giulia, comprensiva di indicazioni sullo status delle specie, diffusione nel territorio, dominanza, invasività potenziale e di altri caratteri funzio-nali. Complessivamente la lista annovera 341 specie e 23 sottospecie delle quali 185 possi...

In European lowlands, remnants of natural forests are rare, small, fragmented and often endangered. Most of the recent EU environmental policies have included such habitats in protected areas. However, nature conservation measures may conflict with traditional forest management, such as coppicing. We used a space-for-time approach to assess the eff...

A comprehensive understanding of the interactions between primary producers and consumers plays an important role for the conservation of sensitive ecosystems such as lagoons. In this light, we studied the relationships between the flocks' size of Mareca penelope and the distribution of three seagrass species (Cymodocea nodosa, Zoostera marina and...

Abundant clay burnt plaster remains and a few flaked tools, including an obsidian artefact, found on the ground surface not far from Trieste (north-eastern Italy) provide rare evidence of a possible prehistoric open-air occupation in the area. To confirm and detail their ancient origin, a plaster sample has been dated between 4000 and 2000 B.C. via...

Biotic invasions are altering the world's natural communities and their ecological characters at an unprecedented rate. If we fail to implement effective strategies to curb the most damaging impacts of invaders, we risk impoverishing and homogenizing the ecosystems on which we rely to sustain ecosystem services given by biodiversity with irreplacea...

Saltmarshes are recognised worldwide to be among the most complex ecosystems, where several environmental factors concur to sustain their fragile functioning. Among them, soil–plant interactions are pivotal but often overlooked. The aim of this work was to use a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach to get new insight into soil–plant interac...

Geranium palustre L. is a rare species with a fragmented distribution in Europe, occurring in Veneto region in the area of Garna (Pieve d’Alpago, BL) (Argenti et al. 2006). In this area, the state of the populations was investigated using floristic, vegetational and ecological approaches. The area, represents a relic of a post-glacial swamp, modifed...

Linear relationship between standard deviation of the ramet age and the elevation. Results were calculated with general linear mixed-effects models. Confidence intervals (95%) are also shown. (EPS)

Complete outcomes of all the models tested in the piecewise SEM. (DOCX)

Data and species matrix. (XLSX)

In order to improve germplasm preservation of local cultivar "Friulano", belonging to Apium graveolens var. rapaceum (Miller) Gaudin) seed germination of a seed lot, stored for prolonged time at-20°C, was assessed in comparison to that of a commercial cultivar. In order to increase the seed performance during germination, three different priming pr...

Question Does dispersal mode and/or disturbance intensity affect the spread of exotic species across agricultural landscapes? Location Friuli Venezia Giulia, NE Italy. Methods We analyzed alpha- and beta-diversity of native and exotic plants in 128 plots distributed in four habitats (viz. woods, hedgerows, field boundaries and meadows), in four a...

Knowledge on the metabolism of polysaccharide reserves in wild species is still scarce. In natural sites we collected tubers of Arum italicum Mill. and A. maculatum L. – two geophytes with different apparent phenological timing, ecology and chorology – during five stages of the annual cycle in order to understand patterns of reserve accumulation an...

Drought-induced tree decline is a complex event, and recent hypotheses suggest that hydraulic failure and carbon starvation are co-responsible for this process. We tested the possible role of non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) content on post-drought hydraulic recovery, to verify the hypothesis that embolism reversal represents a mechanistic link b...

Purpose The relationship between soil properties and plant communities was investigated in a saltmarsh of the Grado and Marano lagoon (northern Italy), where hydrology and micromorphology strongly influence the features of the ecosystem. A multidisciplinary approach was used to assess the change of soil properties and plant communities in relation...

Six populations of Hippuris vulgaris L. localised in the spring rivers of Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italy) low-flood plain have been chosen for a synecological study aiming to understand the relationships between aquatic vegetation, chemical-physical parameters (of sediment and water) and human disturbance. Results revealed that, in spring water envir...

An understanding of the processes involved in plant succession is pivotal in achieving an effective site restoration. In a former limestone quarry (northeastern Italy), we explored the effects of a technical reclamation on the plant community using changes in cover of vegetation layers and two sensitive plant traits (i.e. exotic status and life spa...

Design of landscape is the process of the arrangement of spatial features with the objective of sustaining ecosystem services, and maintaining ecological functionality to meet societal needs. Along a gradient of cultivation intensity, the functional quality of agricultural landscape was explored and the relationships between landscape metrics and f...

Agroecosystems are principally managed to maximize food provisioning even if they receive a large array of supporting and regulating ecosystem services (ESs). Hence, comprehensive studies investigating the effects of local management and landscape composition on the provision of and trade-offs between multiple ESs are urgently needed. We explored t...

Urban sprawl has been widely recognised as major cause of biodiversity decline across multiple taxonomic levels. Nevertheless, comprehensive studies investigating the effects of landscape urbanisation and farming practices on arthropod biodiversity in agroecosystems are still scarce. We explored the combined effect of urbanisation in the landscape...

The synthesis of ATP in mitochondria is dependent on a low permeability of the inner membrane. Nevertheless, mitochondria can undergo an increased permeability to solutes, named permeability transition (PT) that is mediated by a permeability transition pore (PTP). PTP opening requires matrix Ca²⁺ and leads to mitochondrial swelling and release of i...

Abstract Seagrasses play an important role in coastal lagoons both as primary producers and ecosystem engineers, thus sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem services. In recent decades, their populations have shown a rapid decrease, mainly due to their vulnerability to environmental degradation. Their ecology was widely investigated in the marine do...