Gidi Ne’eman

• Prof.
• Professor Emeritus at University of Haifa

Almost 20 years after the first MEDPINE book "Ecology, biogeography and management of Pinus halepensis and P. brutia forest ecosystems in the Mediterranean basin "(Ne'eman and Trabaud, 2000) was published, this new book presents up to date and state of the art scientific knowledge and information. It covers a wide range of topics concerning Mediter...

Focusing on pines, this chapter describes the main fire-related traits that contribute to plant fitness in response to fire. First we describe the most relevant fire-adaptive traits, and discuss their evolutionary history and syndromes. Next we compare the fire-adaptive traits of Mediterranean pine species in relation to their native habitats.

Pollination, especially by bees, has high importance for man and nature. Ongoing global declines in bee populations make their present and future conservation crucial. We investigated how management of natural areas affects plants and pollinators, in the context of fire prevention measures in Mediterranean forests. The standard forestry practice to...

The flower colour of Anemone coronaria (Ranunculaceae) is a genetically inherited trait. Such intra-specific flower colour polymorphism might be driven by pollinators, other non-pollinating agents, or by abiotic factors. We investigated the genetic relations among red, white and purple-blue flower colour morphs growing in 10 populations of A. coron...

Khammash (2016) argued that self-irrigation occurs in the desert plant Rheum palaestinum Feinbrun, by collecting dew with its unique 3D leaf morphology and its extremely large leaves rather than collecting rainfall. We agree that collecting dew indeed has a theoretical potential to improve the plant’s water economy. However, we suggest that collect...

Plants use visual signals to attract pollinators and direct them to their flowers. Visual capabilities of bees have been extensively studied mostly using artificial paper models. However, there is no empirical determination of the maximal detection distance (MDD) or minimal subtended visual angle (MSVA) of real flowers. Using a six armed radial maz...

To study the effects of wildfire on population genetics of a wind pollinated and wind dispersed tree, we have analyzed the genetic structure of a post-fire, naturally regenerating seedling population of Pinus halepensis Miller, on Mt. Carmel, Israel. We tested the existence of spatial genetic structure, which is expected due to the special spatial...

Forest Conservation is part of the series of Synopses of Conservation Evidence, which are linked to the online resource www.ConservationEvidence.com. This synopsis is part of the Conservation Evidence project and provides a useful resource for conservationists. It forms part of a series designed to promote a more evidence-based approach to biodive...

Landscape modulators are ecosystem engineers that create distinct patches that differ from their surroundings in abiotic conditions and species composition. Woody plants are principal landscape modulators in many terrestrial ecosystems. The effects of woody landscape modulators on herbaceous species richness have been studied at the site level in I...

Native wild boar (Sus scrofa lybicus) populations in Israel increased in the last decades, and their rooting activity presents an apparent severe disturbance that may affect herbaceous plant communities. We studied the extent of wild boar rooting and its effect on herbaceous vegetation in an east Mediterranean garrigue. We compared the effects of r...

http://hevra.haifa.ac.il/~ofakim/pdf/%D7%A9%D7%99%20%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%99.pdf בעשורים האחרונים יש עלייה מתמדת במספר המשתמשים בחניוני מטיילים ביערות עצי אורן ירושלים בכרמל ופעילותם גורמת להידוק הקרקע ופגיעה בעצים. במטרה לנסות למצוא דרך לשקם את העצים ולעודד את התחדשותם, גזמנו את צומח תת היער, חרשנו באופן שטחי את הקרקע והשקנו חלקים של חניונים שנסגרו לצי...

The number of people using day campsites located in Pinus halepensis forests on Mount Carmel has increased dramatically, causing negative changes in soil properties and damage to trees. Seeking management actions to improve tree health and regeneration, we trimmed the undergrowth shrub, superficially plowed the soil and irrigated parts of campsites...

Variation in seed traits is a well‐known phenomenon affecting plant ecology and evolution. Here we describe, for the first time, a bimodal colour pattern of individual seeds, proposing an adaptive explanation, using Pinus halepensis as a model. Pinus halepensis disperses its seeds either by wind on hot dry days, from regular cones, or after fires,...

FIre IN the medIterraNeaN—From geNes to ecosystems guest editors: gidi Ne'eman, Ido Izhaki, and Jon e. Keeley Foreword by the guest editors 103 Weather conditions and forest fire propagation—the case of the carmel Fire, december 2010 H. Kutiel 113 Fire in mediterranean climate ecosystems—a comparative overview J.E. Keeley 123 soil arthropod communi...

Fire is a frequent and severe disturbance that affects plants on large scales, especially in Mediterranean-type ecosystems (MTE). Plants have evolved traits that confer resilience to fire and other disturbances, ensuring their persistence in fire-prone systems, but MTE floras differ in fire-related traits and their frequencies. Using available lite...

Mediterranean type ecosystems are among the world's most fire-prone regions. Focusing on the Mediterranean basin, we review the literature and propose conceptual models to explain the direct and indirect effects of fire on plant-pollinator interactions, seed dispersers, and predators, as well as the temporal changes in these systems along post-fire...

מחקר זה בדק את השפעת דריכת מטיילים על תכונות הקרקע, הצמחייה והקשרים ביניהם בשישה חניונים הנמצאים ביערות אורן ירושלים טבעי בכרמל. נערכו בדיקות פיסיקליות וכימיות לקרקע, הוגדר עושר מיני הצמחים ונבדקו מדדים אקו-פיזיולוגיים המלמדים על מצבם של עצי האורן הבוגרים. תוצאות המחקר מראות שבאזור הרמוס אחוז הקרקע החשופה היה גבוה, הקרקע היתה דחוסה יותר, חדירות המי...

General visual bee mimicry and specific chemical mimicry by flowers to solitary female bees or wasps are well known in several orchid genera, for example, the Mediterranean genus Ophrys, the Australian genera Cryptostylis and Chiloglottis, and the South-African Disa. This mimicry has been shown to attract solitary male bees or wasps, which are thei...

Effects of Visitor Trampling on Soil and Vegetation in Campsites Located in Natural Pine Forests on Mt. Carmel, Israel/השפעת דריכת מטיילים על הקרקע והצמחייה בחניוני אורנים בכרמל‎ http://cms.education.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/CD4012FB-9991-44B8-BD6E-AF85B6BEEFEF/150658/ShuyLevi.pdf

Other Research Unit Despite nearly a century of research, the systematic relationships among North American pitcher plants in the genus Sarracenia (Sarraceniaceae) remain unresolved. In this study we analyzed pollen morphology of the 11 currently recognized species of Sarracenia and examined how variations in key pollen characteristics relate to ou...

Presented By: Shay Levy, University of Haifa Co-Author(s): Dafna DiSegni, University of Haifa, Mordechai Shechter, Interdiciplineary center Herzliya and Gidi Ne'eman Optimal management of wildfire events should balance between ex-ante costs of fire prevention activities and ex-post social costs of wildfire events, including suppression costs, loss...

Sex allocation has been studied mainly in small herbaceous plants but much less in monoecious wind-pollinated trees. The aim of this study was to explore changes in gender segregation and sex allocation by Pinus halepensis, a Mediterranean lowland pine tree, within tree crowns and between trees differing in their size or crown shape. The production...

Anemone coronaria, an attractive Mediterranean geophyte, seems to disappear from grazing-protected areas in Israel. We experimentally examined the ecological mechanism driving the decline of this geophyte. Ten plot-pairs were established, half we fenced as grazing exclosures and half were grazed by beef cattle. Grazing clearly reduced herbaceous bi...

The post disturbance natural succession of the Mediterranean maquis, which turns open and species-rich landscapes into dense, closed stands of sclerophyllous woody vegetation is a principal threat to plant and animal diversity. Therefore, in the absence of traditional agricultural disturbance, active management regimes that include cutting and graz...

We compared the flowering phenology of spiny and non-spiny native species belonging to three families (Asteraceae, Fabaceae and Lamiaceae), which include the highest number of spiny species in the flora of Israel. We found that the peak of flowering (when the highest number of species flowered) was 4–8 weeks later for spiny species than for non-spi...

Pistacia lentiscus L. (Anacardiaceae) is a common shrub in the Mediterranean vegetation. Throughout its distribution area, this species is the obligate host of the kidney-shaped gall-forming aphid Aploneura lentisci (Homoptera: Fordinae). Despite the wide distribution of Pistacia lentiscus in diverse habitats along a climatic gradient in Israel, ou...

The effects of nicotine on honey bees were tested as a model system to understand possible roles of secondary compounds in floral nectar. Eight honey bee colonies were tested for their preference among six feeders containing all the combinations between two sugar concentrations (20% or 50%) and three nicotine concentrations (0, 5 or 50 ppm). Indivi...

“Landscape modulators” are ecosystem engineers that have an impact on community structure by creating patches in the landscape mosaic. Our aim was to study the effect of evergreen-trees, as landscape modulators, on herbaceous plants in a Mediterranean maquis system in northern Israel. We examined the effects of canopy removal and cattle grazing on...

The hypothesis that honeybees (Apis mellifera) compete for floral resources with native bees was studied mainly in areas outside the original range of the honeybees, i.e., where they are introduced. We studied the effect of honeybees on the foraging behavior of native solitary bees in Israel, within the natural distribution range of the honeybee, b...

Measuring pollinator performance has become increasingly important with emerging needs for risk assessment in conservation and sustainable agriculture that require multi-year and multi-site comparisons across studies. However, comparing pollinator performance across studies is difficult because of the diversity of concepts and disparate methods in...

Ecological research on organism-environment interactions has developed asymmetrically. Modulation of organisms by the environment has received much attention, while theoretical studies on the environmental impact of organisms have until recently been limited. We propose a theoretical framework for studying the environmental impacts of woody plants...

The unripe fruits of certain species are red. Some of these species disperse their seeds by wind (Nerium oleander, Anabasis articulata), others by adhering to animals with their spines (Emex spinosa) or prickles (Hedysarum spinosissimum). Certainly neither type uses red coloration as advertisement to attract the seed dispersing agents. Fleshy-fruit...

Vegetative resprouting, soil or canopy-stored seed banks, post-fire seed dispersal and germination are the major strategies by which plants regenerate after fires. Post-fire regeneration modes of plants are commonly based on the presence or absence of post-fire recruitment as well as the presence or absence of post-fire resprouting. High temperatur...

Previous studies on secondary succession in abandoned agricultural land in the Mediterranean area were carried out by the chronosequence method, including data from different sites. A unique opportunity to study secondary succession arose from a situation in which different parts of one homogeneous East-Mediterranean vineyard were abandoned for 5,...

Carrion and dung odours of various flowers have traditionally been considered an adaptation for attracting the flies and beetles that pollinate them. While we accept the role of such odours in pollinator attraction, we propose that they may also have another, overlooked, anti-herbivore defensive function. We suggest that such odours may deter mamma...

The rare plant Rheum palaestinum (Polygonaceae) is a perennial hemicryptophyte that grows during the rainy winter in desert mountainous areas in Israel and Jordan that receive an average annual rainfall of ca. 75 mm. It produces between one and four large round leaves that are tightly attached to the ground and form large rosettes of up to 1 m(2)....

The Mediterranean common shrub Pistacia lentiscus is distributed in a wide range of habitats along the climatic gradient in Israel. We studied the factors that may shape its morphological, physiological, and genetic differentiation. We examined the phenotypic and molecular genetic variability among and within the six Israeli populations as correlat...

Patterns of color changes of senescent colorful aposematic prickles, spines, and thorns are described. Color changes make the older prickles, spines, and thorns less conspicuous and they lose their aposematic character. The color changes and the aposematic character loss occur when the defended organs become less edible to large herbivores because...

Kislev et al. (Reports, 2 June 2006, p. 1372) described Neolithic parthenocarpic fig fruits and proposed that they derive from trees propagated only by cuttings and thus represent the first domesticated plant of the Neolithic Revolution. Because parthenocarpic fig trees naturally produce both seeded and seedless fruits and are capable of spontaneou...

Plant biologists have an enduring interest in assessing components of plant fitness and determining limits to seed set. Consequently, the relative contributions of resource and pollinator availability have been documented for a large number of plant species. We experimentally examined the roles of resource and pollen availability on seed set by the...

The study reported here describes for the first time the similarity between pre- and post-fire spatial patterns of the trees in a Mediterranean pine forest demonstrating that the pre-fire ancestor microsite is occupied also by the next generation. Although Aleppo pine Pinus halepensis Mill, is an obligatory post-fire seeder, it is adapted to regene...

Both male and female solitary bees visit flowers for rewards. Sex related differences in foraging efficiency may also affect their probability to act as pollinators. In some major genera of solitary bees, males can be identified from a distance enabling a comparative foraging-behavior study. We have simultaneously examined nectar foraging of males...

Relationships between flowering plants and their pollinators are usually affected by the amount of reward, mainly pollen or nectar, offered to pollinators by flowers, with these amounts usually positively correlated with floral display. The large Oncocyclus iris flowers, despite being the largest flowers in the East Mediterranean flora, are nectarl...

Nectar of many bee flowers contains secondary compounds, which are considered toxic for honeybees on repeated exposure. Although many anecdotal reports indicate the toxicity of secondary compounds to bees, only a few studies have tested the extent of toxicity at different honeybee ages, especially at the larval stages. Honeybees encounter nicotine...

The role of secondary compounds (SC) in deterring herbivores and pathogens from vegetative parts of plants is well established, whereas their role in plant reproductive organs such as floral nectar is unclear. The present study aimed to reveal the response of free-flying honeybees to naturally occurring concentrations of four SC in floral nectar. W...

Irises in the section Oncocyclus (Siems.) Baker ( IRIS: Iridaceae) grow throughout the Middle East and have large and dark-coloured flowers but no nectar reward available to flower visitors. Consequently, no reward-collecting pollinators have been observed visiting the flowers during daytime. The only visitors are solitary male bees ( Eucera spp.:...

1. The habitat components determining the structure of bee communities are well known when considering foraging resources; however, there is little data with respect to the role of nesting resources. 2. As a model system this study uses 21 diverse bee communities in a Mediterranean landscape comprising a variety of habitats regenerating after fire....

Communities of nectar-producing plants show high spatio-temporal variation in the patterns of volume and concentration presentation. We illustrate a novel approach for quantifying nectar reward structures in complex communities, demonstrating that nectar resource diversity (defined as the variety of nectar volume–concentration combinations availabl...

The main point of our hypothesis "coloration undermines camouflage" is that many color patterns in plants undermine the camouflage of invertebrate herbivores, especially insects, thus exposing them to predation and causing them to avoid plant organs with unsuitable coloration, to the benefit of the plants. This is a common case of "the enemy of my...

To assess the canopy seed bank structure of Pinus halepensis, we measured the level of serotiny and the seed bank size and density of trees in unburned stands and post-fire regenerated stands in Israel. We analysed the effects of tree size, tree density and fire history on the level of serotiny. The level of serotiny decreased with an increase in t...

During the long, dry summers, the deserts of the Middle East are almost devoid of green plants. In the summer, most annuals, geophytes and hemicryptophytes either are dormant in the soil or have already been eaten by the grazing flocks. Many shrubs are summer deciduous or enter summer dormancy with minimal green canopy. However, there are several c...

Fire is known to be a major factor in shaping plants and vegetation worldwide. Many plant traits have been described as adaptations for surviving fire, or regenerating after it. However, many of the traits are also advantageous for overcoming other disturbances. The fact that fire in the Mediterranean Basin has been almost exclusively of anthropoge...

Spatial and temporal aspects of recruitment play a central role in plant population and community dynamics and have important basic and applied implications. Here we summarize and discuss the results from studies of spatiotemporal dynamics of recruitment stages (seeds-seedlings-saplings) in Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) throughout the species' nat...

Pinus halepensis, a Mediterranean pine tree, is a partially serotinous species: individual trees of this species carry both non-serotinous and serotinous cones. Serotinous cones open mainly after fire, whereas non-serotinous cones open in absence of fire. In this study we addressed the question, whether or not this cone response is linked with the...

Pollinators provide essential ecosystem services, and declines in some pollinator communities around the world have been reported. Understanding the fundamental components defining these communities is essential if conservation and restoration are to be successful. We examined the structure of plant-pollinator communities in a dynamic Mediterranean...

Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis Mill.) regenerates after wildfires only by germination. This post-fire germination is controlled by temperature, light and the chemical characteristics of the ash-bed. The extremely high pH caused by the ash inhibits germination of Aleppo pine as well as of many other species. Here we report that ash extracts at neutra...

Globally, plant-pollinator communities are subject to a diverse array of perturbations and in many temperate and semi-arid systems fire is a dominant structuring force. We present a novel and highly integrated approach, which quantifies, in parallel, the response to fire of pollinator communities, floral communities and floral reward structure. Mt...

Mount Meiron Nature Reserve is the largest Mediterranean reserve in Israel. Since its establishment, goat grazing and woodcutting have been prohibited and dense oak maquis has developed by succession. The succession of vegetation poses the risk of losing species. The peony (Paeonia masculla) is a locally endangered species in Israel, growing only i...

This study describes the seasonal patterns of seed and cone abortion in natural Pinus halepensis trees and assesses the effects of pollen quantity, tree size and cone location on seed and cone abortion. The cone-set ratio was similar to the expected value, based on literature on woody perennials. The seed-ovule ratio, however, was almost twice as h...

Germination of the post-fire pioneer species Rhus coriaria, in Pinus halepensis forests on Mount Carmel, Israel, is restricted to the ash covered microsites under large burned pine trees, where the germination of other species is strongly inhibited. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of heat, ash cover, pH, water potential (Ψ) and ethy...

The influence of several spatial parameters on the maximal detection distance of a target by approaching foraging honeybees was examined. The roles of target diameter, color and luminance contrasts have been already demonstrated in earlier studies. The present study used, for the first time, dissected flower like targets that differed in addition t...

The role of heat-shock in stimulating the germination of soil-stored seeds from fire-following plant species is well known. However, the effects of high pre-germination temperatures on subsequent seedling growth are less well understood. In this study, we examined the effect of pre-germination heat shock at five temperatures (60°, 75°, 90°, 105° an...

Large areas of rangelands in the east Mediterranean Basin are dominated by dense cover of the unpalatable, dwarf shrub prickly burnet (Sarcopoterium spinosum (L.) Spach.). This study examined the effectiveness of various shrub control treatments (mechanical removal, chemical/2,4-D control, prescribed burning), combined with NPK fertilization, to re...

Fire in Mediterranean-type ecosystems produces catastrophic changes in plant-pollinator systems; the recovery of which has been studied by comparing an unburnt mature forest habitat with that of an adjacent recently burnt area (eight years post-fire). The composition, visitation profiles, and effectiveness of the taxonomically diverse pollinator as...

1 East Mediterranean Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) forests are subjected to periodic stand-replacing fires. We simulated two of the effects of fire on the germinable soil seed bank in four pine stands on Mt. Carmel, Israel, that differed in their post-fire ages. Soil samples were heated to 100 °C, or covered by pine ash. Vermiculite was used to si...

Most of the area in pine woodlands is occupied by perennial seeders that regenerate from seeds in the first winter after the fire and by annuals. Control of the germination in the regenerating vegetation after wildfire is therefore a primary ecological component of the post-fire succession in this ecosystem. The aim of the study presented here was...

The recovery of vegetation following fire has been studied intensively in Mediterranean-type ecosystems. Little attention, however, has been given to floral traits, and almost no data have been collected on the effects of fire on pollinator activity and fruit-set. This paper reports the effects of fire on flower visitation rates and the possibly re...

ISHS Acta Horticulturae 561: VIII International Symposium on Pollination - Pollination: Integrator of Crops and Native Plant Systems THE UTILITY OF FUNDAMENTAL ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH OF PLANT-POLLINATOR INTERACTIONS AS THE BASIS FOR LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES Authors: S.G. Potts, P. Willmer, A. Dafni, G. Ne'eman Keywords: Pollinator diversity, Hab...

Obligate seeding species are highly specialized to fire disturbance and many conifers such as cypress, which are adapted to high intensity stand-replacing fires, have canopy seed banks stored in serotinous cones. Resilience of these trees to fire disturbance is a function of disturbance frequency and one focus of this study was to determine the eff...

Soil samples from three microhabitats (gaps, beneath shrubs and beneath trees) in five stands of various post-fire ages (6–55years) were collected in an east Mediterranean Aleppo pine Pinus halepensis forest. Total germinable seed bank densities varied between 300 and 1300 seeds per m2. Herbaceous taxa were the major constituents of the germinable...

The typical Mediterranean phrygana has a very rich biodiversity of plants and of solitary bees. Fire may kill the brood of soil-nesting and other solitary bees and may affect pollen and nectar sources. Such changes would be expected to influence seed production in populations of post-fire obligate seeder species and thus also their population dynam...

Conventional pollen load analyses have calculated the proportion of pure to mixed pollen loads, or the average percentage of conspecific pollen on bees captured at their nests or hive. These indices can not distinguish 'flower' constancy from 'pollen' constancy, and are poor estimates for the probability of pollination. This study proposes a new in...

In September 1989 a fire burned a large natural Pinus halepensis Mill. forest on Mt. Carmel, Israel. This paper summarizes the main results of five years of research, in which the effects of natural factors and management on the development of the forest and the vegetation were studied. It was found that the burned pine tree skeletons were correlat...