Jennifer J Cappa

Colorado State University | CSU · Department of Biology

Elemental hyperaccumulation protects plants from many aboveground herbivores. Little is known about effects of hyperaccumulation on belowground herbivores or their ecological interactions. To examine effects of plant selenium (Se) hyperaccumulation on nematode root herbivory, we investigated spatial distribution and speciation of Se in hyperaccumul...

Appendix S1 Description of the statistical analyses of the RNA sequencing data, comparing effects of treatments, species and organs. Figure S1 Biomass production and Se and S accumulation by Stanleya pinnata and S. elata. The plants were grown from seed on agar with 0 or 20 μm sodium selenate. Figure S2 Overview of differential expression between...

To obtain better insight into the mechanisms of selenium hyperaccumulation in Stanleya pinnata, transcriptome-wide differences in root and shoot gene expression levels were investigated in S. pinnata and related nonaccumulator Stanleya elata grown with or without 20 μM selenate. Genes predicted to be involved in sulfate/selenate transport and assim...

Essential selenium (Se) metabolism, as found in some photosynthetic cyanobacteria and algae, appears to have been lost in plants. Although not essential, Se is readily taken up by plants due to its similarity to sulfur (S), and typically plant accumulation of Se parallels that of S. In contrast, some plant species appear to preferentially take up S...

Based on phylogenetic analyses using rDNA and plastid sequence data, and the examination of morphological characters, we infer that Pleurostylia, as currently delimited, is a polyphyletic group. Pleurostylia serrulata and two newly described species from Africa are part of the New World Crossopetalum lineage. By contrast, Pleurostylia s. s. consist...

An important goal of the angiosperm systematics community has been to develop a shared approach to molecular data collection, such that phylogenomic data sets from different focal clades can be combined for meta-studies across the entire group. Although significant progress has been made through efforts such as DNA barcoding, transcriptome sequenci...

We leverage genomic resources from 43 angiosperm species to develop enrichment probes useful for collecting textasciitilde500 loci from non-model taxa across the diversity of angiosperms. By taking an anchored phylogenomics approach, in which probes are designed to represent sequence diversity across the group, we are able to efficiently target loc...

Neighbors of Se hyperaccumulators Stanleya pinnata and Astragalus bisulcatus were found earlier to have elevated Se levels. Here we investigate whether Se hyperaccumulators affect Se localization and speciation in surrounding soil and neighboring plants. X-ray fluorescence mapping and X-ray absorption near-edge structure spectroscopy were used to a...

Identification of bacteria with high selenium tolerance and reduction capacity, for bioremediation of wastewaters and nanoselenium particle production. A bacterial endophyte was isolated from the selenium hyperaccumulator Stanleya pinnata (Brassicaceae) growing on seleniferous soils in Colorado, USA. Based on Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME) analysis...

Selenium (Se)-rich plants may be used to provide dietary Se to humans and livestock, and also to clean up Se-polluted soils or waters. This study focused on endophytic bacteria of plants that hyperaccumulate selenium (Se) to 0.5–1% of dry weight. Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis was used to compare the diversity o...

Past studies have identified herbivory as a likely selection pressure for the evolution of hyperaccumulation, but few have tested the origin(s) of hyperaccumulation in a phylogenetic context. We focused on the evolutionary history of selenium (Se) hyperaccumulation in Stanleya (Brassicaceae).Multiple accessions were collected for all Stanleya taxa...

Selenium (Se) hyperaccumulation, the capacity to concentrate the toxic element Se above 1000 mg·kg(-1)·dry mass, is found in relatively few taxa native to seleniferous soils. While Se hyperaccumulation has been shown to likely be an adaptation that protects plants from herbivory, its evolutionary history remains unstudied. Stanleya (Brassicaceae) i...

Abstract— A new species of Celastraceae, Maytenus megalocarpa, is described and illustrated. The species is known from only a small number of collections from eastern Brazil, in the Atlantic Rainforest of Bahia and Minas Gerais states. It is considered endangered given the rapid deforestation of this biome. The species is readily distinguished fro...

Hyperaccumulation is the uptake of one or more metal/metalloids to concentrations greater than 50-100× those of the surrounding vegetation or 100-10,000 mg/kg dry weight depending on the element. Hyperaccumulation has been documented in at least 515 taxa of angiosperms. By mapping the occurrence of hyperaccumulators onto the angiosperm phylogeny, w...

Symphyotrichum ericoides was shown earlier to contain hyperaccumulator levels of selenium (Se) in the field (>1000 mg kg(-1) DW), but only when growing next to other Se hyperaccumulators. It was also 2-fold larger next to hyperaccumulators and suffered less herbivory. This raised two questions: whether S. ericoides is capable of hyperaccumulation w...

Disjunct distributions in poorly defined taxa can serve as indicators that the members of the isolated ranges are polyphyletic, as has been previously demonstrated in many plant families. Such taxa should be prioritized for inclusion in phylogenetic analyses so that at least one member from each isolated range should be sampled together with other...

• This study investigated how selenium (Se) affects relationships between Se hyperaccumulator and nonaccumulator species, particularly how plants influence their neighbors' Se accumulation and growth. • Hyperaccumulators Astragalus bisulcatus and Stanleya pinnata and nonaccumulators Astragalus drummondii and Stanleya elata were cocultivated on sele...

The phylogeny of Celastraceae subfamilies Cassinoideae (120 species in 17 genera in both the Old and New World tropics and subtropics) and Tripterygioideae (39 species in seven genera) was inferred using plastid (matK, trnL-F) and nuclear (ITS and 26S rDNA) loci together with morphological characters. Subfamily Cassinoideae include those Celastrace...

The phylogeny of Celastraceae tribe Euonymeae (≈ 230 species in eight genera in both the Old and New Worlds) was inferred using morphological characters together with plastid (matK, trnL-F) and nuclear (ITS and 26S rDNA) genes. Tribe Euonymeae has been defined as those genera of Celastraceae with generally opposite leaves, isomerous carpels, loculi...

Hyperaccumulation, the rare capacity of certain plant species to accumulate toxic trace elements to levels several orders of magnitude higher than other species growing on the same site, is thought to be an elemental defense mechanism against herbivores and pathogens. Previous research has shown that selenium (Se) hyperaccumulation protects plants...

The molecular mechanisms responsible for selenium (Se) tolerance and hyperaccumulation were studied in the Se hyperaccumulator Stanleya pinnata (Brassicaceae) by comparing it with the related secondary Se accumulator Stanleya albescens using a combination of physiological, structural, genomic, and biochemical approaches. S. pinnata accumulated 3.6-...

The phylogeny of Celastraceae subfamily Salacioideae (ca. 255 species in the Old and New World tropics) and tribe Lophopetaleae (ca. 29 species in southern Asia and the Austral-Pacific) was inferred using morphological characters together with plastid (matK, trnL-F) and nuclear (ITS and 26S rDNA) genes. Brassiantha, a monotypic genus endemic to New...

The phylogeny of Celastraceae tribe Celastreae, which includes about 350 species of trees and shrubs in 15 genera, was inferred in a simultaneous analysis of morphological characters together with nuclear (ITS and 26S rDNA) and plastid (matK, trnL-F) genes. A strong correlation was found between the geography of the species sampled and their inferr...