Jose M. Iriondo

King Juan Carlos University | URJC

Background and aims: Within-population genetic and phenotypic variation play a key role in the development of adaptive responses to environmental change. Between-population variation is also an essential element to assess the evolutionary potential of species in response to changes in environmental conditions. In this context, common garden experi...

The outcome of many ecological interactions lies somewhere along a continuum between pure positive and pure negative effects. Although the popularity of this idea has notoriously risen in the last decades, with the occurrence of continua in interaction outcomes invoked for a wide variety of interactions, the absence of a precise theoretical treatme...

The outcome of many ecological interactions lies somewhere along a continuum between pure positive and pure negative effects. Although the popularity of this idea has notoriously risen in the last decades, with the occurrence of continua in interaction outcomes invoked for a wide variety of interactions, the absence of a precise theoretical treatme...

Current climate change may impede species to evolutionary adapt quickly enough to environmental changes, threatening their survival. In keystone populations, it may be necessary to consider the introduction of adaptive alleles through assisted gene flow. Considering that flowering time is a crucial trait in plant response to global warming, the obj...

La caja de herramientas CAPFITOGEN fue desarrollada para apoyar la comunidad global que conserva y usa sosteniblemente los RFAA, ofreciendo herramientas de software diseñadas para realizar análisis espaciales y de diversidad ecogeográfica para facilitar una conservación más eficiente y efectiva y la planificación del uso sostenible.

The CAPFITOGEN toolbox was developed to provide support to the global PGR conservation and sustainable use community by providing software tools designed to perform spatial and ecogeographic diversity analyses to facilitate more efficient and effective PGR conservation and sustainable use planning.

In the present framework of global warming, it is unclear whether evolutionary adaptation can happen quick enough to preserve the persistence of many species. Specifically, we lack knowledge about the adaptive potential of the different populations in relation to the various constraints that may hamper particular adaptations. There is evidence indi...

Los parientes silvestres de los cultivos (PSC) son una fuente de genes para los mejoradores de plantas y deben ser conservados en aras de la seguridad alimentaria, máxime en el actual contexto de cambio climático. Con esta finalidad, recientemente se ha aprobado una estrategia nacional que contempla la creación de una red de reservas genéticas de P...

Estrategia Nacional de Conservación y Utilización de Parientes Silvestres de los Cultivos (PSC) y Plantas Silvestres de Uso Alimentario (PSUA)

Evolutionary transitions among ecological interactions are widely known, although their detailed dynamics remain absent for most population models. Adaptive dynamics has been used to illustrate how the parameters of population models might shift through evolution, but within an ecological regime. Here we use adaptive dynamics combined with a genera...

Crop Wild Relatives (CWR) are a valuable source of genetic diversity that can be transferred to commercial crops, so their conservation will become a priority in the face of climate change. Bizarrely, in situ conserved CWR populations and the traits one might wish to preserve in them are themselves vulnerable to climate change. In this study, we us...

Bees are a diverse group with more than 1000 species known from the Iberian Peninsula. They have increasingly received special attention due to their important role as pollinators and providers of ecosystem services. In addition, various rapid human-induced environmental changes are leading to the decline of some of its populations. However, we kno...

Transgenerational plasticity is a form of non-genetic inheritance that can reduce or enhance offspring fitness depending on parental stress. Yet, the adaptive value of such parental environmental effects and whether their expression varies among populations remain largely unknown. We used self-fertilized lines from climatically distinct populations...

Crop wild relatives are species related to cultivated plants, whose populations have evolved in natural conditions and confer them valuable adaptive genetic diversity, that can be used in introgression breeding programs. Targeting four wild lentil taxa in Europe, we applied the predictive characterization approach through the filtering method to id...

Environmental variation within a species’ range can create contrasting selective pressures, leading to divergent selection and novel adaptations. The conservation value of populations inhabiting environmentally marginal areas remains in debate and is closely related to the adaptive potential in changing environments. Strong selection caused by stre...

The change in allele frequencies within a population over time represents a fundamental process of evolution. By monitoring allele frequencies, we can analyze the effects of natural selection and genetic drift on populations. To efficiently track time-resolved genetic change, large experimental or wild populations can be sequenced as pools of indiv...

Evolutionary transitions among ecological interactions are widely known, although their detailed dynamics remain absent for most population models. Adaptive dynamics has been used to illustrate how the parameters of population models might shift through evolution but within an ecological regime. Here we use adaptive dynamics combined with a general...

Landraces are key plant genetic resources due to their adaptation to the local environment, which makes them likely to contain alleles or gene complexes that confer local adaptation. After massive loss of landraces in the past century, the diversity that still persists in farms is currently threatened and, thus, it must be safeguarded with the high...

Many species cannot either migrate or adapt at the rate of temperature increases due to climate warming. Therefore, they need active conservation strategies to avoid extinction. Facilitated adaptation actions, such assisted gene flow, aim at the increase of the evolutionary resilience of species affected by global change. In elevational gradients,...

Restoration of wild plant populations in a changing environment is not a simple task, and it becomes increasingly complex and challenging in the context of climate change. In the present study, a spatiotemporal approach was used to delimit provisional seed transfer zones (STZs), for restoration activities involving two wild perennial grasses in Arg...

Seventeen European endemic plant species were considered extinct, but improved taxonomic and distribution knowledge as well as ex situ collecting activities brought them out of the extinct status. These species have now been reported into a conservation framework that may promote legal protection and in situ and ex situ conservation. Species once c...

Although the number of plant translocations has been rapidly increasing for two decades, no study is available to date that examines the directions and distances of plant displacements, which is essential (though not sufficient) information for considering translocations as a management tool to enable species to cope with the consequences of climat...

Population persistence is strongly determined by climatic variability. Changes in the patterns of climatic events linked to global warming may alter population dynamics, but their effects may be strongly modulated by biotic interactions. Plant populations interact with each other in such a way that responses to climate of a single population may im...

In this report, Farmer’s Pride project partners assess the potential of the Natura 2000 network to secure crop wild relative (CWR) diversity. They present results of analyses showing the priority CWR populations that occur within the limits of the network and analyse the coverage and efficiency of the Natura 2000 network as a tool for CWR in situ c...

This report describes the work of Farmer’s Pride project partners to increase knowledge about the occurrence of natural populations of crop wild relatives (CWR), as well as the existence of active in situ conservation actions.

Environmental variation within a species’ range may create contrasting selective pressures, leading to divergent selection and novel adaptations in various populations. Here, we explored the potential of ecological niche models (ENMs) coupled with common-garden experiments to identify environmentally contrasting areas inside a species’ range, hypot...

The evolutionary potential of populations inhabiting marginal areas has been extensively debated and directly affects their conservation value. Gene flow is one of the main factors influencing selection, adaptive potential and thus, local adaptation processes in marginal areas. The effects of differential gene flow provenance are still not well und...

Aims Harsh environmental conditions in alpine ecosystems shape vegetation structure into patches, where many different plant species cluster and grow together. Yet, which factors are important for the structure and dynamics of such plant–patch networks remains poorly understood. We aim to assess which and how environmental and biotic factors predic...

Geographically disparate populations within a species’ range may show important differences including variation in ecological, demographic, genetic and phenotypic characteristics. Based on the Center-Periphery Hypothesis, it is often assumed that environmental conditions are optimal in the geographic center of the range and stressful or suboptimal...

Populations of widely distributed species often exhibit geographic variation in functional traits in response to environmental heterogeneity. Such trait variation may be the result of different adaptive mechanisms, including genetically based differentiation, phenotypic plasticity or a combination of both. Disentangling the genetic and environmenta...

Crop wild relatives (CWR) can be used to mitigate the negative effects of climate change on crops, but their genetic diversity conservation has not been properly addressed. We propose a new target unit for conservation (Asso-EcoU) based on the occurrence of phytosociological associations in different environments. This approach involves using ecoge...

Flowering phenology is an important life-history trait strongly influenced by the environment that directly affects plant fitness. Climate change is bringing about shifts in flowering time caused by adaptive evolution and phenotypic plasticity, but their relative contributions and effects are poorly understood. This is especially critical in Medite...

During the Anthropocene, humans are changing the Earth system in ways that will be detectable for millennia to come [1]. Biologically, these changes include habitat destruction, biotic homogenization, increased species invasions, and accelerated extinctions [2]. Contemporary extinction rates far surpass background rates [3], but they seem remarkabl...

Habitat fragmentation is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity conservation and ecosystem productivity mediated by direct human impact. Its consequences include genetic depauperation, comprising phenomena such as inbreeding depression or reduction in genetic diversity. While the capacity of wild and domestic herbivores to sustain long-distanc...

Las aproximaciones genéticas son esenciales en los estudios de biología de conservación relacionados con las plantas. La evaluación de factores como la diversidad genética y su impacto en la conservación, los niveles de endogamia o el flujo genético han permitido conocer mejor el estado de las poblaciones amenazadas y adecuar las acciones de manejo...

Conservation translocations of threatened species are being widely used to mitigate human impacts. However, their effects are surrounded by some controversy since these actions have often failed to meet planned objectives. Despite the limited number of published studies, existing evidence indicates that a main constraint for the long-term success o...

Silene ciliata (Caryophyllaceae) is a key species to test evolutionary hypotheses in a global warming context. The recent advances in Next Generation Sequencing technologies can help in providing clues about climate-mediated local adaptation. In the present study, we analysed the full transcriptome of six individuals of S. ciliata from Central Spai...

Crop wild relatives can be a useful source of genotypes that maximize crop survival and yield in specific habitats. Lupinus angustifolius is an annual forb with crop varieties derived from a narrow genetic basis but that are cultivated worldwide. Its seeds have a high nutritional value, but they naturally contain alkaloids with anti‐nutritive facto...

Orchid seeds are presumably dispersed by wind due to their very small size and thus can potentially travel long distances. However, the few related studies indicate that seeds fall close to their mother plants. Because seed dispersal and colonization patterns can have relevant consequences for long-term species persistence, we assessed the fine-sca...

Epiphytic vascular plants comprise an essential part of the tropical flora and are a key component for ecosystem functioning. Some recent studies have used a network approach to investigate the interaction of epiphytes with host phorophytes at the community level. However, knowledge on commensalistic epiphyte–phorophyte network structure still lags...

This is the first comprehensive investigation of the patterns of genetic diversity of Patellifolia species. The main objective of our research work is to determine Most Appropriate crop Wild relative Populations (MAWP) suited to conserve in situ wild relatives of the sugar beet. Individual plant samples of P. patellaris were collected at 26 and of...

Forage breeding is essential for animal production, and its effectiveness depends on available genetic diversity. However, breeding is challenged when there is limited evaluation of genebank accessions. Predictive characterisation based on ecogeographic information is a promising approach to address the urgent need to expedite evaluation of target...

The study of the drivers that shape spatial genetic structure across heterogeneous landscapes is one of the main approaches used to understand population dynamics and responses in changing environments. While the Isolation-by-Distance model (IBD) assumes that genetic differentiation increases among populations with geographical distance, the Isolat...

Habitat fragmentation is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity conservation and productivity, that are mediated by direct human impact. Its consequences include genetic depauperation, including phenomena such as inbreeding depression or reduction in genetic diversity. While the capacity of wild and domestic herbivores to sustain long-distance...

Habitat fragmentation is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity conservation and productivity, that are mediated by direct human impact. Its consequences include genetic depauperation, including phenomena such as inbreeding depression or reduction in genetic diversity. While the capacity of wild and domestic herbivores to sustain long-distance...

Crop Wild Relatives (CWR) are receiving significant attention over the last decades. Numerous conservation plans and guidelines to better manage these resources have been developed lately at both national and international levels. In this sense, Spain is following a similar path to that followed by other countries and has included CWR in the Nation...

Phenology is often identified as one of the main structural driving forces of plant – flower visitor networks. Nevertheless, we do not yet have a full understanding of the effects of phenology in basic network build up mechanisms such as ecological modularity. In this study, we aimed to identify the effect of within-season temporal variation of pla...

To generate European-wide information to contribute to the improvement of national and regional crop wild relative (CWR) conservation planning and the development of effective CWR conservation strategies, a questionnaire was sent to the members of the Wild Species Conservation in Genetic Reserves Working Group of the European Cooperative Programme...

Crop wild relatives (CWR) have recently received significant attention due to their value as plant genetic resources and their contribution to world food security. We present a prioritized checklist of CWR in Spain in which the criteria of crossability with crops of economic importance, endemicity and threat status have been taken into account. Fir...

Fragmentation is one of the most important human-induced threats to biodiversity. Linear infrastructures, together with agriculture intensification, alter migration patterns, inducing isolation and/or affecting the connectivity between populations. The combined effect of these drivers has, as far as we know, never been explored. A population geneti...

Mediterranean mountains are extraordinarily diverse and hold a high proportion of endemic plants but they are particularly vulnerable to climate change and most species distribution models project drastic changes in community composition. Retrospective studies and long-term monitoring also highlight that Mediterranean high-mountain plants are suffe...

Changes in reproductive traits associated with domestication critically determine the evolutionary divergence between crops and their wild relatives, as well as the potential of crop plants to become feral. In this review, we examine the genetic mechanisms of plant domestication and the different types of selection involved, and describe the partic...

Drought, one of the most important abiotic stress factors limiting biomass, significantly reduces crop productivity. Salinization also affects the productivity of both irrigated and rain-fed wheat crops. Species of genus Aegilops can be considered crop wild relatives (CWR) of wheat and have been widely used as gene sources in wheat breeding, especi...

ELC map of Ae. neglecta for Peninsular Spain, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands The environmental characteristics of the different categories are described in Table S10.

ELC map of Ae. triuncialis for Peninsular Spain, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands The environmental characteristics of the different categories are described in Table S10.

Location of the Ae. biuncialis populations identified as priority ecogeographical gaps in Spain

Raw data on Spanish populations of Aegilops spp. collected and conserved in the genebanks of the Spanish Network of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

Raw data on population occurrences from external sources from GBIF