Matías C Baranzelli

National Scientific and Technical Research Council | conicet · IMBIV Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal

Monttea aphylla flowers simultaneously produce oil and nectar, rewards known to differentially attract ecologically and functionally distinct pollinators. We examined whether geographical differentiation occurred for rewards, and whether this could be explained by spatially heterogeneous pollinator guilds and climate. Rewards were measured across t...

The coastal deserts of northern Chile show an important latitudinal gradient of aridity with more arid areas to the north of the Atacama Desert than to the south. Several plant species have disjunct distributions that correspond with the extremes of this latitudinal gradient. In this study, using genetic (chloroplast and nuclear DNA), morphological...

Monttea aphylla flowers simultaneously produce oil and nectar, rewards known to differentially attract ecologically and functionally distinct pollinators. We examined whether geographical differentiation occurred for rewards, and whether this could be explained by spatially heterogeneous pollinator guilds and climate. Rewards were measured across t...

Background and aims: Differences among populations in pollinator assemblages can lead to local adaptation mosaics in which plants evolve different floral morphologies and attractive traits. Mountain habitats may promote local adaptation because of differences in environmental conditions along the altitude, causing changes in pollinators, and becau...

Dr. Matias C. Baranzelli (Argentina) travelled to the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico as a PAGES-IAI International Mobility Research Fellow (18 May – 19 August 2022) to study the response to climate change since the last 3 million years on flowering plants, mammals, birds and amphibians, considering three levels of biodiversity: genetic div...

Only a small fraction of the species on Earth is known (Linnean shortfall), while geographic ranges of already described species are poorly documented (Wallacean shortfall). While the effect of both shortfalls in conservation assessments has been analyzed and discussed individually, it is still unclear how these knowledge shortfalls interplay affec...

Intraspecific genetic diversity (IGD), the fundamental dimension of biodiversity, is scarcely considered in the context of anthropogenic impact at regional and global scales. Here, encouraged by the knowledge about the effect of past climate changes that shaped IGD at the community level, we evaluated how current land use and future climate changes...

The joint effect of the Andes as a geographical barrier and the Quaternary glaciations as promoters of genetic divergence remains virtually unexplored in southern South America. To help fill this knowledge gap, in this study we investigated the demographic history of Centris cineraria, a solitary bee mainly distributed in Patagonia. We used mitocho...

Shared genetic patterns within a community of ecologically distinct species may reflect the role of past geoclimatic events imprinting species evolutionary history. Although Pleistocene glaciations are the most important processes evoked as drivers of these shared patterns, in some regions Quaternary volcanic activity should also be considered as a...

Shared genetic patterns within a community of ecologically distinct species may reflect the role of past geoclimatic events imprinting species evolutionary history. Although Pleistocene glaciations are the most important processes evoked as drivers of these shared patterns, in some regions Quaternary volcanic activity should also be considered as a...

The intraspecific evolutionary history of South American xerophytic plant species has been poorly explored. The tree species Prosopis chilensis has a disjunct distribution in four South American regions: southern Peru, southern Bolivia, central-western Argentina and central Chile. Here, we combined phylogeographical (based on chloroplast and nuclea...

Background: Despite Stebbins' principle of the most efficient pollinator was proposed decades ago, most important pollinators are still mainly identified using the frequency of visits to flowers. This shortcoming faces us with a gap between the characterization of the flower visitors of a plant species and reliable estimation of the plant fitness c...

A key to understanding the origin and identity of young species lays on the knowledge of the Quaternary climatic oscillations’ effect on gene flow and vicariance. Even though the effect of climatic fluctuations is relatively well understood for southern hemisphere plant species, little is known about their effect on the evolutionary histories of sp...

Interspecific interactions take place over both long and short time-frames. However, it is not completely understood if the interacting-partners persisted, migrated, or expanded in concert with Quaternary climate and landscape changes. We aim to understand whether there is concordance between the specialist weevil Hydnorobius hydnorae and its paras...

La polinización por animales es un proceso fundamental en la reproducción de las plantas con flores. En el ámbito educativo, esta temática rara vez se aborda con un enfoque en la interacción planta-polinizador, y su importancia es poco reconocida por los estudiantes. En este trabajo se presenta una propuesta didáctica para abordar la reproducción s...

Geologic events promoting the aridization of southern South America contributed to lineage divergences and species differentiation through geographic (allopatric divergence) and biotic and abiotic factors (ecological divergence). For the genus Anarthrophyllum, which is distributed in arid and semi-arid regions of Patagonia, we assessed how these fa...

Effects of Pleistocene climatic oscillations on plant phylogeographic patterns are relatively well studied in forest, savanna and grassland biomes, but such impacts remain less explored on desert regions of the world, especially in South America. Here, we performed a phylogeographical study of Monttea aphylla, an endemic species of the Monte Desert...

Internal primer sequences designed for trnQ–rpL16 region. (DOC)

Outgroup species, locality, coordinates, and voucher number in CORD. (DOC)

Document. Permission to publishmap shapefiles. (DOC)

Sampling sites, geographical coordinates, sample size, elevation, and molecular diversity indexes of the sampled Monttea aphylla populations in the South American Arid Diagonal for each data set. (DOC)

Location for each set of primers in the trnQ–rpL16 sequence. (DOC)

Summary of the results from the species-specific tuning of the ecological niche modelling carried out with 10 replicated runs under the current climatic conditions. (DOC)

Curetted database of the presence points for M. aphylla and the associated absence data used in the potential distribution models. (DOC)

Percentage contribution of climatic variables to the past (LIG and LGM) and current potential distributions of Monttea aphylla. (DOC)

Quaternary climatic changes impacted species’ demography and distribution worldwide. Although response to climate change could have been modulated by mutualistic interactions with other species, studies exploring the dynamics of these interactions and their role facilitating species persistence during past climatic variations are scarce. In this wo...

Oil-flower species are highly specialized attracting a narrow group of oil-collecting bees in contrast to nectar-flower species visited by a wide diversity of pollinators. The vast majority of the oil species lack nectar as a pollinator reward; this suggests that the ancestors of plants with oil flowers had either nectar-less flowers or faced stron...

La creciente pérdida de bosques nativos y la invasión por especies de plantas exóticas en las Sierras de Córdoba constituyen problemas que conllevan serias consecuencias ambientales, sociales y económicas. Aquí presentamos una propuesta didáctica dirigida a alumnos del nivel primario, basada en el uso de actividades lúdicas y del Ciclo de Indagació...

Aquí se presenta una propuesta didáctica dirigida a alumnos de nivel primario, basada en el uso de analogías y actividades lúdicas como herramientas educativas para abordar el estudio de los aparatos bucales de los insectos y su funcionamiento. A través de la misma, se buscó promover el conocimiento de los diferentes aparatos bucales de los insecto...

This study analyses the shell morphological variations in the venerid clam Ameghinomya antiqua recovered from Bustamante Bay, in Patagonia Argentina, from the Pleistocene (MIS 7–MIS 5) to the present. Fossil and modern A. antiqua shells were analyzed using the Elliptic Fourier Analysis (EFA) and landmark methods. Both methods were successful in sep...

This is an educational proposal for elementary school students based on the use of analogies and play activities as educational tools for the study of insect mouthparts and their functions. Through it, we sought to promote knowledge of the different kinds of insect mouthparts in relation to their feeding habits, to spark students’ curiosity, and to...

Pollinator-mediated natural selection on single traits, such as corolla tube or spur length, has been well documented. However, flower phenotypes are usually complex, and selection is expected to act on several traits that functionally interact rather than on a single isolated trait. Despite the fact that selection on complex phenotypes is expected...

Direct physical confrontation among conspecifics for access to mates is a form of sexual selection well known among animals, but not thought to take place in plants. Consequently, no structures are known that can be considered as weapons that evolved under such confrontation. Pollinaria of milkweeds may physically compete for access to attachment p...