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January 1982 - present
Publications
Publications (157)
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the publication of “The History and Geography of Human Genes”, the story of its origin and motivation is revisited by looking at nearly two decades of work that the book required. By describing details of activities that now have been abandoned thanks to technological advances, we try to communicate the ir...
We report experimental evidence of egg polyphenism in clonal lineages of Heterocypris incongruens from an ephemeral pond on a Mediterranean Island (Lampedusa, Italy). In controlled laboratory conditions, clonal females produced three different kinds of eggs: (i) resting and desiccation-resistant eggs, (ii) nonresting eggs that hatched gradually wit...
Sympatry of amphimictic and parthenogenetic lineages in species with mixed reproductive systems is rarely observed in nature. On Lampedusa Island (Pelagie Islands, Italy), amphimictic and parthenogenetic lineages of Heterocypris barbara (Gauthier and Brehm, 1928) co-occur in a temporary pond. Their sympatric persistence calls for an ecological diff...
In ephemeral ponds, the hatching asynchrony of resting eggs may be adaptive and the result of a maternal bet-hedging strategy. A mother can influence the progeny phenology through conditions experienced during life cycle even in early development stages. We investigated the consequences of a hatching delay for offspring and compared early and late...
The persistence of crustacean populations in ephemeral ponds requires appropriate adaptations in life history strategies (e.g. in hatching phenology). Organisms take advantage of pond filling when it occurs and hedge their bets for the possibility to complete one or more life cycles or to produce resting stages that ensure that the population will...
The timing of many phenological events (e.g. egg hatching, development and reproduction) is the result of the interaction of genotype, environmental factors and maternal effects. In many taxa it is known that egg size and development time are linked and that, especially in temporary habitats, mothers, anticipating the environment that their offspri...
Based on literature results and our expert evaluation, we report some likely impacts of climate change on the biodiversity of forest communities in Italy by the end of this century. In the Mediterranean region and on the Apennines: at low altitudes, vulnerability of Pinus sp. and Quercus ilex forests, with loss of intraspecific genetic variability;...
Heterocypris incongruens and Eucypris virens are geographic parthenogens inhabiting temporary ponds. Several authors proposed that, after the last glaciation, asexual lineages would spread throughout Europe more efficiently than sexual ones. The range expansion, that followed metapopulation dynamics characterized by genetic bottlenecks and subseque...
The ability of resting eggs to survive periods of drying, and hydroperiods that are too short to allow reproduction, affects the ability of a species to colonise and persist in temporary waters. We previously described the formation of an egg bank of Heterocypris incongruens,
a widespread and common freshwater ostracod. The egg bank was made up of...
Fragmentation can affect the demographic and genetic structure of populations near the boundary of their biogeographic range. Higher genetic differentiation among populations coupled with lower level of within-population variability is expected as a consequence of reduced population size and isolation. The effects of these 2 factors have been rarel...
The ever-increasing use of paternity analysis to estimate the dispersal capability of forest trees calls for a quantitative evaluation of potential errors due to sampling design. Previous studies on optimal sampling strategies for seed trapping experiments suggested a link between sampling effort and error rate in the reconstruction of the seed dis...
Parental care is a source of maternal effects and the lack of genetic variation expected among clonal organisms makes them ideal material for investigating environmental mother effects. Using laboratory experiments at two photoperiods, 16: 8 and 6: 18 L: D, we evaluated the effect of mother's age and mother presence/absence, on the production of re...
We analyzed the response to drought of 420 individuals from eight half-sib families from a small and isolated population of
silver fir (Abies alba Mill.): 105 of them were kept in well-watered conditions as control while the remaining 315 were exposed to drought for 27
days. A model describing stomatal behavior derived from Monteith and developed i...
We tested the constancy of linkage relationships of randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) marker loci used to construct a population-based consensus map in material from an Italian stand of Picea abies (L.) Karst. in 29 individuals from three Norwegian populations. Thirteen marker loci linked in the Italian stand did show a consistent locus ord...
We followed the artificial colonization of a temporary pond in Northern Italy by the freshwater ostracod Heterocypris incongruens. The species had not been found in the pond in previous years. In May 2009 we released five laboratory reared, genetically identical, parthenogenetic females and observed the population during colonization and growth unt...
Small and isolated silver fir populations from the Emilian Apennines (northern Italy) were studied to assess their level of genetic variation and their relationship with Alpine populations. We investigated the variability of two chloroplast microsatellites to analyse the within‐population genetic variability of four peripheral and fragmented Apenni...
P. 2010: Genetic structure of Austrian and Italian populations of Limnocythere inopinata (Crustacea, Ostracoda): a potential case of post-glacial parthenogenetic invader? — Ann. Zool. Fennici 47: 133–143. Several hypotheses were proposed to account for geographic parthenogenesis that is the disjointed distribution of a species' sexual and asexual f...
At treeline, selection by harsh environmental conditions sets an upward limit to arboreal vegetation. Increasing temperatures and the decline of traditional animal raising have favoured an upward shift of treeline in the last decades. These circumstances create a unique opportunity to study the balance of the main forces (selection and gene flow) t...
In this study we aimed to combine knowledge of the ecophysiology and genetics of European beech to assess the potential of this species to adapt to environmental change. Therefore, we performed field and experimental studies on the genetic and ecophysiological functioning of beech. This information was integrated through a coupled genetic–ecophysio...
We report data on the coexistence of apomictic and amphimictic lineages of Eucypris virens within the same pond and discuss the role of intraspecific hybridation as a source of genetic variability. We describe the genetic structure of 36 populations of E. virens from Europe. Most (28) populations were made up of putative parthenogenetic females, in...
In Italy, universities are regulated by law. In December 2007 new rules for hiring young researchers in Italian Universities, based on international peer review, were approved by the Italian Parliament. The Court that controls the compatibility of new laws with existing legislation found the new rules in violation of this principle and annulated th...
Coexisting bisexual and unisexual populations of individuals belonging to the genus Heterocypris are found in ephemeral freshwater ponds on the island of Lampedusa (Pelagie Islands, Italy). Different reproductive modes were associated with a peculiar morphological trait: a lamella hyalina on the posterior margin of the left valve was observed in am...
A comment on the procedures for the appointment of researchers in Italian Universities.
In the Alps global warming and change in land use, in particular the drastic reduction in cattle grazing, are causing a progressive treeline ecotone upwards shift. The colonization dynamics of woody species are modulated by high selective pressure on seedlings due to the extreme ecological conditions of this habitat. We studied the colonization dyn...
A method to evaluate the genetic control of plant response to increasing soil water deficit is proposed. A description of single tree transpiration behavior was obtained considering parameters independent from air and soil conditions. We removed environmental effects by using two approaches: the normalization of drought data to control (watered) pl...
We report the genetic structure of 47 all-female populations of Heterocypris incongruens from Italy. Most populations (34) were collected from ricefields in the Po Plain (Northern Italy). Using three polymorphic allozyme markers (MPI, PGM and GPI) we found 125 different multilocus genotypes (clones) in a total of 3235 studied females. One clone was...
Allozymes were assessed by starch gel electrophoresis in 3 populations of a eutardigrade, Richtersius coronifer, with different reproductive modes. One population from Italy (with 2 sub-populations) was amphimictic and 2 populations (1 from Italy and 1 from Sweden) were parthenogenetic. All populations, irrespective of their reproductive mode, were...
Summary In this study we analysed gene flow and spatial genetic structure in an alpine population of Norway spruce (Picea abies Karst.) using molecular markers. We investigated genetic consequences of migration and colonization of old pastures at the treeline, an ecotone shifting upward because of the combined effect of climatic changes and abandon...
The genetic variability and genotypic (clonal) structure of 34 populations of the ancient asexual Darwinula stevensoni was assayed using allozymes. In this study of 1964 individuals from nine countries in Europe, Israel and South Africa, little genetic variability was found. Out of nine enzyme systems only two revealed sufficient enzyme activity to...
The genetic linkage map of European beech ( Fagus sylvatica L.) that we report here is the first to our knowledge. Based on a total of 312 markers (28 RAPDs, 274 AFLPs, 10 SSRs) scored in 143 individuals from a F(1) full-sib family. Two maps (one for each parent) were constructed according to a "two-way pseudo-testcross" mapping strategy. In the ma...
The clonal structure of apomictic populations of Darwinula stevensoni from Northern Italy lacustrine and riverine habitats has been analysed by allozyme electrophoresis. Thirty two sites were sampled and a total of 748 individuals were analysed. Only one polymorphic locus, Gpi, turned out to have enough variation to be informative. Two thirds of al...
The hatching phenology of Heterocypris resting eggs was investigated in laboratory controlled conditions. Microcosms were set up using dry sediments from three freshwater temporary ponds (Cavallo Bianco, Aria Rossa and Vallone della Forbice) of the island of Lampedusa (Sicily) and kept at different temperatures and photoperiods. Hatching time was m...
Ancient asexuals have been considered to be a contradiction of the basic tenets of evolutionary theory. Barred from rearranging genetic variation by recombination, their reduced number of gene arrangements is thought to hamper their response to changing environments. For the same reason, it should be difficult for them to avoid the build-up of dele...
We compare data from a survey of ostracode species carried out during 1994-1998 from Northern Italian ricefields with data from the same area collected in the '60s. Twenty-five species were recorded during a survey of 19 ricefields in 1994-98 as against 46 species found in 16 ricefields over thirty years ago. Three of these species (Ilyocypris bipl...
We analysed the genetic structure of five populations of Heterocypris from small temporary ponds on the islands of Lampedusa and Linosa (Isole Pelagie, South of Sicily) where we have observed two different adult females morphotypes. The most genetically‐differentiated population, Cavallo Bianco, is made up by females only showing a morphology typic...
Principal component maps of the gene arrangement frequencies of 108 natural populations in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East were prepared to investigate the evolutionary forces shaping the geographic variation of inversion frequencies. Principal component maps were also prepared from ten climate variables at 347 localities of the same regio...
The spatial clustering of single- and di-locus genotypes in a natural, continuous population of Norway spruce was investigated using 69 Mendelian Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers that covered about 15 of the species genome, and whose linkage relationships were known. Spatial autocorrelation techniques and randomization tests, applied...
High rates of survival of Darwinula stevensoni individuals at very low oxygen concentration were observed in a 768 hour laboratory experiment. Organisms from two different habitats (a river and a lake) whose populations were previously shown to be genetically different were used. No difference in hypoxia tolerance was found between individuals from...
The lack of variability in ITS regions within individuals and within species has been explained as the result of concerted evolution. In fact, many examples of intraindividual variation in the ITS regions have been reported. Here we report evidence of within-individual variation of the ITS1 region in the obligate parthenogenetic species Darwinula s...
The inheritance of 65 RAPD markers obtained from 15 arbitrary primers has been tested in two sexual populations of the ostracod Heterocypris incongruens. The markers were selected using the criteria of reproducibility and banding-pattern clarity from the amplification products yielded by 40 primers. The expected inheritance model was inferred from...
We describe life history traits of the ostracod Darwinula stevensoni through laboratory experiments. This small (about 0.7 mm), ancient, obligate parthenogenetic species appeared to be particulary difficult to handle as its long life cycle (up to 3-4 years) has made lab experiments over several generations very difficult. D. stevensoni is an euryth...
Relatively few laboratory tests of the effect of salinity on ostracod species exist. Here we report the results of acute and chronic bioassay tests to study the effects of six different salinities (deionised water, 22, 120, 922, 9600 μS‐cm, and marine water) on survival and reproductive parameters (number of eggs and hatching). The test was carried...
We tested the constancy of linkage relationships of randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) marker loci used to construct a population-based consensus map in material from an Italian stand of Picea abies (L.) Karst. in 29 individuals from three Norwegian populations. Thirteen marker loci linked in the Italian stand did show a consistent locus ord...
From May 1997 to April 1998 we have studied the colonisation dynamics of 88 experimental panels, monitoring the allele and genotypic frequencies at GPI locus and GPI activity, of Balanus amphitrite in 3 sites from the lagoon of Venice. Two sampling stations are characterised by severe chemical (the Industrial Channel) and thermal pollution (the out...