Patricia Morellato

São Paulo State University | Unesp · Department of Botany

Dioecy, a character common to all cycads, requires obligatory outcrossing. The absence of potential reproductive mates of the opposite sex renders individuals effectively sterile. Therefore, reproductive synchrony is essential for the reproductive success of cycads. Here, we describe the reproductive phenology, morphology, and lifespan of strobili...

Germination timing is determined by several plant life-history traits. Seed dormancy regulates the time and place of early plant development and spreads recruitment risks over time. Dispersal phenology and syndrome can influence germination timing and buffer spatial heterogeneity. The ecological requirements for germination (the germination niche)...

Plant phenology is rarely considered when selecting species used in restoration actions. However, considering the potential flowering and fruiting phenologies of species is a key point to: (i) evaluate the capacity of restoration actions in reestablishing ecological interactions (pollination and seed dispersal) and ecosystem functions (early germin...

Temporal constancy of pollination systems is essential for the maintenance of pollinators through time. Community-level assessment of flowering phenology allows understanding variations across seasons and years and the risks of decoupling flowering and pollinators’ activity. We evaluated flowering patterns and temporal diversity of pollination syst...

Populations of dioecious plants commonly exhibit dissimilarities to the equilibrium expectation of a 1:1 sex ratio. Differential expenditure for reproduction between genders is cited as the primary mechanism responsible for a male-biased sex ratio, with increased effects on long-living species, but these mechanisms are still poorly understood. We e...

Premise: Flower color is a primary pollinator attractant and generally adjusted to the cognitive system of the pollinators. The perception of flower color depends on the visual system of pollinators and also on environmental factors such as light conditions and the background against which flowers are displayed. Methods: Using bee-pollinated Fab...

The vegetation of ironstone rupestrian grasslands (canga) is of significant conservation concern due to the rapid encroachment of mining activity and urbanization on the remnants of this ecosystem. Ecological studies that address the phenological patterns of this vegetation are still scarce, although they are essential for its conservation, managem...

Key message A systematic review (1950–2018) summarizes the research on woody lianas and their interaction with trees in the Neotropics. We identify knowledge gaps, propose new directions for future studies and discuss the control, management, and conservation of lianas. Abstract Lianas are key components of species composition, structure and dynam...

The integration of phylogenetic methods and species distribution can really help in the investigation of biogeographic patterns and to fill gaps in evolutionary ecology. Here we investigated how the vascular flora of the Brazilian ancient Cipó Mountains, an alleged OCBIL (old, climatic buffered infertile landscape) with a high diversity of species...

Brood‐site pollination mutualisms represent extreme levels of reciprocal specialization between plants and insects. Several studies have revealed intimate associations between cycads and their insect pollinators across different continents. However, the reproductive biology of South American cycads is still poorly understood, with limited empirical...

Flowering patterns are crucial to understand the dynamics of plant reproduction and resource availability for pollinators. Seasonal climate constrains flower and leaf phenology, where leaf and flower colors likely differ between seasons. Color is the main floral trait attracting pollinators; however, seasonal changes in the leaf-background colorati...

The campo rupestre is a Neotropical OCBIL (old, climatically buffered infertile landscape), a grassy-shrub vegetation with high species richness and endemism, characterized by rocky outcrops surrounded by grasslands distributed in South American ancient mountaintops. We tested one OCBIL prediction: the prevalence of long-distance pollinators ensuri...

We investigated the water use of Caatinga vegetation, the largest seasonally dry forest in South America. We identified and analysed the environmental phenological drivers in woody species and their relationship with transpiration. To monitor the phenological evolution, we used remote sensing indices at different spatial and temporal scales: normal...

Global sustainability rests on a myriad of benefits provided by natural ecosystems that support human livelihoods and well-being, from biodiversity persistence to climate regulation. The undeniable importance of conserving tropical forests has drawn most of the conservation spotlight towards it. However, open ecosystems such as the Brazilian Campo...

The campo rupestre is a Neotropical OCBIL (old, climatically buffered infertile landscape), a grassy-shrub vegetation with high species richness and endemism, characterized by rocky outcrops surrounded by grasslands distributed in South American ancient mountaintops. We tested one OCBIL prediction: the prevalence of long-distance pollinators ensuri...

en The ecological impact of lianas in the edges of tropical forest areas is widely recognised; however, the edge influence on the liana community and its relationship with trees in biomes of open vegetation require further evaluation. We compared the following parameters between edges and interiors in a remnant of woody cerrado: (i) the structure o...

Background and aims: Plant individuals within a population differ in their phenology and interactions with pollinators. However, it is still unknown how individual differences affect the reproductive success of plants that have functionally specialized pollination systems. Here, we evaluated whether plant individual specialization in phenology (te...

Background and Aims Plant individuals within a population differ in their phenology and interactions with pollinators. However, it is still unknown how individual differences affect the reproductive success of plants that have functionally specialized pollination systems. Here, we evaluated whether plant individual specialization in phenology (temp...

Aim Regeneration traits are crucial to understand patterns and processes in plant communities. However, regeneration traits are underrepresented in community ecology preventing a better assessment of trait-based community assembly. Here we assessed habitat-related regeneration traits by comparing species from open (grassland and shrubland) and clo...

Generalized assessments of the accuracy of spectroscopic estimates of ecologically important leaf traits such as leaf mass per area (LMA) and leaf dry matter content (LDMC) are still lacking for most ecosystems, and particularly for non-forested and/or seasonally dry tropical vegetation. Here, we tested the ability of using leaf reflectance spectra...

One of the challenges in remote phenology studies lies in how to efficiently manage large volumes of data obtained as long-term sequences of high-resolution images. A promising approach is known as image foveation, which is able to reduce the computational resources used (i.e., memory storage) in several applications. In this paper, we propose an i...

The global network of protected areas (PAs) is systematically biased towards remote and unproductive places. Consequently, the processes threatening biodiversity are not halted and conservation impact—defined as the beneficial environmental outcomes arising from protection relative to the counterfactual of no intervention—is smaller than previously...

Diospyros lasiocalyx (Mart.) B. Wall. is a dioecious tree species found in the threatened and fragmented Brazilian Cerrado. Its fleshy fruits, which are consumed extensively by wildlife, make the species ideal for use in restoration. This study includes a ten-year phenological observation, germination tests, and analysis of molecular markers to und...

Freely available for download here: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ecy.3001

Mountains are interesting systems for studying patterns of diversity distribution and the role of environmental filters and competition on community assembly. According to the phylogenetic niche conservatism theory, the co-occurrence of closely related species might indicate that environmental filters are more important than competition when struct...

Investigating the timing of key phenological events across environments with variable seasonality is crucial to understand the drivers of ecosystem dynamics. Leaf production in the tropics is mainly constrained by water and light availability. Identifying the factors regulating leaf phenology patterns allows efficiently forecasting of climate chang...

1.The high diversity of plant species in the tropics has revealed complex phenological patterns and reproductive strategies occurring throughout the year. Describing and analysing tropical plant phenology, and detecting triggers, demands to consider the circular nature of recurrent life‐cycle events and the use of appropriated statistical metrics....

Premise: Increasingly, researchers studying plant phenology are exploring novel technologies to remotely observe plant changes over time. The increasing use of phenocams to monitor leaf phenology, based on the analysis of indices extracted from sequences of daily digital vegetation images, has demanded the development of appropriate tools for data...

Campo rupestre is a megadiverse vegetation mosaic dominating one of the world’s geologically oldest tropical mountains. The campo rupestre hosts nearly 15% of Brazil’s flora, with 40% of endemism in an area smaller than 1% of the national territory. Here, we summarize and explain the rationale underlying the long-term ecological research at Serra d...

Plant phenology studies rely on long-term monitoring of life cycles of plants. High-resolution unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and near-surface technologies have been used for plant monitoring, demanding the creation of methods capable of locating, and identifying plant species through time and space. However, this is a challenging task given the h...

Plant phenology studies rely on long-term monitoring of life cycles of plants. High-resolution unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and near-surface technologies have been used for plant monitoring, demanding the creation of methods capable of locating and identifying plant species through time and space. However, this is a challenging task given the hi...

Background and Aims Large clades of angiosperms are often characterized by diverse interactions with pol-linators, but how these pollination systems are structured phylogenetically and biogeographically is still uncertain for most families. Apocynaceae is a clade of >5300 species with a worldwide distribution. A database representing >10 % of speci...

Epiphytes are hyper‐diverse and one of the frequently undervalued life forms in plant surveys and biodiversity inventories. Epiphytes of the Atlantic Forest, one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world, have high endemism and radiated recently in the Pliocene. We aimed to (1) compile an extensive Atlantic Forest data set on vascular, non‐vas...

Zamiaceae, a family of the ancient order Cycadales, is distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of both the Old and New Worlds. Here, we present a systematic review of Zamiaceae with emphasis on Zamia species from South America. We aim to (a) establish the current knowledge, (b) identify research gaps, and (c) indicate directions...

List of species from campo rupestre

Tradução do artigo original "Ecology and evolution of plant diversity in the endangered campo 26 rupestre: a neglected conservation priority. Plant and Soil 403: 192-152" que pode ser acessado aqui (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11104-015-2637-8). Em caso de citação, deve-se mencionar o artigo original. A permissão para a tradução foi...

Rupestrian grasslands are biodiverse, evolutionary old vegetation complexes that harbor more than 5000 species of vascular plants and one of the highest levels of plant endemism in the world. Growing on nutrient–impoverished soils and under harsh environmental conditions, these mountaintop ecosystems were once spared from major human interventions...

Most angiosperms rely on animals for pollination, and insects, especially bees, are the most frequent pollinators. Many native Neotropical plants are frequently visited by the invasive honeybee (Apis mellifera), but its role in the pollination of these plants has been little investigated. We assessed the contribution of various floral visitors, inc...

The deciduousness of tropical trees and communities depend on ecosystems characteristics such as plant species diversity, and strength of the dry season. Based on seven years of phenological observations, we provide the first long-term description of leafing patterns of a woody cerrado community, aiming to investigate (1) the leaf exchange strategi...

We retrace the development of tropical phenology research, compare temperate phenology study to that in the tropics and highlight the advances currently being made in this flourishing discipline. The synthesis draws attention to how fundamentally different tropical phenology data can be to temperate data. Tropical plants lack a phase of winter dorm...

Background and Aims The relationship between fruiting phenology and seed dispersal syndrome is widely recognized, however, the interaction of dormancy classes and plant life-history traits in relation to fruiting phenology and seed dispersal are understudied. Here, we examined the relationship between fruiting season and seed dormancy and how such...

Phenology is a traditional science that investigates the periodic phenomena of plants and animals and their relations to environmental conditions. Typically plant phenological studies are based on observations made by phenology experts in the field over time and the correlation with climate data collected by weather sensors. Although within the vis...

1. Under a warming scenario many permanent inland water bodies in the Mediterranean region have become temporary ones, so the persistence of submerged macrophytes depends on the timely production of drought-resistant propagules. Phenological research measures the timing of ecological processes and allows the consequences of disturbances such as cli...

The years 2011–2020 represent the United Nations Decade of Biodiversity, aiming to inspire worldwide actions to support biodiversity conservation. This Special Issue illustrates the current knowledge of plant life in campo rupestre, a megadiverse, highly-endemic vegetation complex, and one under alarming and unprecedented threats. The major researc...

Reproductive phenology of Carapa guianensis Aubl. (Meliaceae) in two forest areas of the Central Amazon Abstract— This article presents the phenological study of Carapa guianensis Aubl species from 1974 to 2000, in ADFR and TFES forests stations research in Central Amazon, Brazil. The objective was to analyze and compare the phenological pattern (...

Climate tends to explain phenological variations in tropical ecosystems. However, water availability and nutrient content in soil strongly affect plant communities, especially those on old, climatically-buffered, infertile landscapes (OCBILs), and may impact these ecosystems’ plant reproductive phenology over time. Here, we compare the reproductive...

Leaf phenology represents a major temporal component of ecosystem functioning, and understanding the drivers of seasonal variation in phenology is essential to understand plant responses to climate change. We assessed the patterns and drivers of land surface phenology, a proxy for leafing phenology, for the meridional Espinhaço Range, a South Ameri...

Specialization of species is often studied in ecology but its quantification and meaning is disputed. More recently, ecological network analysis has been widely used as a tool to quantify specialization, but here its true meaning is also debated. However, irrespective of the tool used, the geographic scale at which specialization is measured remain...

Fire is a natural disturbance in savannas, and defines vegetation physiognomy and structure, often influencing species diversity. Fire activity is determined by a wide range of factors, including long and short term climatic conditions, climate seasonality, wind speed and direction, topography, and fuel biomass. In Brazil, fire shapes the structure...

The application of digital cameras to monitor the environment is becoming global and changing the way of phenological data collection. The technique of repeated digital photographs to monitor plant phenology (phenocams) has increased due to its low-cost investment, reduced size, easy set up installation, and the possibility of handling high-resolut...

Flowering and fruiting are key events in the life history of plants, and both are critical to their reproductive success. Besides the role of evolutionary history, plant reproductive phenology is regulated by abiotic factors and shaped by biotic interactions with pollinators and seed dispersers. In Melastomataceae, a dominant Neotropical clade, the...

The propagation in nurseries of native plant species potentially useful for agroforestry, silvopastoral and restoration programs is hindered by an inadequate supply of high quality seed. Limitations in our knowledge on the phenological patterns of native species result in the lack of efficient collecting protocols. Here we analyze the reproductive...

The quality of digital elevation models (DEMS) determines the quality of geomorphometric analysis. Remote sensing can help with the acquisition of better DEMs, especially through high spatial resolution sensors and sensors with three-dimensional imaging capabilities. Imaging by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is still being explored as a remote sen...

Fig. 1. Atlantic Forest Islands from Serra do Cipó, south Espinhaço Range, Minas Gerais, Brazil. ab. Outside and inside views from typical forest islands; cd. Inside and outside views from a typical forest islands after a fire event.

Forest islands are unique habitats standing out across mountains dominated by rupestrian grassland in southeastern Brazil. In this work we evaluated the relationship between the plant species functional traits (number of ecoregions in which a species occurs, potential height, mean height, mean basal area, mean leaf area) and ecological variables (l...

The propagation in nurseries of native plant species potentially useful for agroforestry, silvopastoral and restoration programs is hindered by an inadequate supply of high quality seed. Limitations in our knowledge on the phenological patterns of native species result in the lack of efficient collecting protocols. Here we analyze the reproductive...

Seed dispersal disruptions may arise not only by animal loss, but also when environmental changes produce a mismatch between the timing of activity of plants and their dispersers. As plant phenology is finely tuned to climate, understanding the main climatic drivers of fruit seasonality gives clues on potential phenological shifts mediated by clima...

Changes in the life cycle of organisms (i.e. phenology) are one of the most widely used early-warning indicators of climate change, yet this remains poorly understood throughout the tropics. We exhaustively reviewed any published and unpublished study on fruiting phenology carried out at the community level in the American tropics and subtropics (l...

—In this paper, we analyse the use of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs or ConvNets) to discriminate vegetation species with few labelled samples. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work dedicated to the investigation of the use of deep features in such task. The experimental evaluation demonstrate that deep features significantly ou...