Renate A. Wesselingh

• assistant professor
• Professor at Catholic University of Louvain

Moths and other insects are attracted by artificial light sources. This flight-to-light behaviour disrupts their general activity focused on finding resources, such as mating partners, and increases predation risk. It thus has substantial fitness costs. In illuminated urban areas, spindle ermine moths Yponomeuta cagnagella were reported to have evo...

During the main COVID-19 global pandemic lockdown period of 2020 an impromptu set of pollination ecologists came together via social media and personal contacts to carry out standardised surveys of the flower visits and plants in gardens. The surveys involved 67 rural, suburban and urban gardens, of various sizes, ranging from 61.18° North in Norwa...

Background and Aims Germination is a vital stage in a plant’s life cycle, and a different germination behavior of offspring in comparison to their parents can have fitness consequences. In studies on hybridization between Rhinanthus minor and R. major , low germination rates of F 1 hybrids with R. major as the maternal parent have often been report...

Rhinanthus major and R. minor are two annual plant species that are known to hybridize in nature and in which unilateral introgression is likely to occur. Here we used double-digest restriction site-associated DNA sequencing technology (ddRAD-seq) to detect 16,932 genome-wide SNPs in R. major and R. minor individuals from 9 populations. After scree...

This article is a Commentary on Jánosi et al. (2020), 228: 1535–1547.

The performance of first‐generation hybrids determines to a large extent the long‐term outcome of hybridization in natural populations. F1 hybrids can facilitate further gene flow between the two parental species, especially in animal‐pollinated flowering plants. We studied the performance of reciprocal F1 hybrids between Rhinanthus minor and R. ma...

Plant density varies naturally, from isolated plants to clumped individuals, and this can influence pollinator foraging behaviour and plant reproductive success. In addition, the effect of conspecific density on reproduction may depend on the pollination system, and deceptive species differ from rewarding ones in this regard, a high density being o...

The performance of first-generation hybrids determines to a large extent the long-term outcome of hybridization in natural populations. F 1 hybrids can facilitate further gene flow between the two parental species, especially in animal-pollinated flowering plants. We studied the performance of reciprocal F 1 hybrids between Rhinanthus minor and R....

In Angiosperms, a decrease of fruit production towards the apex of individual inflorescences is usually observed. Orchids are thought to be primarily pollination‐limited species and non‐uniform pollination could cause this decrease pattern in several species. Fruit production was investigated in relation to flower position and floral display size i...

Abstract In arid zones, plowing and overgrazing, accentuate steppe degradation risk, silting and wind erosion are the consequences, plants disappear and others persist and adapt. We aimed in this study, to identify steppic plants that can grow in a silted environment and find their effects on dune soil. Under three perennial plants (Retama raetam,...

In arid zones, plowing and overgrazing, accentuate steppe degradation risk, silting and wind erosion are the consequences, plants disappear and others persist and adapt. We aimed in this study, to identify steppic plants that can grow in a silted environment and find their effects on dune soil. Under three perennial plants (Retama raetam, Aristida...

Wild flower diversity and abundance are strongly reduced in intensive agricultural landscapes. Flower-visiting insects may, therefore, experience limited nectar quantities and qualities. Adult insects that rely on energy-rich nectar income for flight, survival and reproduction are expected to be much more affected than insects that rely on their la...

Background and aims – About one third of orchid species do not produce any floral reward but have developed various strategies to attract pollinators. The most common system is food deception, which takes place through two types of attraction mechanisms: Batesian floral mimicry and generalised food deception. In rewardless species, fruit set is gen...

Butterflies are often considered as opportunistic nectar consumers that visit a range of flower species. The degree of specialisation in foraging behaviour and flower choice may, however, vary considerably at the inter‐specific level, from highly specialised to generalist species. In generalist nectar use, there can be intra‐specific variation in t...

Flight is an essential biological ability of many insects, but is energetically costly.Environments under rapid human-induced change are characterized by habitat fragmentation and may impose constraints on the energy income budget of organisms.This may, in turn, affect locomotor performance and willingness to fly.We tested flight performance and me...

Background and aims – The annual hemiparasitic plant genus Rhinanthus displays large variation in the date of onset of flowering, and ecotypes have been described from populations with different flowering times. Much less is known, however, about the variation in flowering time within populations of an ecotype, which is important for the adaptive c...

Agricultural intensification has a strong negative impact on farmland biodiversity (including flower-visiting insects), but understanding the mechanisms involved in this requires experimental work. We document the impact of nectar limitation on the performance of a flower-visiting insect, the meadow brown butterfly Maniola jurtina. We conducted two...

Sparing zones from mowing has been proposed, and applied, to improve local conditions for survival and reproduction of insects in hay meadows. However, little is known about the efficiency of refuge zones and the consequences for local populations. We studied population densities of butterflies before and after mowing in the refuge zone of 15 meado...

To assess the impact of atmospheric aerosols on health, climate, and air traffic, aerosol properties must be measured with fine spatial and temporal sampling. This can be achieved by actively involving citizens and the technology they own to form an atmospheric measurement network. We establish this new measurement strategy by developing and deploy...

To shed light on the role played by pollinators in the diversification of angiosperms, focus is needed on how floral isolation varies locally in the early stages of plant divergence. The few studies performed so far have often used species pairs with distinct pollination syndromes and contrasting floral displays. Here, we focus on a hybridizing pai...

The congeners Rhinanthus angustifolius and Rhinanthus minor, two annual hemiparasites pollinated by bumblebees, are known to hybridise in the wild. Both species are self-compatible, but the capacity for autonomous selfing is higher in R. minor. This suggests a difference in realized outcrossing rates, which have not been determined before in these...

Premise of the study: Several barriers against hybrid formation exist, and their combined action can affect the evolutionary outcomes of hybridization. To explain the asymmetrical introgression observed between two bumblebee-pollinated plant species (Rhinanthus angustifolius and R. minor), we focused on post-pollination barriers and ethological is...

Rhinanthus minor and Rhinanthus angustifolius (Orobanchaceae) are annual hemiparasites, which occur sympatrically in Europe and are known to hybridize. We studied chloroplast and nuclear (amplified fragment length polymorphism [AFLP]) diversity in R. minor and compared genetic structuring in this species with R. angustifolius by analyzing the AFLP...

Gene flow between hybridizing plant species depends strongly on pollinator behaviour, which affects pollen transfer among floral types and reproductive isolation. We examined bumblebee behaviour and pollen transfer between two hybridizing Rhinanthus species that are very similar in ecology and floral traits. The two species, Rhinanthus minor and R....

Keywords Pedicularis - Rhinanthus

Rhinanthus minor and Rhinanthus angustifolius are known to hybridize in mixed populations in nature. These hybridization events can have important evolutionary consequences. The development and use of species-specific RAPD and ISSR markers allowed the detection of hybrid individuals not always distinguishable with morphological characters. Two mixe...

Background and aims – The mode of inheritance of the chloroplast genome is an important factor in studies dealing with population and evolutionary plant biology. In this paper, we aim to determine the chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) inheritance in Rhinanthus angustifolius. Methods – We studied the cpDNA inheritance using PCR-RFLP. One hundred sixty six off...

Rhinanthus angustifolius and Rhinanthus minor are annual hemiparasitic herbs found in open vegetations. They are closely related, hybridize frequently, and appear to have largely overlapping niches, although some floras report a preference of R. angustifolius for more humid conditions compared to R. minor. We analysed the relative fitness of both s...

The impact of climate fluctuations during the Pleistocene on the geographic structure of genetic variation in plant populations is well documented, but there is a lack of studies of annual species at the European scale. The present study aimed to infer the history of the widespread European annual Rhinanthus angustifolius C. C. Gmelin (Orobanchacea...

Fifteen polymorphic microsatellite loci were developed from an enriched genomic library of the annual plant Rhinanthus angustifolius and characterized using 36 individuals. These markers provided high polymorphism ranging from two to 15 alleles per locus. Four loci showed significant departure from HardyWeinberg equilibrium, probably because of the...

The standard method of measuring pollen limitation is to add pollen to a number of flowers, preferably to a whole plant, and to compare fruit and seed set with that of naturally pollinated flowers on other plants. In 25 yr of research, this method has yielded valuable data, but it is difficult to use in large plants. This has caused a bias in the a...

Like other pond-breeding amphibians, the natterjack toad (Bufo calamita) typically presents a patchy distribution. Because the species experiences high probabilities of local population extinction, its persistence within landscapes relies on both local and landscape-scale processes [dispersal allowing the (re)colonization of habitat patches]. Howev...

Functional connectivity is a key factor for the persistence of many specialist species in fragmented landscapes. However, connectivity estimates have rarely been validated by the observation of dispersal movements. In this study, we estimated functional connectivity of a real landscape by modelling dispersal for the endangered natterjack toad (Bufo...

Rhinanthus minor and Rhinanthus angustifolius are known to hybridize in mixed populations in nature. These hybridization events can have important evolutionary consequences. The development and use of species-specific RAPD and ISSR markers allowed the detection of hybrid individuals not always distinguishable with morphological characters. Two mixe...

This paper gives an overview of current research into the biology of hemiparasitic Orobanchaceae, formerly part of the Scrophulariaceae. It is based on presentations and discussions that took place during the First International Symposium on non-weedy hemiparasitic Orobanchaceae in April 2004 in Wageningen. Aspects such as taxonomy and evolution, e...

Studies of natural hybridization have suggested that it may be a creative stimulus for adaptive evolution and speciation. An important step in this process is the establishment of fit recombinant genotypes that are buffered from subsequent recombination with unlike genotypes. We used molecular markers and a two-generation sampling strategy to infer...

Despite the importance assigned to inter-patch movements in fragmented systems, the structure of landscape between suitable habitat patches, the matrix, is often considered as to be of minor interest, or totally ignored. Consequently, models predicting metapopulation dynamics typically assume that dispersal and movement abilities are independent of...

In Europe, the genus Dactylorhiza comprises a bewildering variety of forms that are difficult to sort into discrete species. Most Dactylorhiza species are diploid or tetraploid and contrasting hypotheses have been proposed to explain the complex variation within this group. Using PCR-RFLP analysis in eight putative species, we could identify four h...

In Iris fulva, the apical flower on an inflorescence opens first, and the flowering sequence then proceeds from the most basal flower upward to the apex (acropetally). Flowering order and flower position are thus partially decoupled, and this provides an opportunity to investigate separately the effects of these two factors upon fruit formation. We...

In a small, isolated population of the natterjack toad in southern Belgium, some features of demography and reproductive behaviour were atypical. Fecundity (about 2000 eggs per clutch) and adult survival rate (27%, compared with typical values of 50-80%) were both very low. Population age-structure was skewed towards young toad (2-4 years) and male...

Several models of hybrid zone evolution predict the same spatial patterns of genotypic distribution whether or not structuring is due to environment-dependent or -independent selection. In this study, we tested for evidence of environment-dependent selection in an Iris fulvaIris brevicaulis hybrid population by examining the distribution of genotyp...

This study addresses the pollination ecology of shrub species in an upper montane forest in Costa Rica, where the diversity of insect visitors is well below that of the well-studied tropical forests of lower elevations. Data are presented on visitation rates by the tropical bumblebee Bombusephippiatus to flowers of three species, pollen loads on bu...

Nectar is an important attractant for pollinators, and a plants success in sexual reproduction can be influenced by the amount and concentration of nectar produced by its flowers. We studied nectar production over flower lifetime in Iris fulva, Iris brevicaulis, and four classes of hybrids - reciprocal F1 s and back-crosses - between these species....

Pollinator preference may influence the origin and dynamics of plant hybrid zones. Hybrid zones between the red-flowered Iris fulva and the blue-flowered Iris brevicaulis are found in southern Louisiana. The genetic structure of these populations reflects a lack of intermediate phenotypes. We observed pollinator behaviour in an experimental array w...

The plant genera in which natural hybridization is most prevalent tend to be outcrossing perennials with some mechanism for clonal (i.e., asexual) reproduction. Although clonal reproduction in fertile, sexually reproducing hybrid populations could have important evolutionary consequences, little attention has been paid to quantifying this parameter...

The plant genera in which natural hybridization is most prevalent tend to be outcrossing perennials with some mechanism for clonal (i.e., asexual) reproduction. Although clonal reproduction in fertile, sexually reproducing hybrid populations could have important evolutionary consequences, little attention has been paid to quantifying this parameter...

The reproductive ecology of nine hermaphroditic understory species in a tropical montane Quercus forest was studied at two sites (2300 and 2600 m elev.) in the Cordillera de Talamanca, Costa Rica. Flower life span, studied in six species, averaged 4.4 d. This is longer than flower life spans found in the Monteverde cloud forest (2.7 d) and comparab...

This paper is an abstract of a talk given during a scientific meeting.

For organisms with indeterminate growth, life history theory predicts that in environments where organisms experience high survival rates or gain fecundity with age or size, natural selection favors delayed maturity. In semelparous perennial plants the onset of reproduction is regulated by a threshold size for flowering. We tested this prediction b...

For organisms with indeterminate growth, life history theory predicts that in environments where organisms experience high survival rates or gain fecundity with age or size, natural selection favors delayed maturity. In semelparous perennial plants the onset of reproduction is regulated by a threshold size for flowering. We tested this prediction b...

Small Ecological Project report

We investigated body temperatures of free-ranging green iguanas (Iguana iguana) on Curacao (Netherlands Antilles), and how metabolic costs and benefits of food processing affect body temperatures. Body temperatures of free-living iguanas were measured by radio telemetry. We also used a model, with activity data and operative temperature from taxide...

1. Flowering in Senecio jacobaea is dependent on plant size at the time of vernalization and at the time of photoinduction in spring. We present data on genetic variation in the threshold size for vernalization in this species. 2. Field measurements revealed ample phenotypic variation in threshold size for flowering in a natural sand dune populatio...

Previous studies have demonstrated that many facultative biennials show variation in threshold size for flowering. In order to quantify the genetic variation for this character, we performed a two-way artificial selection experiment on threshold size in Cynoglossum officinale. The parental generation, established from seed from a natural population...

We studied geographical variation in the vernalization requirement among European populations of the facultative biennial thistle Cirsium vulgare. In two common garden experiments and a growth room experiment we found genotypes that flowered without cold, in their first year. These annual types originated mainly from the south of Europe. Most of th...

Estimated energy expenditure and allocation of energy in free-living Iguana iguana in a seasonal environment on Curacao, Netherlands Antilles. Average daily energy expenditure (DEE) was 71.7 kJ.kg-1.d-1. Males tended to have higher metabolic rates during the mating season. Energy expenditure on a yearly basis including clutch production in females...

We investigated variation in two traits that determine generation time, cold- and size-requirement for flowering, within and among EuroPean populations for the monocarpic perennial Cynoglossum officinale. When grown in an experimental garden in Leiden, no annual individuals were found among plants originating from 22 locations; all plants were bien...

Echium vulgare is a gynodioecious species; hermaphrodite and female individuals occur in the same population. Flowers of the female individuals are smaller and produce less nectar. Female and hermaphrodite plants were equally frequently approached by bumblebees. After an approach the bumblebees visited more flowers on hermaphrodite plants. As a res...

A low mean performance and a low level of variability of seed families may be of minor importance in large populations, but critical in small ones. -from Authors