
Sidonie BellotRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew · Comparative Plant and Fungal Biology
Sidonie Bellot
PhD
About
77
Publications
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Introduction
I use genomic and morphological studies to understand aspects and mechanisms of plant genome evolution, phylogenetics, biogeography, morphological evolution, parasitism. More recently, I have been developing projects on plant intraspecific variation, and past, present and future adaptation. I also try to support plant conservation, for instance through using machine learning to predict species extinction risk or by developing DNA barcodes to monitor plant trade and exploitation.
Publications
Publications (77)
Societal Impact Statement
As climate change accelerates, breeding resilient crops is urgent. The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.), a crucial 18 billion USD fruit crop, underpins North African and West Asian oasis agroecosystems. This study investigates the genetics and morphology of its closest wild relative, the endemic and endangered Cape Verde...
Imbalance in species richness among related clades is a pervasive, yet incompletely understood feature of biodiversity. Comparison of species-poor and species-rich clades that have evolved within the same region can shed light on the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. The long-isolated island of Madagascar is an ideal place for doing this. Mada...
Abstract
Background and Aims
The geographical origin and evolutionary mechanisms underpinning the rich and distinctive New Caledonian flora remain poorly understood. This is attributable to the complex geological past of the island and to the scarcity of well-resolved species-level phylogenies. Here, we infer phylogenetic relationships and divergen...
Orchids constitute one of the most spectacular radiations of flowering plants. However, their origin, spread across the globe, and hotspots of speciation remain uncertain due to the lack of an up‐to‐date phylogeographic analysis.
We present a new Orchidaceae phylogeny based on combined high‐throughput and Sanger sequencing data, covering all five s...
What grows where? Knowledge about where to find particular species in nature must have been key to the survival of humans throughout our evolution. Over time, and as people colonised new land masses and habitats, interactions with the local biota led to a wealth of combined traditional and scientific wisdom about the distributions of species and th...
A genus and species of palm from the Truong Son Range in Vietnam, Truongsonia lecongkietii, is described as new to science. Phylogenomic analysis strongly supports the placement of the new taxon in subfamily Arecoideae as sister to the African endemic tribe Podococceae, which comprises a single genus Podococcus. A new tribe Truongsonieae is also de...
Orchids constitute one of the most spectacular radiations of flowering plants. However, their geographical origin, historical spread across the globe, and hotspots of speciation remain uncertain due to the lack of a broad phylogenomic framework.
⍰ We present a new Orchidaceae phylogeny based on high-throughput and Sanger sequencing datasets, coveri...
The production of flowers and fruit below ground (geoflory and geocarpy, respectively) is a paradoxical reproductive strategy that seemingly hinders pollination and dispersal. Though rare, these phenomena occur in 33 angiosperm families. Plants that flower and fruit entirely below ground are exceptionally unusual. Pinanga subterranea (Arecaceae), a...
Background Over the past decade, phylogenomics has greatly advanced our knowledge of angiosperm evolution. However, phylogenomic studies of large angiosperm families with complete species or genus-level sampling are still
lacking. The palms, Arecaceae, are a large family with ca. 181 genera and 2600 species and are important components of tropical...
Hybridization and polyploidy are key evolutionary forces in plant diversification, and their co-occurrence in the context of allopolyploid speciation is often associated with increased ability to colonize new environments and invasiveness. In the genus Ulex (Fabaceae), the European gorse (Ulex europaeus subsp. europaeus) is the only invasive and th...
Protecting nature’s contributions to people requires accelerating extinction risk assessment and better integrating evolutionary, functional and used diversity with conservation planning. Here, we report machine learning extinction risk predictions for 1,381 palm species (Arecaceae), a plant family of high socio-economic and ecological importance....
With 178 species, palm subtribe Dypsidinae is one of the largest plant radiations on Madagascar. A well‐resolved species‐level phylogeny is required not only to unpick the drivers of this spectacular radiation, but also to define natural and useful generic limits in this taxonomically difficult group. The only recent taxonomic revision of Dypsidina...
Genome size varies 2400‐fold across plants, influencing their evolution through changes in cell size and cell division rates which impact plants' environmental stress tolerance. Repetitive element expansion explains much genome size diversity, and the processes structuring repeat ‘communities’ are analogous to those structuring ecological communiti...
Genome size varies 2,400-fold across plants, influencing their evolution through changes in cell size and cell division rates which impact plants’ environmental stress tolerance. Repetitive element expansion explains much genome size diversity, and the processes structuring repeat ‘communities’ are analogous to those structuring ecological communit...
Premise
To further advance the understanding of the species-rich, economically and ecologically important angiosperm order Myrtales in the rosid clade, comprising nine families, approximately 400 genera and almost 14,000 species occurring on all continents (except Antarctica), we tested the Angiosperms353 probe kit.
Methods
We combined high-throug...
Premise:
The inference of evolutionary relationships in the species-rich family Orchidaceae has hitherto relied heavily on plastid DNA sequences and limited taxon sampling. Previous studies have provided a robust plastid phylogenetic framework, which was used to classify orchids and investigate the drivers of orchid diversification. However, the e...
The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is an iconic crop of hot and arid regions of North Africa, the Middle East and up to northwestern India. It is a member of the genus Phoenix that constitutes a monophyletic group within the Coryphoideae subfamily, in the palm family. The genus Phoenix is composed of around 14 species whose native distribution...
The date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, has been a cornerstone of Middle Eastern and North African agriculture for millennia. It was first domesticated in the Persian Gulf, and its evolution appears to have been influenced by gene flow from two wild relatives, P. theophrasti, currently restricted to Crete and Turkey, and P. sylvestris, widespread from...
The tree of life is the fundamental biological roadmap for navigating the evolution and properties of life on Earth, and yet remains largely unknown. Even angiosperms (flowering plants) are fraught with data gaps, despite their critical role in sustaining terrestrial life. Today, high-throughput sequencing promises to significantly deepen our under...
The tree of life is the fundamental biological roadmap for navigating the evolution and properties of life on Earth, and yet remains largely unknown. Even angiosperms (flowering plants) are fraught with data gaps, despite their critical role in sustaining terrestrial life. Today, high-throughput sequencing promises to significantly deepen our under...
Well-supported phylogenies are a prerequisite for the study of the evolution and diversity of life on earth. The subfamily Calamoideae accounts for more than one fifth of the palm family (Arecaceae), occurs in tropical rainforests across the world, and supports a billion-dollar industry in rattan products. It contains ca. 550 species in 17 genera,...
The date palm ( Phoenix dactylifera ) has been a cornerstone of Middle Eastern and North African agriculture for millennia. It is presumed that date palms were first domesticated in the Persian Gulf and subsequently introduced into North Africa, where their evolution in the latter region appears to have been influenced by gene flow from the wild re...
Premise of the study
Evolutionary relationships in the species-rich Orchidaceae have historically relied on organellar DNA sequences and limited taxon sampling. Previous studies provided a robust plastid-maternal phylogenetic framework, from which multiple hypotheses on the drivers of orchid diversification have been derived. However, the extent to...
In this article we explain what DNA barcoding means and its utility for palm research and conservation.
Seed size shapes plant evolution and ecosystems, and may be driven by plant size and architecture, dispersers, habitat and insularity. How these factors influence the evolution of giant seeds is unclear, as are the rate of evolution and the biogeographical consequences of giant seeds.
We generated DNA and seed size data for the palm tribe Borasseae...
Now published in the book The date palm genome, Vol. 1 (Springer): https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-73746-7_2
The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is the iconic crop of hot and arid regions of North Africa, the Middle East and up to northwestern India. It is a member of the genus Phoenix, that constitutes a monophyletic group...
Phylogenomic studies have so far mostly relied on genome skimming or target sequence capture, which suffer from representation bias and can fail to resolve relationships even with hundreds of loci. Here, we explored the potential of phylogenetic informativeness and tree confidence analyses to interpret phylogenomic datasets. We studied Cucurbitacea...
Nepenthaceae is one of the largest carnivorous plant families and features ecological and morphological adaptations indicating an impressive adaptive radiation. However, investigation of evolutionary and taxonomic questions is hindered by poor phylogenetic understanding, with previous molecular studies based on limited loci and taxa. We use high-th...
Arborescent succulent plants are regarded as keystone and indicator species in desert ecosystems due to their large stature and long lifespans. Tree aloes, the genus Aloidendron, are icons of the southern African deserts yet have proved elusive subjects due to the difficulty of obtaining material of known provenance for comparative study. Consequen...
Ethnopharmacological relevance:
The botanical identity of the ancient vernacular cynomorium does not correspond to the modern scientific genus while it is not clear how many species of hipocistis (Cytinus sp.) were differentiated by the ancient physicians and whether Cynomorium coccineum was subsumed. The early history of therapeutic uses related...
The world’s herbaria collectively house millions of diverse plant specimens, including endangered or extinct species and type specimens. Unlocking genetic data from the typically highly degraded DNA obtained from herbarium specimens was difficult until the arrival of high-throughput sequencing approaches, which can be applied to low quantities of s...
In the continuous scientific search for new safe and effective drugs, there has recently been a rediscovery of natural substances as a potential reservoir of innovative therapeutic solutions for human health, with the prospect of integrating with and sometimes replacing conventional drugs. Cynomorium coccineum subsp. coccineum is a holoparasitic pl...
Nepenthaceae is one of the largest carnivorous plant families and features ecological and morphological adaptations indicating an impressive adaptive radiation. However, investigation of evolutionary and taxonomic questions is hindered by poor phylogenetic understanding, with previous molecular studies based on limited loci and taxa. We use high-th...
1)
Background
Seed-banking (the ability to persist in the soil over many generations) is usually considered as a dormant stage where genotypes are “stored” as a bet-hedging strategy in response to unpredictable environments. However, seed dormancy may instead have consequences for the integrity of the DNA and generate novel mutations.
2)
Methods...
Significance
Parasitism is a proven way of life that brings about extraordinary phenotypic and genetic modifications. Obtaining organic carbon from a host rather than synthesizing it, nonphotosynthetic plants lose unneeded genes for photosynthesis from their plastid genomes, while essential genes in the same subgenome may evolve rapidly. We show th...
Cynomoriaceae, one of the last unplaced families of flowering plants, comprises one or two species or subspecies of root parasites
that occur from the Mediterranean to the Gobi Desert. Using Illumina sequencing, we assembled the mitochondrial and plastid
genomes as well as some nuclear genes of a Cynomorium specimen from Italy. Selected genes were...
Few angiosperms have distinct Y-chromosomes, among them Silene latifolia (Caryophyllaceae), Rumex acetosa (Polygonaceae), and Coccinia grandis (Cucurbitaceae), the latter with a male/female difference of 10% of the total genome (female individuals have a 0.85 pg, male individuals 0.94 pg), due to a Y chromosome that arose ca. 3 my ago. We compared...
The 23 species of mycoheterotrophic or exoparasitic land plants (from 15 genera and six families) studied so far all retain
a minimal set of 17 of the normally 116 plastome genes. Only Rafflesia lagascae, an endoparasite concealed in its host except when flowering, has been reported as perhaps lacking a plastome, although it
still possesses plastid...
Gene trees of holoparasitic plants usually show distinctly longer branch lengths than seen in photosynthetic closest relatives. Such substitution rate jumps have made it difficult to infer the absolute divergence times of parasites. An additional problem is that parasite clades often lack a fossil record. Using nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequenc...
The history of many plant lineages is complicated by reticulate evolution with cases of hybridization often followed by genome duplication (allopolyploidy). In such a context, the inference of phylogenetic relationships and biogeographic scenarios based on molecular data is easier using haploid markers like chloroplast genome sequences. Hybridizati...
Using morphological, nuclear, and mitochondrial data, we here revise the taxonomy of Apodanthaceae and allocate the 36 names published in the family to ten biological species in two genera, Apodanthes and Pilostyles. All species are endo-parasites that live permanently inside trees or shrubs of the families Salicaceae or Fabaceae and that only emer...
List of accessions used in this study with author names for each species, herbarium vouchers, and GenBank accession numbers
Results of the dissections of 123 flowers from 82 specimens of Apodanthaceae
Unlabelled:
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Premise of the study:
The most recent reviews of the reproductive biology and sexual systems of parasitic angiosperms were published 17 yr ago and reported that dioecy might be associated with parasitism. We use current knowledge on parasitic lineages and their sister groups, and data on the reproductive biology and sexual systems...
Polyploidy and recurrent interspecific hybridization represent major features of Spartina evolution, resulting in several superimposed divergent genomes that coexist in the currently living species. This chapter summarizes what we presently know about Spartina history, emphasizing the recent hybridization and polyploidization events that have impor...
This review focuses on horizontal gene transfer (HGT) involving bacteria, fungi, and plants (Viridiplantae). It highlights in particular the persistent challenge of recognizing HGT, which requires a combination of methods from bioinformatics, phylogenetics, and molecular biology. Non-phylogenetic methods rely on compositional structure, such as G/C...
Movement of photoassimilates from leaves to phloem is an important step for the flux of carbon through plants. Fractionation of carbon isotopes during this process may influence their abundance in heterotrophic tissues. We subjected Eucalyptus globulus to 20, 25 and 28 °C ambient growth temperatures and measured compound-specific δ(13)C of carbohyd...