Susana Rodríguez-Echeverría

Susana Rodríguez-Echeverría
University of Coimbra | UC · Centre for Functional Ecology - Science for People & the Planet

PhD

About

176
Publications
40,266
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4,472
Citations
Introduction
I am a plant ecologist interested in mutualism, mainly those with soil microbes, their diversity, biogeography and ecological role. I am also an Editor of Ecosistemas, an international journal about Ecology in Spanish.
Additional affiliations
January 2009 - present
Curtin University
January 2003 - December 2012
University of Coimbra
January 2003 - December 2009
University of Extremadura

Publications

Publications (176)
Article
Plant–plant facilitation is an important driver of plant diversity, which in turn maintains ecosystem multifunctionality and can buffer some negative effects of climate change. Facilitation is classically attributed to the amelioration of environmental extremes and resource availability. Integrating below‐ground biota into the positive plant intera...
Article
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Reproductive traits are crucial for the establishment and maintenance of populations in new areas, and therefore for the invasion process. This work aimed to study the reproductive biology of four aggressive invasive Australian Acacia spp. in Portugal. Fruit and seed set, seed weight and germinability, and seedling growth were assessed for self- an...
Article
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Juniperus thurifera L. is an important tree endemic to the western Mediterranean basin that it is able to grow in semi-arid climates. It nowadays exhibits a disjunct distribution pattern, occurring in North Africa, Spain, France and the Italian Alps. The Strait of Gibraltar has acted as an efficient barrier against gene flow between African and Eur...
Article
The genetic diversity of root nodulating bacteria isolated from Retama sphaerocarpa was studied using BOX-A1R PCR and phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA region, as well as the housekeeping genes atpD, glnII and recA. A total of 193 isolates were obtained from eight different sites with different soil and environmental conditions in the Iberian P...
Article
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Plant–soil feedbacks can exacerbate competition between invasive and native species, although the net effect of the interaction between soil biota and competition is likely to be species-specific. Very few studies have addressed the combined effect of soil and competition on plant performance and invasion by exotic woody species. This study explore...
Article
Phenolic compounds are key to plant defence, offering protection as antioxidants, UV shields, and antimicrobials. Their production is largely shaped by environmental conditions. It is believed that plants at lower elevations increase phenolic content to counter herbivory, while those at higher elevations rely on phenolics to manage abiotic stresses...
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Understanding how biotic interactions shape ecosystems and impact their functioning, resilience and biodiversity has been a sustained research priority in ecology. Yet, traditional assessments of ecological complexity typically focus on species-species interactions that mediate a particular function (e.g., pollination), overlooking both the synergi...
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Synergic effects between climate change and invasive species may alter soil microbial diversity and functioning, as well as cause major shifts in physicochemical properties. Moreover, some of these ecological impacts may manifest even after the removal of the invasive species. We have conducted a field experiment to assess such effects on soil micr...
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Background and aims Ecological restoration strategies are emerging globally to counteract biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. However, restored ecosystems may not reach undisturbed biodiversity and functionality. One reason of this limited success may be a focus on short-term recovery of diversity, composition, or isolated functions. These...
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Increasing mean global temperatures in conjunction with increases in the frequency and severity of drought events affect plant growth and physiology, particularly in more arid and mountainous ecosystems. Thus, it is imperative to understand the response of plant growth to climatic oscillations in these regions. This study used dendrochronological a...
Preprint
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Understanding how biotic interactions affect ecosystem functioning has been a research priority in natural sciences due to their critical role in bolstering ecological resilience. Yet, traditional assessment of ecological complexity typically focus on species-species effective interactions that mediate a particular function (e.g. pollination or see...
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Premio al mejor revisor de Ecosistemas y reconocimiento a editores invitados del bienio 2021-2022
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Keystone species are disproportionately important for ecosystem functioning. While all species engage in multiple interaction types with other species, keystone species importance is often defined based on a single dimension of their Eltonian niche, that is, one type of interaction (e.g. keystone predator). It remains unclear whether the importance...
Article
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New data from sites in Spain, Sicily and North America establish that the spread of the European legume Cytisus scoparius (Scotch broom) across North America involved the concurrent invasion of a European mobile genetic element (symbiosis island [SI]) into North American Bradyrhizobium nodule bacteria. At four SI loci, bacteria from nine C. scopari...
Article
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Cushion plants are specialized keystone species of alpine environments that can have a positive effect on ecosystem structure and function. However, we know relatively little about how cushion plants regulate the diversity and composition of soil microbial communities, major drivers of soil processes and ecosystem functioning. Identifying what fact...
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Aims Gypsum soils are P-limited atypical soils that harbour a rich endemic flora. These singular soils are usually found in drylands, where plant activity and soil nutrient availability are seasonal. No previous studies have analysed the seasonality of P nutrition and its interaction with the arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi (AMF) colonisation in gypsum...
Article
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Forests have expanded across Europe over the last centuries as a consequence of farmland (agricultural and pasture) abandonment. Agricultural practices usually increase soil fertility and reduce the diversity and abundance of ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi, essential mutualists of many woody species in temperate and Mediterranean forests. The recovery...
Preprint
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The importance of keystone species is often defined based on a single type of interaction (e.g., keystone predator). However, it remains unclear whether this functional importance extends across interaction types. We conducted a global meta-analysis of interaction networks to examine whether species functional importance in one niche dimension is m...
Article
More knowledge of community composition of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi in ecosystems in relation to habitat type and land use intensity is needed. We studied AMF in 106 soil samples from pristine natural forests and a gradient of disturbance including semi-natural and intensively managed pastures of Terceira, Azores. Altogether, 42 spore morp...
Article
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Cushion plants are life forms with a hemispherical or mat‐like, prostrate canopy well adapted to the extreme conditions of cold regions that have appealed to scientists for their ability to cope with extreme environments in most mountains, arctic, and subantarctic regions of the world. They can buffer the effects of low temperature and drought and...
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A frequent hypothesis explaining the high susceptibility of many crops to pests and diseases is that, in the process of domestication, crops have lost defensive genes and traits against pests and diseases. Ecological theory predicts trade‐offs whereby resistance and tolerance go at the cost of each other. We used wild relatives, early domesticated...
Article
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Mutualistic interactions like those established between plants and mycorrhizal fungi or seed dispersers are key drivers of plant population dynamics and ecosystem functioning; however, these interactions have rarely been explored together. We assembled a tripartite fungi–plant–disperser network in the Gorongosa National Park—Mozambique, to test (1)...
Article
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Seed dispersal allows plants to colonise new sites and escape from pathogens and intraspecific competition, maintaining plant genetic diversity and regulating plant distribution. Conversely, most plant species form mutualistic associations with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi in a symbiosis established immediately after seed germination. Because...
Article
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Myrmecochorous plants produce seeds with lipid-rich appendages (elaiosomes) which act as a reward for seed-dispersing ants. Seed dispersal is important for exotic species, which often need to establish new mutualistic interactions in order to colonize new non-native habitats. However, little is known about the importance of elaiosomes for seed remo...
Article
Parkinsonia aculeata and Prosopis juliflora are two of the most problematic invasive plant species in the Brazilian tropical seasonal dry forest, but the mechanisms driving the biological invasion of this ecosystem is virtually unknown. This study assessed the role of arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis, in particular of Funneliformis mosseae, on the...
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The original version of this Article contained Figshare links in the Code availability statement that were not functional. The correct Figshare links to MATLAB scripts and R code used in this study are https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.4955651 and https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.4836383, respectively. These errors have now been corrected in b...
Article
Plant interactions with soil microbiota are important drivers of biodiversity and ecosystem function, but climate change can modify these interactions by directly altering the soil community, which can affect the direction and magnitude of such interactions. We manipulated water quantity and soil microbiota of two populations of three plant species...
Article
A sustainable practice for weed control and crop protection is the incorporation of green manures with phytotoxic potential. It is gaining attention as a way to reduce the use of synthetic herbicides in agriculture and so pot experiments and field trials were conducted to explore the possible use of residues of Acacia species to alleviate weed emer...
Article
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Seed dispersal and mycorrhizal associations are key mutualisms for the functioning and regeneration of plant communities; however, these processes have seldom been explored together. We hypothesised that obligatory mycorrhizal plants will be less likely to have long-distance dispersal (LDD) syndromes since the probability of finding suitable mycorr...
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Species interaction networks are traditionally explored as discrete entities with well-defined spatial borders, an oversimplification likely impairing their applicability. Using a multilayer network approach, explicitly accounting for inter-habitat connectivity, we investigate the spatial structure of seed–dispersal networks across the Gorongosa Na...
Poster
Full-text available
CITE THE NATCOMM PAPER - DOI: 10.1038/S41467-017-02658-Y Use of multilayer network analysis to spatial networks - Poster presented at the 3rd Symposium on Ecological Networks (2017), Uppsala, Sweden.
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Aims The tree legume Acacia dealbata Link is an aggressive Australian invader that severely affects abiotic and biotic compartments of ecosystems worldwide. This invasive species outcompetes native plant communities through direct competition, changes in microhabitat and soil properties under the canopy and the release of allelopathic compounds. Ho...
Article
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The stress-gradient hypothesis predicts a higher frequency of facilitative interactions as resource limitation increases. Under severe resource limitation, it has been suggested that facilitation may revert to competition, and identifying the presence as well as determining the magnitude of this shift is important for predicting the effect of clima...
Article
The study of intraspecific seed packaging ( i.e . seed size/number strategy) variation across different populations may allow better understanding of the ecological forces that drive seed evolution in plants. Juniperus thurifera (Cupressaceae) provides a good model to study this due to the existence of two subspecies differentiated by phenotypic tr...
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Women are still under-represented in science and technology because there is a bias in the different evaluation processes from the admission of oral communications at conferences to the access to more qualified positions. In this study, we compared the participation and visibility of female ecologists in the IV Iberian Ecological Conference (CIE4)...
Article
Understanding the distribution and diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi ( AMF ) and the rules that govern AMF assemblages has been hampered by a lack of data from natural ecosystems. In addition, the current knowledge on AMF diversity is biased towards temperate ecosystems, whereas little is known about other habitats such as dry tropical ecos...
Article
Exotic entomophilous plants need to establish effective pollinator interactions in order to succeed after being introduced into a new community, particularly if they are obligatory outbreeders. By establishing these novel interactions in the new non-native range, invasive plants are hypothesised to drive changes in the composition and functioning o...
Article
Seed dispersal is a vital step for plant reproduction and long-term vegetation dynamics, and many plants rely on animals for this process. Large animals are disproportionally important dispersers, however they tend to be under a higher extinction risk worldwide. There is compelling evidence that the global biodiversity crisis is leading to the dete...
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Invasive plants are hypothesized to have higher fitness in introduced areas due to their release from pathogens and herbivores and the relocation of resources to reproduction. However, few studies have tested this hypothesis in native and introduced regions. A biogeographical approach is fundamental to understanding the mechanisms involved in plant...
Article
The symbiosis between leguminous plants and symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria is a key component of terrestrial ecosystems. Woody legumes are well represented in tropical African forests but despite their ecological and socio-economic importance, they have been little studied for this symbiosis. In this study, we examined the identity and diversit...
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Biological invasions pose a serious threat to native semi-arid areas of Brazil, especially in areas of the state of Ceara that are typically invaded by Cryptostegia madagascariensis, an exotic plant species from Madagascar. However, how this biological invasion influences the composition of the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) community and how...
Article
Many plant species from Brazilian semi-arid present arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in their rhizosphere. These microorganisms play a key role in the establishment, growth, survival of plants and protection against drought, pathogenic fungi and nematodes. This study presents a quantitative analysis of the AMF species associated with Mimosa tenui...
Conference Paper
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Integrar las comunidades del suelo en la teoría ecológica general es uno de los desafíos actuales de la Ecología Terrestre. Las comunidades de organismos del suelo son responsables de la descomposición y el reciclado de nutrientes, procesos esenciales para el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas terrestres y los ciclos biogeoquímicos a escala global....
Article
This study examines plant and soil microbial diversity in a cereal–fallow rotation scheme in the cereal steppes of Castro Verde, Southern Portugal, which have an important conservation value as they provide habitat for many steppic birds with unfavorable conservation status. For that we monitored plant and soil microbial diversity during 4 years in...
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The phytotoxic activity of novel natural compounds is generally evaluated by the bioassay-directed fractionation procedure conducted with bioassays on model species. Two different methodologies to dissolve the examined compounds, using either organic solvents and water, or dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and buffered medium, are commonly used in these bi...
Article
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An increased understanding of intraspecific seed packaging (i.e. seed size/number strategy) variation across different environments may improve current knowledge of the ecological forces that drive seed evolution in plants. In particular, pre-dispersal seed predation may influence seed packaging strategies, triggering a reduction of the resources a...
Article
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Facilitation by nurse plants is a key process involved in the organization of plant communities and maintenance of biodiversity, particularly in harsh environments. Nurse plants increase plant diversity and productivity in these ecosystems, but our knowledge on the mechanisms through which such facilitation operates is still expanding. Despite grow...
Conference Paper
The reproductive biology of exotic species affects their capacity to become naturalized and invasive in non-native areas. Selfing is a common trait in many invasive plants because it provides reproductive assurance under low availability of pollination vectors and sexual partners. Nonetheless, the predominantly self-incompatible Australian Acacia s...
Poster
Full-text available
European-native species can grow in soils invaded by Acacia dealbata: implications for restoration.