Tanya Scharaschkin

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Queensland University of Technology

Floral mimics deceive their pollinators by developing visual and olfactory resemblance to various models. We report a flower that exhibits phenotypes like aerial litter and deceives an aerial litter specialist beetle to achieve pollination. We assessed the floral phenology and the effective pollinators of an Australian understorey treelet, Meiogyne...

Premise The family Annonaceae possesses a broad array of floral phenotypes and pollination specialisations, and are important in the plant-pollinator interactions of tropical rainforests. Although there has been considerable effort to assess their interactions with pollinators, attempts to characterise their visual and olfactory communication chann...

Floral mimics deceive their pollinators by developing visual and olfactory resemblance to their models. Our knowledge on the diversity of models is expanding rapidly. We report a system in which the flowers exhibit phenotypes similar to aerial litter and deceives an aerial litter specialist beetle to achieve pollination. We assessed the floral phen...

Invasive plant species are hypothesized as being more efficient at resource acquisition and use, resulting in faster growth than co-occurring non-invasive plant species. Nonetheless, some findings suggest that trait differences between invasive and non-invasive species are context dependent. In this study, two forms of an invasive vine species, Dol...

Invasive plant species are hypothesized as being more efficient at resource acquisition and use, resulting in faster growth than co-occurring non-invasive plant species. Nonetheless, some findings suggest that trait differences between invasive and non-invasive species are context dependent. In this study, two forms of an invasive vine species, Dol...

Cat’s claw creeper vine, Dolichandra unguis-cati (L.) Lohmann (syn. Macfadyena unguis-cati (L.) Gentry), is a major environmental weed in Australia. Two forms of the weed with distinctive leaf morphology and reproductive traits, including varying fruit size, occur in Queensland, Australia. The long pod form occurs in a few localities in Queensland,...

Tripogon loliiformis is a desiccation-tolerant grass that occurs throughout mainland Australia. There has been recent interest in this species as a model system for understanding desiccation tolerance in a native grass at the structural, molecular and physiological levels. However, not much is known about the biology and natural history of this spe...

The family Myrtaceae in Chile comprises 26 species in 10 genera. The species occur in a diverse range of environments including humid temperate forests, swamps, riparian habitats and coastal xeromorphic shrublands. Most of these species are either endemic to Chile or endemic to the humid temperate forests of Chile and Argentina. Although many taxa...

The tribe Myrteae (Myrtaceae) is widely distributed in Australasia and South America. In Australia, Myrteae is represented by ca. 100 species in 11 genera. Most species occur in rainforests and mesic habitats, but some species can be found in coastal sands and shrublands. To date, phylogenetic analyses in Myrteae have primarily focused on neotropic...

Species of fleshy-fruited Myrtaceae are generally associated with humid environments and their vegetative anatomy is mainly mesophytic. Myrceugenia rufa is an endemic and rare species from arid zones of the coast of central Chile and there are no anatomical studies regarding its leaf anatomy and environmental adaptations. Here we describe the leaf...

Myceugenia rufa es una rara y endémica especie de la costa de Chile central. A la fecha, no hay estudios publicados que describan la anatomía de flor, fruto o semilla del taxón. Cuarenta y dos especímenes fueron muestreados a lo largo del rango geográfico de la especie. Las estructuras reproductivas fueron fijadas, deshidratadas, incluidas en paraf...

Myrceugenia Berg. is a South American genus of fleshy fruited Myrtaceae with ca. 40 species. Fourteen species occur in Chile and adjacent Argentina and 25 in eastern South America, mainly Brazil. Previous phylogenetic reconstructions based on molecular data alone have shown that these two disjunctive distributions are reciprocally monophyletic. The...

• Premise of the study: Here we propose a staining protocol using toluidine blue (TBO) and ruthenium red to reliably identify secondary compounds in the leaves of some species of Myrtaceae. • Methods and Results: Leaves of 10 species representing 10 different genera of Myrtaceae were processed and stained using five different combinations of ruthen...

High germination rates and rapid germination behaviour in response to different environmental cues are traits that may be associated with invasiveness. Cat’s claw creeper (Dolichandra unguis-cati (L.) Lohmann (syn. Macfadyena unguis-cati (L.) Gentry), a Weed of National Significance has two forms, a long-pod (LP) form and a short-pod (SP) from. The...

Unlabelled: • Premise of the study: Plant invasiveness can be promoted by higher values of adaptive traits (e.g., photosynthetic capacity, biomass accumulation), greater plasticity and coordination of these traits, and by higher and positive relative influence of these functionalities on fitness, such as increasing reproductive output. However,...

Ugni molinae Turcz. is one of the most studied species of South American Myrtaceae due to its edible fruits and foliar medicinal compounds. However, there is no anatomical study of the leaves or secretory cavities. This paper seeks to describe the leaf micromorphology and anatomy of the species using standard protocols for light and scanning electr...

The invasive liana cat’s claw creeper Dolichandra unguis-cati (L.) L.G. Lohmann (syn. Macfadyena unguis-cati (L.) A.H. Gentry) exhibits intraspecific variation in leaf morphology, but this is rarely noted in the published literature. The present study documents variation in leaf morphology in two forms of the species that occur in Australia (long p...

Fundamental misconceptions regarding some basic phylogenetic terminology are presented in this opinion piece. An attempt is made to point out why these misconceptions exist and what may be causing the misapplication of terminology. Clarification is providing via basic definitions and simple explanations. Differences between the scientific fields of...

Unlike most genera in the early-divergent angiosperm family Annonaceae, Pseuduvaria exhibits a diversity of floral sex expression. Most species are structurally andromonoecious (or possibly androdioecious), although the hermaphroditic flowers have been inferred to be functionally pistillate, with sterile staminodes. Pseuduvaria presents an ideal mo...

Putative chemical composition of floral volatiles emitted by hermaphroditic and staminate flowers in Pseuduvaria mulgraveana. Phenological phases: II = immature; III = pistillate phase; IV = petal abscission phase; V = staminate phase. (DOC)

Madeira vine (Anredera cordifolia (Ten.) Steenis) is a climber in the angiosperm family Basellaceae. It is native to South America and has naturalised in Australia. It is regarded as a serious environmental weed because of the structural damage it causes to native vegetation. The present study, for the first time, documents anatomical and morpholog...

The fungal genera Ustilago, Sporisorium and Macalpinomyces represent an unresolved complex. Taxa within the complex often possess characters that occur in more than one genus, creating uncertainty for species placement. Previous studies have indicated that the genera cannot be separated based on morphology alone. Here we chronologically review the...

The genera Ustilago, Sporisorium and Macalpinomyces are a polyphyletic complex of plant pathogenic fungi. The four main morphological characters used to define these genera have been considered homoplasious and not useful for resolving the complex. This study re-evaluates character homology and discusses the use of these characters for defining mon...

Morphological characters within the Ustilago-Sporisorium-Macalpinomyces complex are defined explicitly. The genera Sporisorium and Anthracocystis are emended to reflect morphological synapomorphies. Three new genera, Langdonia, Stollia and Triodiomyces are described based on soral synapomorphies and host classification. The new classification of th...

Acid sulfate soils (ASS) are one of the stressor factors that cause many mangrove restoration projects to fail. Achieving successful rehabilitation in an ASS affected area requires an understanding of the geochemical conditions that influence the establishment and growth of mangrove seedlings. This study evaluated the effect of tidal inundation on...

Ustanciosporium appendiculatum was collected on Rhynchospora exserta from northern Western Australia in May 2009. The identification is based on morphological and sequence data which are presented for the first time. This is the first report of this smut fungus outside North America. Rhynchospora exserta is a new host species for this smut fungus.

Endogenous members of the family Caulimoviridae have now been found in the genomes of many plant species. Although these sequences are usually fragmented and rearranged and show varying degrees of decay, the genomes of the ancestral viruses can often be reassembled in silico, allowing classification within the existing viral taxonomic framework. In...

Sugarcane orange rust, caused by Puccinia kuehnii, was once considered a minor disease in the Australian sugar industry. However, in 2000 a new race of the pathogen devastated the high-performing sugarcane cultivar Q124, and caused the industry Aus$150–210 million in yield losses. At the time of the epidemic, very little was known about the genetic...

The Annonaceae are a pantropical angiosperm family, in which Anaxagorea is sister to the rest of the family based on previous phylogenetic studies. Anaxagorea is the only genus of Annonaceae with a disjunct distribution in South and Central America and southeast Asia. Earlier arguments on the biogeographic history of Annonaceae led to the hypothesi...

Cat’s claw creeper, Macfadyena unguis-cati (L.) Gentry (Bignoniaceae) is a major environmental weed of riparian areas, rainforest communities and remnant natural vegetation in coastal Queensland and New South Wales, Australia. In densely infested areas, it smothers standing vegetation, including large trees, and causes canopy collapse. Quantitative...

Since the 1925 Scope's trial there has been a long-standing conflict in the United States between science teachers and Fundamentalist Christians over the teaching of evolution in schools. Perhaps surprisingly, there are no analogous skirmishes in Pakistan, the second most populous Muslim-majority country in the world. Instead, religious views are s...

Anaxagorea is a critical genus for understanding morphological evolution in Annonaceae because it shares a variety of features with other Magnoliales that have been interpreted as primitive relative to other Annonaceae. We present a detailed discussion of morphological characters used in a combined morphological and molecular phylogenetic analysis...

Annonaceae and Myristicaceae, the two largest families of Magnoliales, are pantropical groups of uncertain geographic history. The most recent morphological and molecular phylogenetic analyses identify the Asian-American genus Anaxagorea as sister to all other Annonaceae and the ambavioids, consisting of small genera endemic to South America, Afric...

The Annonaceae are a pantropical angiosperm family, in which Anaxagorea is sister to the rest of the family based on previous phylogenetic studies. Anaxagorea is the only genus of Annonaceae with a disjunct distribution in South and Central America and southeast Asia. Earlier arguments on the biogeographic history of Annonaceae led to the hypothesi...

Magnoliales, consisting of six families of tropical to warm-temperate woody angiosperms, were long considered the most archaic order of flowering plants, but molecular analyses nest them among other eumagnoliids. Based on separate and combined analyses of a morphological matrix (115 characters) and multiple molecular data sets (seven variable chlor...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Davis, 2004. Includes bibliographical references. Photocopy.