Xavier Picó

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Verified

Xavier verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• Dr.
• Senior Researcher at Doñana Biological Station

Natural history collections (NHCs) represent an enormous and largely untapped wealth of information on the Earth's biota, made available through GBIF as digital preserved specimen records. Precise knowledge of where the specimens were collected is paramount to rigorous ecological studies, especially in the field of species distribution modelling. H...

Evolutionary change begins at the population scale. Therefore, understanding adaptive variation requires the identification of the factors maintaining and shaping standing genetic variation at the within‐population level. Spatial and temporal environmental heterogeneity represent ecological drivers of within‐population genetic variation, determinin...

Natural variation in trichome pattern (amount and distribution) is prominent among populations of many angiosperms. However, the degree of parallelism in the genetic mechanisms underlying this diversity and its environmental drivers in different species remain unclear. To address these questions, we analyzed the genomic and environmental bases of l...

Background Despite its implications for population dynamics and evolution, the relationship between genetic and phenotypic variation in wild populations remains unclear. Here, we estimated variation and plasticity in life-history traits and fitness of the annual plant Arabidopsis thaliana in two common garden experiments that differed in environmen...

Plant root exudates are involved in nutrient acquisition, microbial partnerships, and inter‐organism signaling. Yet, little is known about the genetic and environmental drivers of root exudate variation at large geographical scales, which may help understand the evolutionary trajectories of plants in heterogeneous environments. We quantified natura...

The location of populations across a species’ distribution determines its evolutionary dynamics due to the combination of forces acting upon the genetic and phenotypic variation in populations from different environments. A comprehensive understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of any species requires the quantification of the amount of variation...

The spatiotemporal genetic variation at early plant life stages may substantially affect the natural recolonization of human-altered areas, which is crucial to understand plant and habitat conservation. In animal-dispersed plants, dispersers’ behavior may critically drive the distribution of genetic variation. Here, we examine how genetic rarity is...

In plant ecology, extreme environments are those that pose physiological or other limitations to plant growth, especially for non-adapted taxa. In these environments, the severity of climate conditions and/or the limitations imposed by particular soil substrates represent major selective pressures for plants, leading to the evolution of a wide arra...

Premise of the study: The interfertile species Anacyclus clavatus, A. homogamos and A. valentinus represent a plant complex coexisting in large anthropic areas of the western Mediterranean Basin with phenotypically mixed populations exhibiting a great floral variation. The goal of this study was to estimate the genetic identity of each species, to...

Understanding the genetic and molecular mechanisms allowing plants to adapt to heterogeneous environments still remains elusive. Such a goal requires the combination of common garden experiments to quantify variation in plant developmental phases with the detection of gene expression patterns along the life cycle in natural settings where genes hav...

Despite the adaptive and taxonomic relevance of the natural diversity for trichome patterning and morphology, the molecular and evolutionary mechanisms underlying these traits remain mostly unknown, particularly in organs other than leaves. In this study, we address the ecological, genetic and molecular bases of the natural variation for trichome p...

The phenotypic space encompasses the assemblage of trait combinations yielding well-suited integrated phenotypes. At the population level, understanding the phenotypic space structure requires the quantification of among- and within-population variations in traits and the correlation pattern among them. Here, we studied the phenotypic space of the...

Population differentiation is a pervasive process in nature. At present, evolutionary studies on plant population differentiation address key questions by undertaking joint ecological and genetic approaches and employing a combination of molecular and experimental means. In this special issue, we gathered a collection of papers dealing with various...

Both inter- and intraspecific diversity has been described for trichome patterning in fruits, which is presumably involved in plant adaptation. However, the mechanisms underlying this developmental trait have been hardly addressed. Here we examined natural populations of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) that develop trichomes in fruits and pedice...

Arabidopsis has become a model plant for ecological and population genomics, owing to the substantial phenotypic and genotypic variation that exists among and within natural populations. Specially, the recent availability of large worldwide collections of accessions, together with their full genome sequences, has triggered the study of Arabidopsis...

Migration is a process with important implications for the genetic structure of populations. However, there is an aspect of migration seldom investigated in plants: migration between temporally isolated groups of individuals within the same geographic population. The genetic implications of temporal migration can be particularly relevant for semelp...

Background: Disentangling the drivers of genetic differentiation is one of the cornerstones in evolution. This is because genetic diversity, and the way in which it is partitioned within and among populations across space, is an important asset for the ability of populations to adapt and persist in changing environments. We tested three major hypot...

Premise: Nuclear microsatellite markers were developed for Linum bienne, the sister species of the crop L. usitatissimum, to provide molecular genetic tools for the investigation of L. bienne genetic diversity and structure. Methods and results: Fifty microsatellite loci were identified in L. bienne by means of genome skimming, and 44 loci succe...

The combination of extensive population sampling with whole-genome sequencing in the annual plant Arabidopsis thaliana has recently allowed the identification of a genetically differentiated relict lineage. The most important nuclei of relict A. thaliana is found in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, although relict accessions have also been f...

Restricted seed dispersal frequently leads to fine‐scale spatial genetic structure (i.e., FSGS) within plant populations. Depending on its spatial extent and the mobility of pollinators, this inflated kinship at the immediate neighbourhood can critically impoverish pollen quality. Despite the common occurrence of positive FSGS within plant populati...

Global climate change (GCC) may be imposing distribution range shifts in many organisms worldwide. Multiple efforts are currently focused on the development of models to better predict distribution range shifts due to GCC. We addressed this issue by including intra‐specific genetic structure and spatial autocorrelation (SAC) of data in distribution...

Natural history collections represent a vast and superb wealth of information gathered and curated across centuries by institutions such as natural history museums and botanical gardens around the world. The relatively recent advent and maturation of accessible computer technology has allowed the initiation of major digitization projects aimed at m...

Rapid evolution in annual plants can be quantified by comparing phenotypic and genetic changes between past and contemporary individuals from the same populations over several generations. Such knowledge will help understand the response of plants to rapid environmental shifts, such as the ones imposed by global climate change. To that end, we unde...

The evolutionary response of organisms to global climate change is expected to be strongly conditioned by preexisting standing genetic variation. In addition, natural selection imposed by global climate change on fitness‐related traits can be heterogeneous over time. We estimated selection of life‐history traits of an entire genetic lineage of the...

Current global change is fueling an interest to understand the genetic and molecular mechanisms of plant adaptation to climate. In particular, altered flowering time is a common strategy for escape from unfavorable climate temperature. In order to determine the genomic bases underlying flowering time adaptation to this climatic factor, we have syst...

To understand how adaptive evolution in life‐cycle phenology operates in plants, we need to unravel the effects of geographic variation in putative agents of natural selection on life‐cycle phenology by considering all key developmental transitions and their co‐variation patterns. We address this goal by quantifying the temperature‐driven and geogr...

We report on the outcomes of the XIV MEDECOS & XIII AEET meeting (http://www.medecos- aeet-meeting2017.es/) to identify the major topics, trends, and issues of interest for the international community working in Mediterranean-type ecosystems worldwide.

Significance The principal plant model species, Arabidopsis thaliana , is central to our understanding of how molecular variants lead to phenotypic change. In this genome-sequencing effort focused on accessions from Africa, we show that African populations represent the most ancient lineages and provide new clues about the origin of selfing and the...

The epigenome orchestrates genome accessibility, functionality, and three-dimensional structure. Because epigenetic variation can impact transcription and thus phenotypes, it may contribute to adaptation. Here, we report 1,107 high-quality single-base resolution methylomes and 1,203 transcriptomes from the 1001 Genomes collection of Arabidopsis tha...

Arabidopsis thaliana serves as a model organism for the study of fundamental physiological, cellular, and molecular processes. It has also greatly advanced our understanding of intraspecific genome variation. We present a detailed map of variation in 1,135 high-quality re-sequenced natural inbred lines representing the native Eurasian and North Afr...

The temporal control or timing of the life cycle of annual plants is presumed to provide adaptive strategies to escape harsh environments for survival and reproduction. This is mainly determined by the timing of germination, which is controlled by the level of seed dormancy, and of flowering initiation. However, the environmental factors driving th...

Genetic diversity provides insight into heterogeneous demographic and adaptive history across organisms’ distribution ranges. For this reason, decomposing single species into genetic units may represent a powerful tool to better understand biogeographical patterns as well as improve predictions of the effects of GCC (global climate change) on biodi...

The timing of flowering initiation depends strongly on the environment, a property termed as the plasticity of flowering. Such plasticity determines the adaptive potential of plants since it provides phenotypic buffer against environmental changes, and its natural variation contributes to evolutionary adaptation. We addressed the genetic mechanisms...

Plants are highly sensitive to environmental changes and even small variations in ambient temperature have severe consequences on their growth and development. Temperature affects multiple aspects of plant development, but the processes and mechanisms underlying thermo-sensitive growth responses are mostly unknown. Here we exploit natural variation...

• Theoretical models state that natural selection and mating patterns account for floral morph ratio in style-polymorphic plants. However, the demographic history of populations can also influence variation in morph ratios. If so, we hypothesize an association between the morph ratios and the genetic structure across populations.• We used nuclear m...

The role that different life-history traits may have in the process of adaptation caused by divergent selection can be assessed by using extensive collections of geographically-explicit populations. This is because adaptive phenotypic variation shifts gradually across space as a result of the geographic patterns of variation in environmental select...

Deciphering the genetic structure of Arabidopsis thaliana diversity across its geographic range provides the bases for elucidating the demographic history of this model plant. Despite the unique A. thaliana genomic resources currently available, its history in North Africa, the extreme southern limit in the biodiversity hotspot of the Mediterranean...

• Premise of the study: Nuclear microsatellite primers were developed for the weedy herb Anacyclus clavatus to study the genetic structure of hybrid zones with closely related taxa in the western Mediterranean Basin, where different floral phenotypes are present. • Methods and Results: We obtained two microsatellite libraries using next-generation...

The study of the evolutionary and population genetics of quantitative traits requires the assessment of within‐ and among‐population patterns of variation. We carried out experiments including eight Iberian Arabidopsis thaliana populations (10 individuals per population) in glasshouse and field conditions. We quantified among‐ and within‐population...

Early life-history transitions are crucial determinants of lifetime survival and fecundity. Adaptive evolution in early life-history traits involves a complex interplay between the developing plant and its current and future environments. We examined the plant's earliest life-history traits, dissecting an integrated suite of pregermination processe...

Local adaptation provides an opportunity to study the genetic basis of adaptation and investigate the allelic architecture of adaptive genes. We study delay of germination 1 (DOG1), a gene controlling natural variation in seed dormancy in Arabidopsis thaliana and investigate evolution of dormancy in 41 populations distributed in four regions separa...

1. Understanding how plants respond and adapt to varying environmental conditions has attracted the attention of plant ecologists for decades. To study this process, altitudinal gradients are used because of their inherent variation in environmental conditions. In the current scenario of global warming, altitudinal gradients may also represent a va...

Vernalization, the induction of flowering by low winter temperatures, is likely to be involved in plant climatic adaptation. However, the genetic, molecular and ecological bases underlying the quantitative variation that tunes vernalization sensitivity to natural environments are largely unknown. To address these questions, we have studied the enha...

Extensive natural variation has been described for the timing of flowering initiation in many annual plants, including the model wild species Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), which is presumed to be involved in adaptation to different climates. However, the environmental factors that might shape this genetic variation, as well as the molecular b...

We have developed and optimized microsatellite loci from a genomic library of Erysimum mediohispanicum. Microsatellites were also tested for cross-amplification in 31 other Erysimum species. A total of 10 microsatellite loci were successfully amplified. They were polymorphic for 81 E. mediohispanicum individuals from two locations in Sierra Nevada...

Currently, there exists a limited knowledge on the extent of temporal variation in population genetic parameters of natural populations. Here, we study the extent of temporal variation in population genetics by genotyping 151 genome-wide SNP markers polymorphic in 466 individuals collected from nine populations of the annual plant Arabidopsis thali...

Water-limited hot environments are good examples of hyper-aridity. Trees are scarce in these environments but some manage to survive, such as the tree Moringa peregrina. Understanding how trees maintain viable populations in extremely arid environments may provide insight into the adaptive mechanisms by which trees cope with extremely arid weather...

• Understanding the adaptive basis of life history variation is a central goal in evolutionary ecology. The use of model species enables the combination of molecular mechanistic knowledge with ecological and evolutionary questions, but the study of life history variation in natural environments is required to merge these disciplines. • Here, we tes...

Unlabelled: Premise of the study: Microsatellite loci from a genomic library of the species Narcissus papyraceus were optimized and characterized for studies of population genetics. • Methods and results: Eleven markers that were successfully amplified showed polymorphism when tested on 50 individuals from two populations in southern Spain and...

Aim This study aims to link demographic traits and post‐glacial recolonization processes with genetic traits in Himantoglossum hircinum (L.) Spreng (Orchidaceae), and to test the implications of the central–marginal concept (CMC) in Europe. Location Twenty sites covering the entire European distribution range of this species. Methods We employed am...

Background: Understanding the relationship between environment and genetics requires the integration of knowledge on the demographic behavior of natural populations. However, the demographic performance and genetic composition of Arabidopsis thaliana populations in the species' native environments remain largely uncharacterized. This information,...

There is growing evidence that genetic and ecological factors interact in determining population persistence. The demographic effects of inbreeding depression can largely depend on the ecological milieu. We used demographic data of the perennial herb Succisa pratensis from six populations in grazed and ungrazed sites with different soil moisture. W...

To understand the demographic history of Arabidopsis thaliana within its native geographical range, we have studied its genetic structure in the Iberian Peninsula region. We have analyzed the amount and spatial distribution of A. thaliana genetic variation by genotyping 268 individuals sampled in 100 natural populations from the Iberian Peninsula....

Density-independent and density-dependent processes affect plant mortality. Although less well understood, age-specific mortality can also play an important role in plant mortality. The goal of this study was to analyse several factors accounting for mortality in the Mediterranean short-lived perennial herb Lobularia maritima. We followed three coh...

Survival and fecundity are basic components of demography and therefore have a strong influence on population dynamics. These two key parameters and their relationship are crucial to understand the evolution of life histories. It remains, however, to be empirically established how life span, fecundity, and population dynamics are linked in differen...

During the last century, unprecedented landscape fragmentation has severely affected many plant species occurring in once widespread semi-natural grasslands in Europe. Fragmentation reduces population size and increases isolation, which can jeopardize the persistence of populations. Recent large-scale ecological and genetic studies across several E...

Bryophytes have increased in abundance in northern regions, and climate changes have been proposed to account for this change. However, changes in the population dynamics of microtine rodents may also contribute to changes in bryophyte abundance. New evidence indicates a tendency for microtine rodent population oscillations to change from periodici...

Rare plant species have extremely narrow distributions that can be reduced to a single or few populations. The rare long-lived plant Kosteletzkya pentacarpos is one such species because only two extant localities are known in the western Mediterranean. In this study, we analyse the population dynamics over nine years of the only population known in...

We examined the effects of repeated inbreeding on fitness components of the long-lived perennial Succisa pratensis (Dipsacaceae). Plants from six populations differing in size were used to establish lines with expected inbreeding coefficients f of 0, 0.5 and 0.75. The effects of different inbreeding levels were measured for seed set, seed mass, per...

We developed eight polymorphic microsatellite loci for Collinsia verna (Veronicaceae). In a sample of 18–35 individuals from a single population, we found two to 15 alleles per locus (mean 8.3). We also tested these loci for cross-amplification in all 22 species in the tribe Collinseae. Overall, more than half the species in the tribe amplified one...

During habitat fragmentation, plant populations become smaller and more isolated from each other, resulting in increasing inbreeding rates within populations. Furthermore, fragmentation is often accompanied by a progressive deterioration of soil conditions. Overall, high inbreeding rates and poor soil conditions decrease plant performance and so in...

Restingas are sandy coastal plains that stand between the sea and the Brazilian Atlantic forest mountains. The predominant restinga vegetation type in northern Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is characterized by the formation of islands that begins with colonization by some pioneer herbs and/or woody plants. Pioneer plants are stress-resistant and nurse ma...

Several ecological (e.g., environmental variability, density dependence) and genetic (e.g., genetic variability, genetic drift, inbreeding depression) factors determine the dynamics of plant populations. Understanding the effect of such factors on population growth rate becomes crucial to design effective conservation plans to reduce extinction pro...

The ecological and evolutionary implications of dispersal are many. Pollination type and maternal effects may affect plant fitness traits, including life-cycle traits as well as dispersal ability. This study investigated the joint influence of pollination type and maternal effects on both life-cycle traits and dispersal ability in the herb Hypochae...

Significantly different maternal line responses to inbreeding provide a mechanism for the invasion of a selfing variant into a population. The goal of this study was to examine the extent of family-level variation in inbreeding depression in the mixed-mating, perennial herb Scabiosa columbaria. Plants from one population were raised, and hand-polli...

Ants have been traditionally considered either as predators or dispersers of seeds, but not both. That is, ant dispersal is restricted to myrmecochorous seeds, while almost all seeds removed by seed-harvesting ants are eaten. However, harvesting ants might be simultaneously antagonistic and mutualistic towards seeds. This study analyzes the predati...

It is widely accepted that the postfire recovery in Mediterranean plant com- munities is carried out by direct regeneration, i.e., the fast recovery of a plant community with the same species pool that it had immediately prior to disturbance. However, there is evidence that not all plant species in the Mediterranean basin survive fire in all situat...

Heterocarpic plants are characterized by the production of distinct types of fruits that usually differ in their ecological behavior. In the Asteraceae, differences are mainly found between peripheral non-dispersal and central dispersal achenes (single-seeded fruits). Inbreeding depression is considered as an evolutionary force as it may reduce sev...

Empirical studies for different life histories have shown an inverse relationship between elasticity (i.e. the proportional contribution to population growth rate) and temporal variation in vital rates. It is accepted that this relationship indicates the effect of selective pressures in reducing variation in those life-history traits with a major i...

: Inbreeding depression can decrease several fitness traits and maternal effects can strongly influence the amount of inbreeding depression. Understanding the effects of inbreeding depression on plant fitness is especially important in the context of habitat fragmentation, where plant populations become smaller and more isolated, exhibiting increas...

Lobularia maritima is a Mediterranean short-lived herb with a flowering and fruiting season that lasts for ten months. Previous studies have shown that recruitment in periods other than autumn of the flowering season has few demographic implications; that is contributes little to the population growth rate. Since environmental conditions in periods...

Gcyc is a developmental gene, present in the Gesneriaceae family, that has both highly conserved and highly variable regions. Ramonda myconi (Gesneriaceae) is a paleoendemic plant restricted to mountainous areas of NE Spain. In this study we examine the population variation in the coding region of Gcyc in R. myconi. The fast-evolving nature of the...

Remnant population dynamics permit many plant species to persist timespans extending from decades up to several millenia. The regional-scalepersistence of these plant species strictly depends on the persistence of localpopulations within the region. This type of dynamics can explain the existenceof preglacial relict species in the Mediterranean tod...

The Mediterranean perennial herb Lobularia maritima shows an exceptionally extended flowering and fruiting that lasts for 10 months, from early September to late June. We hypothesized that such an extended phenology may be a flexible mechanism that enhances population persistence in variable Mediterranean environments, as fecundity in one part of t...

In the NE Iberian Peninsula, the herb Hepatica nobilis commonly occurs in the understory of deciduous forests. I report data on spatio-temporal variation in performance of patchily distributed populations in a beech forest at Montseny Natural Park (NE Spain). During three years, I studied the spatial (between populations and between patches within...

The Mediterranean Basin harbours paleo‐endemic species with a highly restricted and fragmented distribution. Many of them might also be of the remnant type, for which the regional dynamics depends on the persistence of extant populations. Therefore, a key issue for the long‐term persistence of these species is to assess the variability and effects...

Las estrategias de conservación de especies amenazadas, de gestión de los recursos naturales o de control de plagas dependen en gran medida del conocimiento de la dinámica de las poblaciones. El disponer de los medios adecuados para el análisis exhaustivo de la dinámica de poblaciones animales y vegetales representa uno de los puntales de la Biolog...

The present study reports spatiotemporal variations in seedling bank dynamics during a 5-year period in thinned and unthinned holm oak (Quercus ilex) plots in the Montseny Massif (NE Spain). Large spatial and temporal variations in seedling density have been found in the three plots studied, while the spatial pattern has shown low temporal fluctuat...

In plant communities of the Mediterranean Basin most plant species reach their blooming peak in spring and have characteristically short flowering periods of two-three months. The perennial herb Lobularia maritima represents an exception to these characteristics, because it flowers for almost 10 months, and has its flowering peak in autumn. In this...

We examined the reproductive success of the perennial herb Lobularia maritima during its extended flowering and fruiting season. The within- and between-year variability of the female components of reproductive success (from flower, fruit and seed production to seed survival, seed germination and seedling establishment) were analysed during four fl...