Taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott) is widely distributed in tropical and sub-tropical areas. However, its origin, diversification and dispersal remain unclear. While taro genetic diversity has been documented at the country and regional levels in Asia and the Pacific, few reports are available from Americas and Africa where it has been introduced through human migrations. We used eleven microsatellite markers to investigate the diversity and diversification of taro accessions from nineteen countries in Asia, the...

The lifetime of tungsten cathodes used in plasma spray torches is limited by processes leading to a loss of cathode material. It was reported in the literature that the mechanism of their erosion is the evaporation. A model of the ionization layer of a cathode is developed to study the diffusive transport of evaporated tungsten atoms and tungsten ions produced due to ionization by electron impact in a background argon plasma. It is shown that...

Studying the biogeography and the phylogeography of the endemic Macaronesian red Festuca species (Loliinae, Poaceae) is of prime interest in understanding the speciation and colonization patterns of recently evolved groups in oceanic archipelagos. Coalescence-based analyses of plastid trnLF sequences were employed to estimate evolutionary parameters and to test different species-history scenarios that model the pattern of species divergence. Bayesian IM estimates of species divergence times suggested that ancestral lineages of diploid Macaronesian and Iberian red...

Plumbaginaceae is characterized by a history of multiple taxonomic rearrangements and lacks a broad molecular phylogenetic framework. Limonium is the most species‐rich genus of the family with ca. 600 species and cosmopolitan distribution. Its center of diversity is the Mediterranean region, where ca. 70% of all Limonium species are endemic. In this study, we sample 201 Limonium species covering all described infrageneric entities and spanning its wide geographic range, along with 64 species of other...

1. Agricultural intensification and associated loss of high-quality habitats are key drivers of insect pollinator declines. With the aim of decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture, the 2014 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) defined a set of habitat and landscape features (Ecological Focus Areas: EFAs) farmers could select from as a requirement to receive basic farm payments. To inform the post-2020 CAP, we performed a European-scale evaluation to determine how different EFA options vary in...