A5059102394- Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
- Species Distribution and Climate Change
- Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Genetic diversity and population structure
- Remote Sensing in Agriculture
- Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies
- Plant and animal studies
- Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
- Identification and Quantification in Food
- Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior
- Evolution and Paleontology Studies
- Insect and Pesticide Research
- Scientific Computing and Data Management
- Research Data Management Practices
- RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms
- Mitochondrial Function and Pathology
- Semantic Web and Ontologies
- Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology
- Amphibian and Reptile Biology
- Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research
- Plant Ecology and Soil Science
- Evolution and Genetic Dynamics
- Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies
- Distributed and Parallel Computing Systems
- Chemistry and Stereochemistry Studies
Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research
2017-2024
National Research Council
2014-2024
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
2011-2023
University of Bari Aldo Moro
2010-2021
Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche
2010-2015
Institute of Biomedical Technologies
2007-2014
Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin
2014
Freie Universität Berlin
2014
University of Gothenburg
2014
University of Manchester
2014
About 100 km east of Rome, in the central Apennine Mountains, a critically endangered population ∼50 brown bears live complete isolation. Mating outside this is prevented by several bear-free territories. We exploited natural experiment to better understand gene and genomic consequences surviving at extremely small size. found that bear populations Europe lost connectivity since Neolithic times, when farming communities expanded forest burning was used for land clearance. In Italy, resulted...
The four species of "river dolphins" are associated with six separate great river systems on three subcontinents and have been grouped for more than a century into single taxon based their similar appearance. However, several morphologists recently questioned the monophyly that group. By using phylogenetic analyses nucleotide sequences from mitochondrial two nuclear genes, we demonstrate statistical significance extant dolphins not monophyletic suggest they relict whose adaptation to...
Abstract Background Codon usage bias (CUB), the uneven use of synonymous codons, is a ubiquitous observation in virtually all organisms examined. The pattern codon generally similar among closely related species, but differs significantly distantly organisms, e.g., bacteria, yeast, and Drosophila . Several explanations for CUB have been offered some supported by observations experiments, although thorough understanding evolutionary forces (random drift, mutation bias, selection) their...
The mitochondrial genome is a fundamental component of the eukaryotic domain life, encoding for several important subunits Respiratory Chain, main energy production system in cells. processes by means which mtDNA replicates, expresses itself and evolves have been explored over years, although various aspects are still debated. In this review, we present key points modern research on role evolutionary forces affecting genomes Metazoa. particular, assemble data their evolution, describing...
Bumblebees are a diverse group of globally important pollinators in natural ecosystems and for agricultural food production. With both eusocial solitary life-cycle phases, some social parasite species, they especially interesting models to understand evolution, behavior, ecology. Reports many species decline point pathogen transmission, habitat loss, pesticide usage, global climate change, as interconnected causes. These threats bumblebee diversity make our reliance on handful well-studied...
Ecosystem heterogeneity has been widely recognized as a key ecological indicator of several functions, diversity patterns and change, metapopulation dynamics, population connectivity or gene flow.In this paper, we present new R package-rasterdiv-to calculate indices based on remotely sensed data. We also provide an application at the landscape scale demonstrate its power in revealing potentially hidden patterns.The rasterdiv package allows calculating multiple indices, robustly rooted...
Abstract The monophyly of European newts the genus Triturus within family Salamandridae has for decades rested on presumably homologous behavioral and morphological characters. Molecular data challenge this hypothesis, but phylogenetic position not yet been convincingly resolved. We addressed issue temporal divergence with novel Bayesian approaches applied to DNA sequence from three mitochondrial genes (12S, 16S cyt b ). included 38 salamandrid species comprising all 13 recognized 16 out 17...
Abstract Scientists recently reported the unexpected detection of unknown or poorly studied bacterial diversity in groundwater. The ability to uncover this neglected biodiversity mainly derives from technical improvements, and term “microbial dark matter” was used group taxa investigated not necessarily monophyletic. We focused on such under-investigated microbial matter drinking water treatment plant groundwater, across carbon filters, post-chlorination. tackled topic using an integrated...
The compilation and cleaning of data needed for analyses prediction species distributions is a time consuming process requiring solid understanding formats service APIs provided by biodiversity informatics infrastructures. We designed implemented Taverna-based Data Refinement Workflow which integrates taxonomic retrieval, cleaning, selection into consistent, standards-based, effective system hiding the complexity underlying workflow can be freely used both locally through web-portal does not...
Abstract Aim The majority of work done to gather information on the Earth's biodiversity has been carried out using in‐situ data, with known issues related epistemology (e.g., species determination and taxonomy), spatial uncertainty, logistics (time costs), among others. An alternative way about ecosystem variability is use satellite remote sensing. It works as a powerful tool for attaining rapid standardized information. Several metrics used calculate remotely sensed diversity ecosystems...
The present study aims to discriminate four semi-arid grassland habitats in a Mediterranean Natura 2000 site, Southern Italy, involving 6210/E1.263, 62A0/E1.55, 6220/E1.434 and X/E1.61-E1.C2-E1.C4 (according Annex I of the European Habitat Directive/EUropean Nature Information System (EUNIS) taxonomies). For this purpose, an intra-annual time-series 30 Sentinel-2 images, embedding phenology information, were investigated for 2018. methodology adopted was based on two-stage workflow employing...
Making forecasts about biodiversity and giving support to policy relies increasingly on large collections of data held electronically, substantial computational capability capacity analyse, model, simulate predict using such data. However, the physically distributed nature resources expertise in advanced analytical tools creates many challenges for modern scientist. Across wider biological sciences, presenting capabilities Internet (as “Web services”) scientific workflow systems compose them...
Grassland ecosystems can provide a variety of services for humans, such as carbon storage, food production, crop pollination and pest regulation. However, grasslands are today one the most endangered due to land use change, agricultural intensification, abandonment well climate change. The present study explores performance knowledge-driven GEOgraphic-Object—based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) learning scheme classify Very High Resolution (VHR) images natural grassland ecosystem mapping....
A standardized and cost-effective molecular identification system is now an urgent need for Fungi owing to their wide involvement in human life quality. In particular the potential use of mitochondrial DNA species markers has been taken account. Unfortunately, a serious difficulty PCR bioinformatic surveys due presence mobile introns almost all fungal genes. The aim this work verify incidence phenomenon Ascomycota, testing, at same time, new tool extracting managing sequence databases...
Does selection for mtDNA mutations occur in human oocytes?We provide statistical evidence favor of the existence purifying oocytes acting between expulsion first and second polar bodies (PBs).Several lines Metazoa, including humans, indicate that variation within germline mitochondrial genomes is under selection. The presence this internal filter has important consequences evolutionary trajectory mtDNA. However, nature localization are still unclear while several hypotheses proposed...
Snow cover plays an important role in biotic and abiotic environmental processes, as well human activities, on both regional global scales. Due to the difficulty of situ data collection vast inaccessible areas, use optical satellite imagery represents a useful support for snow mapping. At present, several operational algorithms products are available. Even though most them offer up-to-daily time scale, they do not provide sufficient spatial resolution studies requiring high detail. By...
Studies of cumulative and long-term effects human activities in the ocean are essential for developing realistic conservation targets. Here, we report results a recent national marine biodiversity inventory along Swedish West coast between 2004 2009. The expedition revisited many historical localities that have been sampled with same methods early twentieth century. We generated comparable datasets from our own investigation data to compare species richness, abundance, geographic...
Codon usage bias (CUB) is a ubiquitous observation in molecular evolution. As model, Drosophila has been particularly well-studied and indications show that selection at least partially controls codon usage, probably through for translational efficiency. Although many aspects of CUB have studied, this the first study relating to development holometabolous insect with very different life stages. Here we ask question: What developmental stage melanogaster greatest CUB? Genes maximum expression...
Abstract The study of diversity in biological communities is an intriguing field. Huge amount data are nowadays available (provided by the innovative DNA sequencing techniques), and management, analysis display results not trivial. Here, we propose for first time use phylogenetic entropy as a measure bacterial studies microbial community structure. We then compared our new method (i.e. web tool phyloh ) partitioning with traditional approach analyses bacteria communities. tested to...
Abstract The variation of species diversity over space and time has been widely recognised as a key challenge in ecology. However, measuring large areas might be difficult for logistic reasons related to both cost savings sampling, well accessibility remote ecosystems. In this paper, we present new package - calculate indices based on remotely sensed data, by discussing the theory behind developed algorithms. Obviously, measures from should not viewed replacement situ data biological...