Invasion Success by Plant Breeding

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XVII

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2. Introduction

   Pages 1-25

3. Isolation and characterisation of microsatellite markers in the invasive shrub Mahonia aquifolium (Berberidaceae) and their applicability in related species

   Pages 27-33

4. Genetic relationships among three native North-American Mahonia species, invasive Mahonia populations from Europe, and commercial cultivars

   Pages 35-58

5. Invasive Mahonia plants outgrow their native relatives

   Pages 59-80

6. Mahonia invasions in different habitats: local adaptation or general-purpose genotypes?

   Pages 81-103

Christel has been intrigued by the phenomenon of invasions since her studies as an undergraduate student in botany at Goettingen University where she took several of my courses and where I supervised her diploma thesis. Her diploma thesis already addressed the possible impact of hybridization for the invasiveness of plant species. By using molecular markers, she studied North American and European Rhododendron species. We were also in close contact while she was working on her PhD thesis at the Department of Community Ecology at the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research UFZ in Halle. Having been one of the reviewers of her PhD thesis, I readily agreed when she asked me to write a short preface to this publication. While the main line of research on the role of evolutionary processes for plant invasions has mainly been on the response to a different natural selection pressures exerted by the abiotic and biotic site factors of the new environment, Christel has asked to which degree breeding efforts might have contributed to such pressures. She chose a very apt study object to address this topic, Mahonia aquifolium, a species native to North America and introduced to Europe as an ornamental plant, together with some other species of the same genus. Christel’s basic question was whether invasive populations of Mahonia aquifolium in Europe originate from planted cultivars or from hybrids with M. repens und M. pinnata.

• Hybridisierung
• Pflanzenzüchtung
• Populationegenetik
• breeding
• ecology
• evolution
• invasive Arten
• plant breeding

Dr. Christel Anne Ross completed her doctoral thesis at the Department of Community Ecology at the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ in Halle, Germany. She now works as a junior editor in a specialist publishing house.

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