NEW PAPER ALERT

28 Sep 2016
28 Sep 2016

Host specificity in parasitic plants – perspectives from mistletoes

The Plant Conservation Unit is pleased to announce the publication of an exciting new paper by Desale Okubamichael, Megan Griffiths and David Ward in the open-access journal, AoB Plants. The article is entitled: Host specificity in parasitic plants - perspectives from mistletoes. The abstract is provided below but the full paper may be downloaded here.

"Host specificity has been investigated for centuries in mistletoes, viruses, insects, parasitoids, lice and flukes, yet it is poorly understood. Reviewing the numerous studies on mistletoe host specificity may contribute to our understanding of these plants and put into context the dynamics at work in root parasitic plants and animal parasites. The mechanisms that determine host specificity in mistletoes are not as well documented and understood as those in other groups of parasites. To rectify this we synthesised the available literature and analysed data compiled from herbaria, published monographs and our own field studies in South Africa. As for other groups of parasites, multiple factors influence mistletoe host specificity. Initially, pollination affects gene flow. Subsequently, seed dispersal vectors (birds and marsupials), host abundance and compatibility (genetic, morphological, physiological and chemical), history and environmental conditions affect the interaction of mistletoes and their hosts and determine host specificity. Mistletoe-host network analyses and a geographic mosaic approach combined with long-term monitoring of reciprocal transplant experiments, genetic analyses of confined mistletoe populations and comparative phylogenetic studies could provide further insights to our understanding of host specificity. Some of these approaches have been used to study animal-plant interactions and could be adopted to test and evaluate host specificity in mistletoes at local and larger geographic scales."