| Grant number: | 12/22833-1 |
| Support Opportunities: | Regular Research Grants |
| Duration: | April 01, 2014 - March 31, 2017 |
| Field of knowledge: | Biological Sciences - Botany - Plant Morphology |
| Principal Investigator: | Diego Demarco |
| Grantee: | Diego Demarco |
| Host Institution: | Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil |
| Associated researchers: | Diego Demarco ; Pedro Guillermo Angeles Alvarez ; Veronica Angyalossy |
Abstract
Parasitic plants are Angiosperms which can withdraw part or all of their nutritional needs of other plants. In order to do so they need to establish a morpho-functional connection called haustorium, which links to the vascular systems of the host plants and acts on transporting of various substances, among which are nutrients and metabolism regulators. The largest group of these plants is the Santalales order, with very representative families in number of species, such as Loranthaceae and Viscaceae. These parasites are commonly called bird's herbs and at the present few studied are conduct to investigate their anatomy. Even less is known about the interaction between parasite and host. At the same time the majority of the studies that are being done nowadays are non-integrative ones, separating morphological/anatomical aspects from the functional aspects. The field of the Hydraulic Architecture deals with the functioning of the vascular system in an integrated manner with the plant anatomy knowledge. This project intents to study some genera of the families Loranthaceae (Struthanthus, Phthirusa, Tripodanthus, Psittacanthus,) and Viscaceae (Arceuthobium, Phoradendron) and also their host plants. The aim is to evaluate the impact of these parasites on the vascular systems of hosts both in anatomical and functional aspects, providing a comprehensive and detailed overview of this relationship. To this end, studies on plant anatomy will be conducted using traditional techniques of light microscopy, plus advanced methods of confocal microscopy, fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM), micro-tomography and electron microscopy. These approaches will be associated with infiltration experiments using "in vivo" dyes and also measurements of hydraulic parameters such as hydraulic conductivity and specific conductivity. The collections and preparations will be made together with the Mexican researcher Guillermo Angeles through research agreement signed between USP and INECOL. All data generated will be analyzed using parametric statistics, analysis of variance and multivariate analyses. In the end we intent to compare the analyzed characters with the existing phylogenies in order to discuss hypotheses related to the diversification of parasitism in the group. (AU)
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