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Premise of the Study: Expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeat (EST-SSR) markers were isolated for Vriesea carinata , an endemic bromeliad from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. These SSR loci may be used to investigate the genetic diversity and population structure of this species and related bromeliads., Methods and Results: Based on the transcriptome data of V. carinata , 30 primer pairs were designed and selected for initial validation. Of these primer pairs, 16 generated suitable SSR loci in 69 individuals. The number of alleles per locus ranged from one to 13; the levels of observed and expected heterozygosity per locus ranged from 0.000 to 1.000 and from 0.000 to 0.935, respectively. All loci produced heterologous amplification. Transferability of the loci was tested in 15 species belonging to three Bromeliaceae subfamilies., Conclusions: The developed EST-SSR markers revealed polymorphism in the four studied populations and could be useful to investigate the genetic diversity of V. carinata and related species. The markers may also be suitable for novel gene annotation and discovery.

Aechmea subgenus Ortgiesia comprises ca. 20 species distributed in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, with a center of diversity in the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest. We examined interspecific relationships of Ortgiesia based on Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphisms (AFLP). Ninety-six accessions belonging to 14 species of Ortgiesia were sampled, and genotyped with 11 AFLP primer combinations. The neighbor joining (NJ) tree depicted two main genetic groups within Aechmea subgenus Ortgiesia, and four subgroups. The NJ tree showed short internal branches, indicating an overall shallow genetic divergence among Ortgiesia species as expected for the recently radiated subfamily Bromelioideae. Our results suggest that hybridization and/or incomplete lineage sorting may have hampered the reconstruction of interspecific relationships in Aechmea subgenus Ortgiesia. The mapping of petal color (yellow, blue, pink, or white), inflorescence type (simple or compound), and inflorescence shape (ellipsoid, subcylindric, cylindric, or pyramidal) against the NJ tree indicated that these characters are of limited taxonomic use in Aechmea subgenus Ortgiesia due to homoplasy. An analysis of the current distribution of Ortgiesia identified the southern region of the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest, between latitudes of 26° and 27°S, as the center of diversity for the subgenus., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Many tank bromeliads have facultative relationships with ants as is the case in French Guiana between Aechmea aquilega (Salib.) Griseb. and the trap-jaw ant, Odontomachus haematodus Linnaeus. Using a redundancy analysis, we determined that the presence of O. haematodus colonies is accompanied by a greater quantity of fine particulate organic matter in the water likely due to their wastes. This increase in nutrient availability is significantly correlated with an increase in the abundance of some detritivorous taxa, suggesting a positive bottom-up influence on the aquatic macroinvertebrate communities living in the A. aquilega wells. On the other hand, the abundance of top predators is negatively affected by a lower number of available wells due to ant constructions for nesting, releasing a top-down pressure that could also favor lower trophic levels., (Copyright © 2015 Académie des sciences. Published by Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.)