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Climate change is seriously impacting coastal biodiversity and the benefits it provides to humans. This issue is particularly relevant in the case of the European Union’s Natura 2000 network of areas for nature protection, where the sensitivity of local ecosystems calls for intervention to increase resistance and resilience to climate-related risks. Given the complex ways in which climate can influence conservation hotspot areas, there is a need to develop effective strategic approaches and general operational models to identify priorities for management and inform adaptation and mitigation measures. Here, a novel methodological proposal to perform climate risk assessment in Natura 2000 sites is presented that implements the systematic approach of ISO 14090 in combination with the theoretical framework of ecosystem services assessment and local stakeholder participation to identify climate-related issues for local protected habitats and improve the knowledge base needed to plan sustainable conservation and restoration measures. The methodology was applied to five Natura 2000 sites located along the Adriatic coast of Italy and Slovenia. Results show that each of the assessed sites, despite being along the coast of the same sea, is affected by different climate-related issues, impacting different habitats and corresponding ecosystem services. This novel methodology enables a simple and rapid screening for the prioritization of conservation actions and of the possible further investigations needed to support decision making, and was found to be robust and of general applicability. These findings highlight the importance of designing site-specific adaptation measures, tailored to address the peculiar response to climate change of each site in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Ecosystem services are all goods and benefits that humans obtain from ecosystems. These are essential for human survival, social and economic development. With the impacts of climate change, ecosystem degradation and loss of biodiversity, the efficient and complete provision of ecosystem services is also under threat. The paper presents community capacity building activities on ecosystem services and climate change implemented under the ECO - SMART project (Cooperation program Interreg V-A ItalySlovenia 2014-2020). Since the design of coordinated local climate change adaptation plans of selected pilot Natura 2000 sites in Slovenia and Italy is a project objective, activities aimed at strengthening competences of crossborder local communities and confronting different stakeholder views are of particular importance. The educational needs of the community were identified through a questionnaire. The respondents' knowledge regarding mentioned contents, interest for capacity building and participation in training events were analysed. The results were taken in consideration during design of capacity building activities.

Freshly released pollen of black elderberry (Sambucus nigra L.) was incubated under various culture conditions until germination was achieved. Optimal conditions for germination were determined and used for maturation of unicellular microspores in vitro. Staining with 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide, propidium iodide and iodine potassium iodide was used to assess pollen viability, nuclear phase and maturation, respectively. The germination rate was highest when fresh pollen was agitated at 40 rpm in Petri dishes containing a liquid medium consisting of Brewbaker and Kwack salts, 15% (w/v) sucrose, 500 mg/l MES sodium salt, at pH 5.0; germination reached nearly 70% after only 1 h in culture. Under these conditions, and with addition of 200 mg/l glutamine, 260 mg/l cytidine and 500 mg/l uridine, uninucleate microspores developed into mature pollen at a 12% germination rate. Our report is the first demonstration of maturation of S. nigra microspores in vitro.

Summary-Genista sericeaWulfen, a northern Illyrian amphi-Adriatic species, presents a certain morphological variability. To clarify whether the genetic variations support the morphological differences among accessions of different geographic origin, analysis of nuclear DNA content and polymorphism of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) dataset was studied. The variation in nuclear DNA content ofG. sericeavar.sericeaand var.rigidais minimal (2.09 and 2.08 pg/nucleus respectively) and is correlated with equal chromosome numbers in both varieties. Intraspecific variability of the ITS region was studied on 13 accessions ofG. sericea, 6 belonging to var.sericeaand 7 to var.rigida. These accessions were analyzed in comparison to closely related species already studied. ITS sequences ofG. sericearevealed large polymorphism and formed two main clusters. One cluster (6 accessions) comprehends var.sericeaof northern Italy, Slovenia and northern Croatia; the other cluster (7 accessions) includes five accessions of var.rigidafrom southern Croatia and Montenegro and two from the Pollino massif (southern Italy). The later two accessions considerably differed from other accessions of var.rigida. This genetic analysis supports the previous assumptions, which subdividedG. sericeainto at least two taxa. On the basis of the results presented, it is here suggested that the subdivision ofG. sericeainto var.sericeaand var.rigidashould be maintained.

The collection, identification and maintenance of genebank accessions of the genus Trifolium is a major task because of the large number of genera and their occasional morphological similarity. We investigated whether the measurement of nuclear DNA content can serve as an additional criterion for identification of mislabeled accessions. Relative nuclear DNA content was determined by flow cytometry measurements for a total of 151 genebank accessions of 23 Trifolium species with notable agronomical value. Among 23 species analyzed, 15 were found to possess a uniform relative nuclear DNA content, with intraspecific variability of the majority of analyzed species lower than 5%. Within six Trifolium species, 1–2 atypical accessions with outstanding differences in relative DNA content, chromosome number and morphological features were found. In T. hybridum and partially in T. ambiguum these outstanding differences could be ascribed to variations in accession ploidy level. For the remaining atypical accessions, the determined nuclear DNA content, chromosome number and morphological features were not related to those characteristic of the species. Additionally taxonomic identity of atypical accessions was determined using ITS region sequencing and morphological observations. We propose flow cytometric measurements of nuclear DNA content as simple and reliable technique which can be used at seedling stage to verify identity and genetic stability of Trifolium genebank accessions.

Thirty-one clover species with significant agronomic value, originating from Eurasia, Africa and America, were analyzed to reveal their nuclear DNA content and propidium iodide/4,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (PI/DAPI) ratio. Chromosome numbers of the same accessions were determined for calculation of 1Cx genome size values, and the relationships between species were studied based on ITS-rDNA analysis. The nuclear DNA content of the majority of species was determined for the first time and revealed large variations among investigated species. The somatic nuclear DNA content ranged from 0.688 pg ( T. ligusticum ) to 7.375 pg ( T. burchellianum ), exhibiting a 10.7-fold difference. Since polyploidy is characteristic of several species of the genus Trifolium , 1Cx values provided the most informative measure of interspecific DNA content variation. Analysis of nuclear DNA content based on 1Cx-values within the Lotoidea section revealed that the basic genome size values of six African and American species were twice those of the six Eurasian species of the same section. Measurements of nuclear DNA content using propidium iodide/DAPI staining highly correlated ( r = 0.99), the average PI/DAPI ratio of 29 species was 1.043. Clustering based on ITS polymorphisms showed high relationship with botanical sections with the only exemption in the section Lotoidea , which was divided mainly according to its origin (American, African or Eurasian). Genome size data and the ITS clustering were highly correlated in sections Chronosemium , Involucrarium and Vesicaria and varied approximately two-fold within sections Trifolium , Lotoidea (African origin) and Lotoidea (Eurasian origin).