ד"ר יובל ספיר

Education

Period	Degree	Institute	Faculty/Department
1997	B.Sc.	The Hebrew University of Jerusalem	Biology
1999	M.Sc.	The Hebrew University of Jerusalem	Evolution, Systematics and Ecology
2004	Ph.D.	The Hebrew University of Jerusalem	Evolution, Systematics and Ecology
2006	BARD Post Doctoral fellow	Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA	-

 

Academic Position:

Period	Rank/Function	School/Department	Institute
2009	Director	Botanical Garden	Tel Aviv University
2013-2018	Senior Lecturer	School of Plant Sciences	Tel Aviv University
Since 2018	Curator of Herbarium	Steinhardt Museum of Natural History	Tel Aviv University

Pollinator-mediated selection and floral evolution – Plant-pollinator interaction is a classic example for co-evolution. Floral traits are the means of which flowers attract animal pollinators and ensure that the pollen will be deposited on the stigma. We study pollinator-mediated selection on floral traits in   Linum pubescens  and in   Oncocyclus  irises. We measure the amount of evolutionary change gained in each generation by the behavior of the insect pollinators, and how these changes contribute floral diversification.

 

Plant evolution under climate change – Climate change in the East Mediterranean involves reduction in rain precipitation and desertification of semi-arid regions. We test the possibility of plants to overcome such changes through rapid evolution. We use the annual grass model plant -  Brachypodium dystachion  - from Mediterranean and arid regions that experienced a few generations of divergent selection by reducing rain amount. We seek for a signal of rapid evolution, either by measuring natural selection or by gene expression. 

 

Speciation and conservation of Oncocyclus irises – The Oncocyclus irises are of special importance for conservation, because of being rare, endangered, and endemic plant species in Israel, as well as their role as "flag" species. Habitat loss and fragmentation limit gene flow and together with local adaptation and inbreeding depression it may facilitate geographic pattern of partial reproductive isolation. We study the various scales of which these irises differentiate along ecological gradients and as a complex of species. We measure the potential of populations to become a separate species due to ecological divergence, and estimate the forces that hold species as an evolutionary unit.

Sapir, Y ., A. Shmida, O. Fragman and H. P. Comes. (2002) Morphological variation of the Oncocyclus Irises in the southern Levant. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society . 139: 369-382.

 

Sapir, Y . and A. Shmida. (2002) Species concepts and ecogeographical divergence of Oncocyclus irises. Israel Journal of Plant Sciences 50:S119-S127.

 

Sapir, Y. , A. Shmida and O. Fragman. (2003) Constructing Red Numbers for endangered plant species - Israeli flora as a test case. Journal for Nature conservation 11(2):91-108.

 

Sapir, Y. , A. Shmida and G. Ne’eman. (2005) Pollination of the Oncocyclus irises ( Iris : Iridaceae) by night-sheltering male bees. Plant Biology . 7(4):417-424.

 

Sapir, Y. , A. Shmida and G. Ne’eman. (2006) Morning floral heat as reward to the pollinators of the Oncocyclus irises. Oecologia . 147:53-59.

 

Sapir, Y. , M. L. Moody, L. C. Brouillette, L. A. Donovan, and L. H. Rieseberg. (2007) Patterns of genetic variation and heterozygosity and candidate genes for ecological divergence in a homoploid hybrid sunflower, Helianthus anomalus . Molecular Ecology 16: 5017-5029.

 

Sapir, Y . (2009) Effects of floral traits and plant genetic composition on pollinator behavior. Arthropod-Plant Interactions 3: 115-129.

 

Dorman, M., Y. Sapir , and S. Volis. (2009) Local adaptation in four Iris species tested in a common garden experiment. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 98: 267-277.

 

Volis, S., M. Blecher, and Y. Sapir. (2010) Application of complex conservation strategy to Iris atrofusca of the Northern Negev, Israel. Biodiversity and Conservation (DOI 10.1007/s10531-010-9883-0).

 

Sapir, Y. and W. S. Armbruster. (2010) Pollinator-mediated selection and floral evolution: from pollination ecology to macroevolution. New Phytologist 188(2): 303-306.

 

Volis, S., M. Dorman, M. Blecher, Y. Sapir and L. Burdeniy. (2011) Variation partitioning in canonical ordination reveals no effect of soil but an effect of co-occuring species on translocation success in Iris atrofusca . Journal of Applied Ecology 48:265-273

 

Sapir, Y. and R. Mazzucco. (2012) Post-zygotic reproductive isolation among populations of Iris atropurpurea: the effect of spatial distance among crosses. Evolutionary Ecology Research, 14:425-445.

Golodets, C., J. Kigel, Y. Sapir, and M. Sternberg. (2013) Quantitative versus qualitative vegetation sampling methods: a lesson from a grazing experiment in a Mediterranean grassland. Applied Vegetation Science 16(3) 502-508. 

Watts, S., Y. Sapir, B. Segal and A. Dafni. (2013) The endangered Iris atropurpurea (Iridaceae) in Israel: honeybees, night-sheltering male bees and female solitary bees as pollinators. Annals of Botany 111(3):395-407. 

R. Lavi and Y. Sapir. (2015) Are Pollinators the agents of selection for the extreme large size and dark color in Oncocyclus irises? The New Phytologist, 205 (1): 369-377. 

Tessler, N., Y. Sapir, L. Wittenberg, and N. Greenbaum (2016) Recovery of Mediterranean vegetation after recurrent forest fires: insight from the 2010 forest fire on Mount Carmel, Israel. Land Degredation & Development  DOI: 10.1002/ldr.2419.

Wilson, C. A., Padiernos, J., and Y. Sapir (2016) The royal irises (subgenus Iris section Oncocyclus): plastid and low-copy nuclear data contribute to an understanding of their phylogenetic relationships. Taxon (in press).