It's known that microbes in the soil can help plants fight pests. Now research published in New Phytologist shows that plants can be used to create anti-pest microbiomes.
Category - Close Encounters
Alun Salt
Potato-associated bacteria can act as bodyguards
Bacteria found with potatoes can help protect their hosts against late blight. The aid comes from their volatile emissions.
Dale Maylea
How does partnership work for a lichen in the Antarctic?
Lichens are partnerships between algae and fungi. In the Antarctic Lichens offer algae shelter against the cold, but also an uncertain future.
Can insights from invasion ecology promote benefits from root mutualisms in plant production?
Ramoneda et al. propose specific experimental approaches to utilize the wild ancestors of crops to determine whether crop domestication compromised the benefits derived from root microbial symbioses or not.
William Salter
Woody plants work with microbes to shape the soil they live in
The B-horizon in soil is created through interactions between plants and rhizosphere organisms.
Fi Gennu
Hybrids may succeed where invasive species fail as sea levels rise
Invasive species might suffer from a change in conditions in tidal areas, but their hybrid offspring may have genes to survive.
Wild tomatoes have the genes to partner with fungi
Foraging for nutrients is easier when something else does it for you, but how can tomatoes better attract a partner?
Wild relatives of beans retain useful drought resistance
A new study of wild crop relatives of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) finds they retain useful adaptations to drought stress.
Floral polymorphism and environmental heterogeneity
Floral polymorphism and environmental heterogeneity Polymorphism in flower colour may be maintained either by pollinator preferences or by environmental fluctuations. Tang and Huan examine gynoecium colour polymorphism...
botanyone
Carnivorous plants prefer to kill in broad daylight
I owe thanks to Dr Andrej PavloviΔ for being a patient guinea pig with my first press-release (you can find it on Science Daily) and to Lizzie Shannon-Little at OUP for helping put it out. It’s good timing because...
Reproductive inter-dependence between a bee and a distylic shrub
Cordia leucocephala Oligolectic bees and host-plants frequently depend on each other to rear offspring and to set fruit, respectively. Milet-Pinheiro and Schlindwein (pp. 17β27) investigate the close relationship...
