How kelp protects coasts
Some protection from waves crashing on the shore could be found in what lies beneath the surface.
Category: News in Focus
Why do some columbines make life harder for their pollinators?
The flowers of Aquilegia eximia, the serpentine columbine, face downward, but the hummingbirds that pollinate it prefer horizontal flowers, so why do the flowers face the wrong way?
How arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi talk to plants before colonisation
Species interactions change the response of saltmarsh plants to flooding
A coastal plant’s ability to cope with temporary flooding isn’t just due to its own traits. Neighbours can make a flood more, or less, tolerable.
Plant invasion success varies with latitude
It was thought that herbivory was more likely to aid plant invasions closer to the equator. New research shows that reality is a bit more complicated.
Islands in the desert and a refuge against a changing climate
If you’re looking for biodiversity, one good place to start is an unexpectedly harsh environment.
What a plant learns. The curious case of Mimosa pudica.
Can a plant learn? Drawing on recent and forthcoming research, Monica Gagliano and Michael Marder suggest that we should be rethinking what intelligence is.
Taking a close look at the mystery of the disappearing petals
How Gleditsia triacanthos invades across biomes
A plant can invade territory when it’s adapted to it, but how can a plant be adapted to multiple biomes. A new paper examines how Honey Locust seedlings use plasticity to tackle new locations.
How does mixed mating persist, when self-pollination ensures a plant won’t reproduce?
Being a seed from self-pollination guarantees failure in Eucalyptus regnans. Yet despite this, new research shows a mixed-mating system. including selfing, is evolutionarily stable.
Tirpitz and the science of conflict ecology…
Now rice has more options to cope with flooding.
When waters rise, should a rice plant shut down and conserve energy till it can breathe again – or should it grow faster to get above the water? New research has produced rice that can do both.
Climate Change and Carbon Sequestration in Soils: Can Phytoliths Help?
When a plant loses photosynthesis, what else does it lose?
One of the common features of plants they make their own food. But what happens inside a plant when they stop making their food and eat something else?