Meet them where they’re at, and show them they’re making an impact, say speakers.
Category - Plants & People
Erin Zimmerman
Symposium looks at new frontiers in collecting & collections
Collections may be poised for a “renaissance of biodiversity specimen collecting.”
Botany 2020: More Botany Than You can Shake a (Virtual) Stick At
The shift to an online conference has brought some benefits to Botany 2020.
Does biodiversity make gardening less stressful?
There are a few studies saying a garden can improve wellbeing, but what if your garden is a source of stress? You’re not alone, but research gives some hints about what to change to help improve things.
Alun Salt
Machine learning can help clear herbarium backlogs & potentially discover new species
Computers can combat the slow pace and shortage of expertise that plagues specimen identification and species discovery.
Training and high quality images needed for best online annotation of digital specimens
Volunteers produced the most accurate annotations in-person, but both in-person and online volunteers gave good results.
Can’t Botanists agree on common names..?
A rose by any other name... would be incorrectly described.
Nigel Chaffey
Unravelling how a mysterious substance may boost plant growth
Capstaff and colleagues investigate how soil-derived fulvic acid may boost growth of alfalfa
Liam Elliott
New research shows that Bioenergy plants need to be in the right location to deliver benefits
Finding the win-wins for Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) as we move to net zero – for the UK at least, size matters.
Caspar Donnison
Gail Taylor
Should we be looking to parasitic plants to help control invasive species?
Biologists have been looking at biological controls like herbivores to control invasive plants. New research suggests we should also look at what parasitic plants can do.
Plastic plants?! Nanoplastics may be bad news for plants too.
More evidence that the damaging potential of small plastics needs to extend to terrestrial environments.
Ethnobiologists consider their impact during and after the COVID-19 pandemic
A group of scientists with diverse backgrounds reached out to each other under unprecedented times and set out new goals for their own discipline.
Juniper Kiss
Citizen science data can complement collections well for some applications
The range and occurrence of anther smut shows very similar patterns in both collections and iNaturalist data.
Law enforcement and ecologists will need to trade information to combat trading in endangered plants say crime researchers
Online trading is increasing the damage done by illegal trading in plant material, but researchers have suggestions to reduce this.
