Tiny stones created in plants can help identified which plants were found in past habitats.
Category - Taxonomy & Evolution
Juniper Kiss
Bulking up: do plants make gains in secondary metabolites through genome duplication?
Whole genome duplication is often associated with gains in plant developmental complexity. Does this include secondary metabolites?
Liam Elliott
Niche conservatism characterizes the spread of Helianthemum in the Canary Islands
In nearly all cases, each species’ closest relatives occur in a similar niche on a different island
Erin Zimmerman
A long-lasting connection? Links between genome size and stomata size in plants
The variation in genome size between different plant species is enormous, with a variation of 2300-fold in flowering plants alone. Whilst variation in plant genome size is well recorded, it is debatable how much of this...
Ex Situ Collections Not Reaching Genetic Diversity Goals
More efficient sampling could capture greater diversity without overwhelming space constraints.
Tricky flowers: how floral variation in a food-deceptive orchid is maintained over generations
Sometimes it's a good idea not to send a consistent message to your pollinators.
Laura Skates
How a conifer spread between isolated mountain-tops: the demographic history of Podocarpus latifolius/milanjianus
Were there land-bridges in the past that enabled trees to travel from mountaintop to mountaintop?
To C4 or not to C4 if you’re a tree? Some possible answers
C4 photosynthesis is an efficient way of harnessing energy, yet trees rarely use it. Why is that?
Invasion, isolation and evolution shape population genetic structure in Campanula rotundifolia
The genes of Harebell populations show the history of post-glacial colonisation.
William Salter
Climate driven population divergence and future extinction risk in wild tomato
Climate change is generally thought to affect plant distribution by reducing the suitability of a species to its environment and diminishing its effective range. Modelling can be used to assess potential changes in...
How is flower diversity produced? Insights from Asarum
The core Heterotropa group was divided into nine subclades, each of which had a narrow geographic distribution.
Morphology is most informative in reconstructing early tracheophyte evolution
More so than reproductive or anatomical features, morphology defines evolutionary relationships among early vascular plants.
The Piedra Chamana fossil woods and leaves reveal a tropical forest with some water stress
The Piedra Chamana fossil forest in northern Peru is an assemblage of angiosperm woods and leaves preserved in volcaniclastic rocks dated at 39 Ma (late Middle Eocene). Deborah Woodcock and Herbert Meyer analyzed...
Alex Assiry
Can you find genetic echoes of an ancient ancestor in hornworts?
The genes hornworts share with other living plants may tell us something about their ancient common ancestor.
