Some plants can “escape” drought stress by speeding up their life cycles, minimising water loss and allocating more resources to roots when water is available. Over half of the world’s worst weeds are annuals and occur...
Tag - common garden
Juniper Kiss
What makes a good invasive species – genetics or plasticity? Insights from Impatiens glandulifera
Understanding what makes invasive plant species so good at invading may help us protect vulnerable plant biodiversity.
Liam Elliott
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
Plasticity to drought and ecotypic differentiation in populations of a crop wild relative
Plant functional traits often vary across space, particularly when species encounter contrasting environmental conditions throughout their range. Such phenotypic variation is determined by both genetic and environmental...
Plants from different climates can react to drought in similar ways
How do plants react when circumstances change? One method can be to evolve a local adaptation. Another can be be phenotypic plasticity, changing the shape of the plant to tackle a local problem. Silvia Matesanz and...
Alex Assiry
Evolution of increased vigour associated with allopolyploidization in a newly formed invasive species
Polyploidy (whole genome duplication) is one of the most important processes in plant evolution. Most land plants have an evolutionary history that includes multiple polyploidization events. Allopolyploidy...
Morphological and physiological traits determine Arundo drought recovery
Arundo donax often reproduces clonally, but a new study finds small differences can affect how it recovers from drought stress.
Population-level plasticity drives plant trait variation along elevation
Within a species, plant traits may vary substantially along environmental gradients. However, is such variation (1) consistent across locations and (2) genetic or non-genetic (i.e., plastic) in nature? In a recent...
AoBPLANTS
Climate change and flowering phenology in mid- and high-elevation species
Recent global changes, particularly warming and drought, have had worldwide repercussions on the timing of flowering events for many plant species. Phenological shifts have also been reported in alpine environments...
botanyone
Sesquiterpene lactones and herbivore resistance
Ahern and Whitney use common garden experiments with common cocklebur, Xanthium strumarium (Asteraceae), to examine relationships between stereochemical variation in sesquiterpene lactones, herbivore damage and plant...
Environmental and genetic effects on seed dormancy
Climate may determine changes in seed dormancy in the short and the long term, shaping plant responses to global change. Fernández-Pascual et al. investigate germination in Centaurium somedanum, a narrow endemic...
Hydraulic adjustment in a pine species across its range
The ability of P. canariensis to inhabit a wide range of ecosystems seems to be associated with high phenotypic plasticity.
Temperature, latitude and forest plant regeneration
Early life history stages are among the most critical phases in the life cycle of plants. De Frenne et al. assess the response of plant regeneration from seed of two forest understorey plants (Anemone nemorosa and...
