While hybrid plants might be less successful than their parents, if enough survive they can backcross with a parent species. This can help a parent colonise a new territory.
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...
The alpine plant Ranunculus kuepferi can face spring frosts while growing reproductive organs. Does the cold explain why sometimes the plant doesn't bother with sex?
In a recent article published in AoB PLANTS, Schinkel et al. present a study on geographical parthenogenesis, an enigmatic and much disputed phenomenon that involves closely related sexual and apomictic (asexually...
Senescence is the process of losing fitness when growing old, and is shaped by the trade-off between maintenance and reproduction that makes reproduction more unsure with age. Injury to the plant body, however, provides...
Genetic variation may play an important role in plant population fitness and invasion success. Li et al. combine genetic analysis and demographic data to investigate the consequences of genetic variation for the...