Finding a suitable habitat for Rafflesia arnoldii is difficult. While it produces the single largest flower on the planet, it’s invisible for much of its life.
Continue reading Finding the habitat of an invisible plant
Plant functional traits constitute responses to a complex evolutionary reciprocality between plants and the environment. Wood anatomy varies between shrubs and trees, and between wet and dry habitats, but a question remains as to the degree to which growth habit and habitat shape and are in turn shaped by wood structure. Using phylogenetic comparative methods, Arévalo et al. tested for contingent evolution of wood anatomy, habit, and habitat in the mega-diverse angiosperm genus Croton (Euphorbiaceae), which possesses a growth habit manifesting in most species as persistently woody shrubs and small to large trees. Showing that habit and habitat influence wood...
Continue reading Wood anatomical diversity results from force of habit, and shifts in habitat
What regulates the size and distribution of plant populations? What determines whether a population of plants will increase in size or decline? What allows some species to become aggressive invaders of exotic habitats, and what prevents this from occurring? When do individuals from different species exclude each other from a community by competition, and when do their interactions facilitate coexistence? These are just a few of the questions that arise when one contemplates the ebb and flow of plants across our landscapes, the magnificent diversity one finds in some habitats, or the tendency of one species to exclude all others...
Continue reading The ecology of plant populations: their dynamics, interactions and evolutionBotany One is a blog run by the Annals of Botany Company, a non-profit educational charity.
In addition to Botany One, the company currently publishes three journals, the Annals of Botany, AoB PLANTS, and in silico Plants.
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