How does environment affect biodiversity? Did Humboldt get it right?
Modern botanists have revisited sites examined by Alexander von Humboldt. Have modern advances made the German polymath’s work irrelevant?
Tag: Mexico
Cyanobacteria: Good week, or bad week..? Part III
Cultivation of Jatropha shows the importance of conservation
Jatropha curcas could be an oil crop with major biofuel potential, but the breeding germplasm has little variation. Botanists have found that there is genetic potential in previously overlooked non-toxic jatropha, but it needs conservation.
Bromeliads going batty: pollinator partitioning among sympatric chiropterophilous Bromeliaceae
Aridification as driver of plant evolution
Aridification has been a major force in cycad evolution, says José Said Gutiérrez-Ortega. It helps to explain why cycads were capable to adapt and diversify in the modern habitats, even when they originated in the early evolution of land plants.
Archaeologists surprised by large maize at El Gigante
The discovery of ancient large maize corn cobs at the El Gigante rockshelter might change how we think about the earliest complex societies in Central America.
Biomechanics of rhizophores in Rhizophora mangroves
Rhizophora mangle supports a thinner stem of higher mechanical resistance when compared to Avicennia germinans, a co-existing mangrove lacking rhizophores.
Biodiversity flourishes in an ancient rubbish tip
High-impact research
Plant species that survived the K–Pg extinction event had fast-growth ecological strategies corresponding to high assimilation rates & low carbon investment
