The finding bodes well for the survival of Lomas communities in the Atacama Desert under future climate change.
Tag - species diversity
Erin Zimmerman
Stochastic variation in Cardamine hirsuta petal number
Petal number is a robust trait in flowering plants. Crucifer flowers have four petals but Monniaux et al. show that petal number varies from zero to four in Cardamine hirsuta. They mapped quantitative trait loci...
botanyone
Why should we investigate the morphological disparity of plant clades?
Macroevolution of major clades is often studied by plotting their taxonomic diversity through time. It is equally informative, but less commonplace, to investigate how clades explore anatomical ‘design’ space by...
Molecular mechanisms of noise and robustness
Robustness, the inverse of noise, is a molecularly programmed feature of biological systems. The molecular networks of some organismal phenotypes like development are designed to maximize robustness, while other...
An evo-devo perspective on diversity and disparity
Diversity (number of included species) and disparity (extent of morphospace occupied) are indicators of a clade’s success. Many large genera show high diversity with low disparity; others like Euphorbia are highly...
Genetic assimilation and the evolution of novelty
Most, if not all, organisms possess the ability to alter their phenotype in direct response to changes in their environment, a phenomenon known as phenotypic plasticity. Selection can break this environmental...
Development and evolution of extremely complex flowers
The two very species-rich families Apocynaceae and Orchidaceae contain the most complex flowers in the angiosperms. Although they are not related they show a number of amazing convergent similarities in flower structure...
The developmental genetics of biological robustness
Biological systems face constant perturbations, yet often manage to produce invariable developmental phenotypes. Developmental robustness is a property observed across phyla and recent work in yeast, animals and plants...
Changes in the distribution of mechanically dependent plants along a gradient of past hurricane impact
The severity of the effects that large disturbance events such as hurricanes can have on the forest canopy and the associated mechanically dependent plant community (epiphytes, climbers, etc.) is dependent on the...
AoBPLANTS
How tree species fill geographic and ecological space
Ricklefs analyses local assemblages of deciduous trees and finds that the forests in question do not appear to be saturated with species.
