Retention of dead biomass by plants is common in the temperate herbaceous flora and can be related to certain plant traits, indicating relevance to ecosystem functioning. These are the main findings of an experimental study on more than 100 plant species jointly performed by researchers from the Germany and Czech Republic.
A research team has unraveled the evolutionary history of the Arctic flora. Researchers selected 32 angiosperm clades comprising 3,626 species across the angiosperm tree of life. They found that dispersal to the Arctic and in situ diversification within the Arctic followed similar trends through time.
New research looking at the evolution of terrestrial orchid species has found that global cooling of the climate appears to be the major driving factor in their diversity. The results help scientists understand the role of global climate on diversity of species, and how our current changing global climate might affect biodiversity in the future.
Scientists have trained AI to unlock data from millions of plant specimens kept in herbaria around the world, to study and combat the impacts of climate change on flora.
Researchers ahave recently discovered a new species of Fabaceae. The new species was named Astragalus bashanense.
In a paper published botanists have shown that some Nepenthes (tropical pitcher plants) are capturing more nitrogen, and therefore nutrients, from mammal droppings as compared to those that capture insects.
A big part of evolution is competition– when there are limited resources to go around, plants and animals have to duke it out for nutrients, mates, and places to live. That means that the flower-covered meadows of China’s Hengduan mountains were an evolutionary mystery– there are dozens of species of closely-related rhododendrons that all live in harmony. To figure out why, scientists spent a summer carefully documenting the flowering patterns of 34 Rhododendron species, and they discovered the reason why the plants were able to coexist: they burst into bloom at different points in the season so they don’t have to compete for pollinators.
Until now, the only way to learn about these traits from herbarium collections has required destroying bits of the precious specimens. But now researchers have developed a fast, nondestructive way of estimating the functional traits of herbarium specimens. The research, offers ecologists a powerful new tool for using biological collections to understand how plant communities change over time, providing insights into how we might best keep ecosystems healthy in the future.
Hidden beneath the delicate, red skin and juicy flesh of a tomato is a wealth of nutrients and genetic makeup. With recent research on the first genome of a species in the tomatillo tribe (part of the tomato family), we now have a better idea of how this vital plant family came to be.
Mt. Timolan Protected Landscape is one of the declared protected areas of the Philippines and is characterized by a variety of habitats. The presence of various microhabitats is reflected in the diversity of flora and fauna found there. However, limited information on its flora and fauna is available and biodiversity studies are scarce up until at present.
