Seven to nine percent of all vascular plant species occurring in Europe are globally threatened. The researchers combined Red Lists of endangered plant species in Europe with data on their global distribution. It helps assess the overall level of threat to plant species and thus supports the basis of international nature conservation activities.
A new study provides key insights into how and why tree populations migrate in response to climate change at the continental scale.
Feeling the heat: Steroid hormones contribute to the heat stress resistance of plants. Plants, like other organisms, can be severely affected by heat stress. To increase their chances of survival, they activate the heat shock response, a molecular pathway also employed by human and animal cells for stress protection. Researchers have now discovered that plant steroid hormones can promote this response in plants.
Scientists have developed ways to decipher effects of the CO2 rise during the past 100 years on metabolic fluxes of the key plant species in peatlands, mosses.
Most organisms follow a timetable – when to reproduce, when to migrate, so on so forth! The timing of such key periodic life events is known as phenology and is crucial for organism’s survival and their contributions to ecosystem functions. One of the most reported responses of organisms to contemporary climate change is shifts in their phenology. Ecologists have already shown that phenology of many plants are advancing due to climate change, for instance, many plants are flowering earlier during the growing season. But little was known how plant phenological changes aboveground matches with plant phenological changes belowground due to climate change.
The world is warming quickly with no indication of slowing down. This could be catastrophic for the production of food crops, particularly in already warm areas.
In a new study, researchers used citizen-science data to determine the cause of the anomalous bloom and predict when similar events might occur.
The global decline of pollinators threatens the reproductive success of 90 per cent of all wild plants globally and the yield of 85 per cent of the world’s most important crops. Pollinators – mainly bees and other insects – contribute to 35 per cent of the world’s food production. The service provided by pollinators is particularly important for securing food produced by the more than two billion small farmers worldwide.
It is commonly assumed that any important scientific knowledge would be available in English, and so scientific knowledge used in international studies is predominantly sourced from English-language documents. But is this assumption correct? According to new research the answer is no, and science written in languages other than English may hold untapped information crucial to the conservation of global biodiversity.
Coconut trees grow slowly and are difficult to clone. Scientists have developed a method to multiply seedlings faster and conserve coconut genetic resources for the long term. This will help to preserve coconut tree biodiversity and meet the increasing demand for coconuts and derived products.
