January 22, 2024

🌻 The Week in Botany January 22, 2024

It’s a much-reduced newsletter this week. Work has been a struggle and every night this week I’ve been ready to sleep by five o’clock. On Friday I found out why when the COVID test was positive. The test is a novelty, but the rest is much better missed, so I can only give it 1 star out of 5 as an experience.

Ironically, the plan was to move to a different system next week that makes writing the emails easier. That will be delayed till I’m feeling better. I’ll try to have a newsletter for you next week, but I’m not sure how it will look. Until then, take care.

Alun (webmaster@botany.one)

News & Views

With fewer pollinators, plants are cutting back on nectar production
Fewer pollinators means more self-pollination, less food for bees.

Botanist calls out chain stores for selling ‘trash’ plant: ‘This is one of the worst invasive species in America’
A botanist posted a video identifying the dangers of a seemingly harmless plant, pointing out that it was actually an invasive species strangling a native tree.

In Uganda, refugees' need for wood ravaged the forest. Now, they work to restore it
Refugees from Uganda’s neighboring countries have long been welcomed to the Nakivale settlement near its southern border with Tanzania.

A botanist shares her love of nurturing green urban spaces
Talia Dotson, TreePeople, uses mostly science in her career growing urban green spaces, leading community planting efforts and educating on the healing power of plants.

What are sacred forests?
Sacred forests and groves are primeval woodlands that different faith communities around the world have safeguarded for centuries as abodes of the spiritual or the divine.

A glorious organic garden in Kerala is a source of inspiration and envy
With its abundance, colour and innovation, a plot in India provides lessons for a return to the UK.

Scientific Papers

How close are we to the temperature tipping point of the terrestrial biosphere? (OA)
The temperature dependence of global photosynthesis and respiration determine land carbon sink strength. While the land sink currently mitigates ~30% of anthropogenic carbon emissions, it is unclear whether this ecosystem service will persist and, more specifically, what hard temperature limits, if any, regulate carbon uptake. Duffy et al. use the largest continuous carbon flux monitoring network to construct the first observationally derived temperature response curves for global land carbon uptake.

Targeted knockout of early nodulin-like 3 (MusaENODL3) gene in banana reveals its function in resistance to Xanthomonas wilt disease (OA)
The identification and manipulation of the MusaENODL3 gene highlight its potential as a critical player in plant-pathogen interactions, offering new opportunities for enhancing disease resistance in crops like banana, an important staple food crop and source of income for resource-poor farmers in the tropics. This study provides the first evidence of the direct role of the ENODL3 gene in developing disease-resistant plants.

First records of non-native species Callitriche deflexa (Plantaginaceae), which was previously misidentified as C. terrestris in Japan (OA)
The cosmopolitan genus Callitriche (Plantaginaceae) is a clade of small herbaceous plants that encompasses terrestrial and aquatic species. In Japan, six Callitriche species have been identified: four native and two naturalised species. Callitriche terrestris, a naturalised terrestrial species, was first reported in 1984 in Kanagawa Prefecture and it is thriving today.

Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities (OA)
Cooper et al. investigate abundance patterns of common tree species using inventory data on 1,003,805 trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm across 1,568 locationsin closed-canopy, structurally intact old-growth tropical forests in Africa, Amazonia and Southeast Asia.

Plant hydraulics at the heart of plant, crops and ecosystem functions in the face of climate change (OA)
This review examines how plant hydraulics can provide new insights into our understanding of these processes, including modelling processes of vegetation dynamics, illuminating numerous perspectives for assessing the consequences of climate change on forest and agronomic systems, and addressing unanswered questions across multiple areas of knowledge.

What explains the high island endemicity of Philippine Rafflesia? A species distribution modeling analysis of three threatened parasitic plant species and their hosts (OA)
Rafflesia are rare holoparasitic plants. In the Philippines, all but one species are found only on single islands. This study aimed to better understand the factors contributing to this distributional pattern. Specifically, we sought to determine whether narrow environmental tolerances of host and/or parasite species might explain their island endemicity.

Climate change determines the sign of productivity trends in US forests ($)
Increases in forest carbon storage have slowed climate change over recent decades, but the future of this carbon sink is uncertain. The net forest carbon sink is determined by the balance between positive drivers (e.g., the enhancement of photosynthesis due to rising concentrations of atmospheric CO2) and negative drivers (e.g., increasing frequency and intensity of drought and wildfire). These results highlight the vulnerability of the global forest carbon sink to climate change.

Green leaf volatile sensory calcium transduction in Arabidopsis
Plants perceive volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released by mechanically- or herbivore-damaged neighboring plants and induce various defense responses. Such interplant communication protects plants from environmental threats. However, the spatiotemporal dynamics of VOC sensory transduction in plants remain largely unknown. Using a wide-field real-time imaging method, Aratani et al. visualize an increase in cytosolic Ca²⁺ concentration ([Ca²⁺]_cyt) in Arabidopsis leaves following exposure to VOCs emitted by injured plants.

Visualizing plant intracellular inorganic orthophosphate distribution
Intracellular inorganic orthophosphate (Pi) distribution and homeostasis profoundly affect plant growth and development. However, its distribution patterns remain elusive owing to the lack of efficient cellular Pi imaging methods. Guo et al. develop a rapid colorimetric Pi imaging method, inorganic orthophosphate staining assay (IOSA), that can semi-quantitatively image intracellular Pi with high resolution.