The Week in Botany October 20, 2025
It’s a busy week coming up. Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be at the National Botanic Garden of Wales for the Plant Science Wales meeting. On Friday, it’s Black in Plant Science in Leeds. The plan was to do a meeting a month, but the rescheduling of Plant Science Wales has changed that this month. I’ll be aiming to listen and talk to people rather than blog the events, as some of this will be work in progress or confidential material.
Despite having a naturally grumpy face, I will be delighted to talk to you about your work, science outreach, or how Mark is probably secretly a Traitor, despite what the captions say, because the way he went after Tameka was vicious.
There will also be another email of the papers and the news stories you’re sharing on Mastodon and Bluesky at the same time next week, if you’re in the UK and Europe or an hour later elsewhere, because next weekend daylight saving ends. Until next time, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
On Botany One
Eccentric Pollinating Mates for An Eccentric Flowering Plant
Science has just proven the most despised bugs in human history to be key pollinators of some of the most bizarre and fascinating plants on Earth.
Patricia Silva-Flores: “A Whole Hidden World Waiting to Be Discovered and Admired!”
Botany One interviews Dr Patricia Silva-Flores, a Chilean biologist whose work brings attention to the vital, overlooked role of fungi in ecosystems and society.
Nigeria’s Silent Libraries of Plant Life
Thousands of overlooked plant specimens from this country could fill critical gaps in global biodiversity knowledge.
…and last’s week’s Week in Botany with nature and nurture, the long life of a rose, Dr. Stefanie Ickert-Bond on the importance of taxonomy and more…
News & Views
FormatMyPaper
Before you complain about this, give it a go.
Botanical Skills Webinars
You can book for a free webinar on botanical skills now, or catch up on past webinars on the BSBI YouTube channel. As an example, here’s a video on Getting Started with Plant Keys.
Famous monkey-face ‘Dracula’ orchids are vanishing in the wild
They look like tiny monkeys peering out from the mist. Known to scientists as Dracula, the so-called “monkey-face orchids” have become online celebrities.
Lessons from 138 bryophyte genomes
A study of 138 bryophyte genomes, including 123 newly sequenced, reveals a greater diversity of gene families and a higher proportion of genes with origins in prokaryotes, viruses, fungi, or animals compared to tracheophytes.
Australian wet rainforests may be switching from absorbing carbon to emitting it
The "woody biomass" of trees in Queensland's wet tropical rainforests has shifted from being a carbon sink to a carbon source. A new study analysing 49 years of data from 20 sites indicated carbon is being emitted because trees are dying and decaying faster than they can be replaced.
Breaking Plant Blindness, One Taylor Swift Song at a Time
Using Taylor Swift music videos in botany classes can make students more interested in plants, helping them learn better and notice the important role plants play in our world.
Identifying Fine Roots
Fine root morphological identification is a frontier of belowground ecology with potential to answer questions about intraspecific nutrient dynamics and strategy. What depth niches do species fill belowground? How do root traits (e.g. root diameter) change across species, ecosystems, soil conditions, and depths?
The Laboratory That Creates Your Houseplants
How tissue culture creates houseplants with consistent traits for sale to the public.
Banned from Mobot #2 - Herbarium Labels & Cheilanthoid Ferns
Joey Santore Missouri Botanical Garden to hang out with Peter Bernhardt in the herbarium and nit-pick herbarium labels.
Happy 2nd birthday (to us)!
Nigel Chaffey celebrates two years of his blog.
Instagram photos help scientists track invasive plant flowering patterns
That vibrant carpet of pink and yellow flowers blanketing Mediterranean cliffs might look beautiful in holiday photos on a social media feed. But scientists have discovered these same Instagram snapshots are revealing how one of the world's most destructive coastal plants is taking over new environments by extending its flowering season and threatening native biodiversity.
This Week in Botany
5 Years Ago: Burn it all down: leaf traits change more than species composition
10 Years Ago: Phytoastrology
15 Years Ago: Blogger goes bananas (in a good way)
Scientific Papers
Kinase KEY1 controls pyrenoid condensate size throughout the cell cycle by disrupting phase separation interactions (FREE)
He et al identify a kinase, KEY1, in the model alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii that regulates pyrenoid condensate size and number dynamics throughout the cell cycle and is necessary for normal pyrenoid function and growth. Unlike wild type, key1 mutant cells have multiple smaller condensates throughout the cell cycle that fail to dissolve during cell division.
The CAPE1 peptide confers resistance against bacterial wilt in tomato (FREE)
Zhang et al describe the xylem proteome in these same cultivars and compared it with the apoplastic proteome, revealing variety-dependent and infection-dependent changes. This proteomic analysis led to the identification of pathogenesis-related 1 (PR1) proteins as highly induced upon infection.
Exploring fern pathosystems and immune receptors to bridge gaps in plant immunity (FREE)
Castel et al reveal that ferns exhibit a range of responses to pathogens, including putative non-host resistance and more specific resistance mechanisms. Among ten ferns tested, Pteris vittata displays the broadest spectrum of pathogen compatibility.
Spatial and single-cell expression analyses reveal complex expression domains in early wheat spike development (FREE)
Xu et al integrate single-molecule fluorescence in situ hybridization (smFISH) and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to generate an atlas of cell clusters and expression domains during the early stages of wheat spike development. They characterize spatiotemporal expression of 99 genes by smFISH in 48,225 cells at early transition (W1.5), late double ridge (W2.5), and floret primordia stages (W3.5).
Differential contributions of an antimicrobial effector from Verticillium dahliae to virulence and tomato microbiota assembly across natural soil (FREE)
Punt et al established a collection of natural soil samples with diverse physicochemical properties and microbiota compositions. Using this collection, they show for three plant species, barley, tomato and cotton, that root-associated bacterial and fungal communities are primarily shaped by the type of soil, whereas the phyllosphere microbiota is mainly determined by plant species.
Changes in plant flammability-related traits to fire regime characteristics and biomass conditions in the Cerrado (FREE)
In Cerrado open savannas, Zanzarini et al selected areas with high or low fire frequency and areas that were recently burned or excluded from fire for the last 21 years. For grasses, forbs, and shrubs, they measured the following flammability-related traits: moisture content, dead biomass, burn rate, maximum fire temperature, and burned biomass.
Differential impact of dawn and dusk watering on tomato metabolism and biomass allocation ($)
Siqueira et al demonstrate that watering tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) at different times of the day alters the transcriptional patterns of genes controlling flowering induction. Dawn watering (DAW) triggered a strong repression of the single flower truss (SFT) gene, leading to metabolite accumulation and delayed development. Dusk-watered plants showed increased fruit production compared to DAW-treated plants.
Aboveground biomass in Australian tropical forests now a net carbon source ($)
Carle et al use long-term forest inventory data (1971–2019) from Australian moist tropical forests and a causal inference framework to assess the carbon balance of woody aboveground standing biomass over time, the demographic processes accounting for it, and its climatic drivers, including cyclones. They find that a transition from sink (0.62 ± 0.04 Mg C ha−1 yr−1: 1971–2000) to source (−0.93 ± 0.11 Mg C ha−1 yr−1: 2010–2019) has occurred for the aboveground woody biomass of these forests, with sink capacity declining at a rate of 0.041 ± 0.032 Mg C ha−1 yr−1.
Drought intensity and duration interact to magnify losses in primary productivity ($)
Ohlert et al. assessed drought effects with a rainfall-exclusion experiment distributed across 74 grasslands and shrublands on six continents. On average, primary productivity declined by 29% in moderate-drought years, but effects did not compound over multiyear droughts.
Phylogenomic signatures of repeat-induced point mutations across the fungal kingdom (FREE)
Fungal genome sizes exhibit more than a 100-fold variation, largely driven by the expansion of repetitive sequences such as transposable elements (TEs). Silencing mechanisms targeting TEs at the epigenetic or transcript level have independently evolved in many lineages. In fungi, repeat-induced point mutation (RIP) targets TEs by recognizing repetitive sequences and inducing mutagenesis. However, the prevalence of RIP across the fungal kingdom and the fidelity of the canonical C-to-T mutation signatures remain unclear. Badet & Croll address these gaps by tracking shifts in genome architecture across the fungal kingdom
Foliar salt spray exclusion and tissue tolerance underlie local adaptation to oceanic salt spray (FREE)
Plunkert et al investigate mechanisms of salt spray adaptation by comparing five latitudinal pairs of monkeyflower accessions locally adapted to coastal and inland habitats. They measured sodium levels in coastal and inland leaves exposed to experimental salt spray in the lab, and compared leaf surface traits that may contribute to differences in sodium uptake between ecotypes. Coastal monkeyflowers take up less sodium through the leaf surface under experimental salt spray, which may contribute to local adaptation under oceanic salt spray in coastal habitats.
In AoBC Publications
Careers
Note: These are posts that have been advertised around the web. They are not posts that I personally offer, nor can I arrange the visa for you to work internationally.
Understanding Host Compatibility in the Marchantia-Phytophthora System, PhD, Norwich
The goal of this project is to explore the delicate balance between disease resistance and susceptibility to filamentous pahogens in M. polymorpha. Using comparative macroevolutionary analyses, molecular genetics, and multi-omics approaches, the candidate will investigate widely-conserved and lineage-specific aspects of liverwort immunity in addition to the virulence mechanisms employed by broad host Phytophthora species to promote infection across distantly related host plants. This multidisciplinary project is based in the laboratory of Dr. Phil Carella, located in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at the John Innes Centre.
Vanishing Virulence: Investigating pathogenicity loss in a plant pathogenic fungus, PhD, Norwich
What makes a plant killer lose its edge? This project will investigate why fungal pathogens lose virulence when they are grown in laboratory culture away from their host plant. Use cutting-edge molecular biology and genomics, we will try to solve a decades-old mystery in plant pathology.
How do cells communicate when it’s hot?, PhD, Norwich
This project will profile how plasmodesmal responses change across a temperature gradient, and thus explore the relationship between plasmodesmal function, temperature and the success of immune responses. The student will take advantage of the extensive tools and resources available in the Faulkner lab to investigate plasmodesmal function and immune responses, and use these to generate new information and hypotheses to be tested. The project will use molecular biology, genetic and quantitative imaging approaches to gain determine how cell-to-cell connectivity via plasmodesmata underpins immune success in different environments.
Identity matters: understanding spike architecture to increase grain number in wheat, PhD, Norwich
We have recently identified a strong candidate for the gene underlying this trait. Our initial phenotypic analysis suggests that the organ identity of glumes is changed to that of lemmas, suggesting that the mutant transforms glumes into sterile flowers. We hypothesise that this could be exploited to increase grain number per spikelet, by combining several mutations to fully transform glumes into fertile flowers. This project provides a clear goal to characterize an exciting mutant in a wheat relative, while also allowing plenty of room for the student to take ownership of the project and expand into their areas of interest and according to the results. The student will receive mentoring and outstanding training in modern crop genetics, genomics, data analysis, and bioinformatics.
Combatting wheat take-all disease with in-field and synthetic microbial communities, PhD, Norwich
In this PhD project, you will: develop molecular lab and bioinformatics skills to analyse microbial community genetic diversity; analyse existing field data from the Watkins wheat landrace collection to inform, and potentially alter existing wheat synthetic microbial communities; screen representatives of the Watkin’s collection for take-all suppression in the presence of different rhizosphere microbial communities; conduct amplicon sequencing on the established communities to analyse how microbial communities are correlated with take-all severity
Professur für Pflanzengenetik, Kiel
We are looking for a professor for plant genetics with a focus on stress responses and adaptation to the habitat. Excellent research results, experience in teaching and academic self-government, as well as knowledge in the promotion of diversity are required. In German, my machine-aided translation may be incorrect.
Associate Professor in Plant Ecology with focus on the ecology of vascular plants, bryophytes or lichens, Stockholm
The Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences (DEEP) at Stockholm University is inviting applications for a tenured Associate Professor position in Plant Ecology. The successful candidate will engage in cutting-edge research, teach undergraduate and master’s courses in plant ecology, and mentor PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. The position is fully financed and the teaching on undergraduate courses normally counts to around 25%.
Curator of Plants & Sustainability, Toronto
ROM seeks an innovative and collaborative Curator to build, research, interpret, and share the Museum’s plants collection and to be an engaging spokesperson for the importance of green plants, including vascular plants, pteridophytes, bryophytes, and algae. The Curator of Plants will initiate and develop transdisciplinary exhibitions and public programs, build a strong museum-based research program, collaborate with academic institutions (such as the University of Toronto), community groups and stakeholders, and demonstrate exceptional leadership, listening, and communication skills.