The Week in Botany October 27, 2025
It’s been tiring week this week, with two conferences, and many more roadworks between them. I think my plan to visit a day long conference once a month might be viable, but the four days out this week have been a lot. I’m glad I had the extra hour in bed this weekend.
One of the highlights of the week was a guided tour in the National Botanic Garden of Wales, where we got to see some unusual fungi. The trip went in roughly three phases. First I couldn’t see any fungi. Then, once they were pointed out I saw plenty of fungi. Finally, I then became paranoid that because they could be anywhere, that I’d put my foot down in the field and damage something rare.
Because I’ve not be around much this past week, I don’t know what is out next, However, 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. Until next time, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
On Botany One
Your Eyes and Ears Are Better At Detecting Biodiversity Than You Think
People’s impressions of forests often match scientific measures of biodiversity, with big implications for conservation and well-being.
Botanists track where a plant thief hides
Advanced imaging captures the growth of a parasite inside its host.
Paul M. Kirika: Botany as a Legacy and Vocation
Botany One interviews Dr. Paul M. Kirika, the curator of the largest herbarium in tropical Africa.
They thought they were growing fruit. They accidentally grew a neighborhood.
Swedish urban forest gardens, created for sustainable food, surprisingly became valued more for fostering community connections and social cohesion than producing crops.
Carnivorous plants lack genes to host arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi
When friends abandon them, some plants go on a killing spree.
…and last’s week’s Week in Botany with the creepiest pollinator, ghost herbaria and the hidden world of fungi and more…
News & Views
Dominique Bergmann
The Stanford botanist New Phytologist profile was shared a lot on Monday.
Event:Living Data 2025
Living Data 2025 is a major conference in the field of biodiversity informatics in Bogotá, Colombia, from 21-24 October 2025, and has session decicated to Wikimedia projects.
Christine Faulkner
On Tuesday, the botanist from the John Innes Centre had her recent New Phytologist profile shared.
Heat surges put preserved Amazon areas at high risk, study says
In September 2024, biologist Cássio Alencar Nunes was taken aback while heading out for field research in Jaú National Park, a conservation unit in Brazil’s northern state of Amazonas. However, instead of hearing the usual noise of the forest at dawn, what researchers found was nothing but silence. No birds, no insects. All quiet.
Harvard FAS Cuts Ph.D. Seats By More Than Half Across Next Two Admissions Cycles
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences slashed the number of Ph.D. student admissions slots for the Science division by more than 75 percent and for the Arts & Humanities division by about 60 percent for the next two years.
David Edwards obituary
David Edwards, who has died aged 77, was a botanist, lecturer and then senior administrator at Universiti Brunei Darussalam in Brunei, where he made a great contribution to efforts to preserve the tropical rainforest.
To understand plant resilience to fire, look belowground
When plants first colonized land around 500 million years ago, they encountered a world where fire did not exist. That “fire-free” period ended once atmospheric oxygen increased (allowing ignition), and plants themselves provided plenty of fuel.
What makes PhD students happy? Good supervision
Supervisors who invest in positive mentoring relationships with their PhD candidates also reap the benefits for their own research.
New wheat diversity discovery could provide an urgently-needed solution to global food security
Newly-discovered diversity in the wheat genome could offer vital new opportunities to improve and ‘climate-proof’ one of the world’s most important staple crops.
What does co-creation really mean for agroecological transitions?
Exploring theory and practice at the annual members forum meeting of the Agroecology TPP?
Bali’s botanical garden
“There are 800 incarnations of Bali. You just have to find the ones you like.” These words, uttered by an old Aussie expat who has lived in Bali since the 1970s, have proved prophetic.
This Week in Botany
5 Years Ago: Asymmetry allows divergent use of pollinators, but often represents a one-way evolutionary street
10 Years Ago: Human mind-control by plants
15 Years Ago: Infection processes of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum in Brassica napus
Scientific Papers
Dynamic cell division and growth during de novomeristem formation in epiphytic fern gametophytes ($)
Using confocal live imaging with computer-assisted image segmentation and quantification at single-cell resolution, Wu et al show that in Phlebodium pseudoaureum, a representative epiphytic fern, continuous de novo meristem formation drives gametophytic clone-forming and extended longevity. Patterns of cell growth and division are closely associated with the initiation and expansion of de novo-formed meristems in Phlebodiumgametophytes, with active proliferation in the outermost layer driving this process.
Seed fatty acid composition and physical dormancy in fire-prone ecosystems (FREE)
McInnes et al characterized seed fatty acid (FA) compositions of 26 Fabaceae species from fire-prone and fire-free ecosystems through gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. They compared FA saturation, total relative FA content and the highest melting point FA of each species across seed tissues (seed coat vs internal tissues) and habitat type (fire-prone vs fire-free) and, for fire-prone species, tested for a relationship with species-specific dormancy-breaking thresholds.
An elevated environmental temperature impairs accumulation of the pattern recognition receptor FLS2 (FREE)
Pattern-triggered immunity (PTI) is initiated when plants detect pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) through pattern-recognition receptors (PRRs). How moderate increases in temperature affect this plant immune signalling remains unclear. Jacobs et al explored this by using flg22 and the leucine-rich repeat receptor kinase (LRR-RK) FLS2 as a model receptor-ligand system and Ca2+ signaling as a representative PTI output.
PHLOEM EARLY DOF genes are induced within clubroot galls as a consequence of cambial stimulation and vascular reprogramming during Plasmodiophora brassicae infection in Arabidopsis thaliana (FREE)
Clubroot galls represent complex cellular structures produced by Plasmodiophora brassicae, a soil-borne protist, which infects below-ground parts of Brassicaceaeplants, including Arabidopsis thaliana. This obligate biotroph hijacks the host machinery to manipulate vascular development and patterning. The galls display a dramatic cellular reprogramming where phloem proliferation is enhanced while xylogenesis is suppressed. Singh et al show that at least three PHLOEM EARLY DOF(PEAR) genes—PEAR1, DOF6, and HIGH CAMBIAL ACTIVITY2 (HCA2)—are induced within proliferating phloem during gall development.
Hereditary Leaf Symbiosis in Tropical Plants: Evolution and Function of Vertically Transmitted Bacterial Symbionts (FREE)
Until recently, the inability to culture the bacterial symbionts and the difficulty of obtaining bacteria-free plants reliably have limited the understanding of the functions of these symbioses and the mechanisms enabling transmission across generations. The development of culture-free methods has made it possible to identify bacterial endosymbionts and to realize that these symbioses are highly specific, with each host plant interacting with only one bacterial species. Ninzatti et al review the current knowledge of these highly specific leaf symbiotic associations, focusing on recent experimental evidence.
Quantitative Genetics in Natural Population ($)
Phenotypes evolve under natural selection if, and only if, they are genetically variable. While evolutionary ecologists have long studied natural selection, it is only comparatively recently that quantitative genetic methods have been applied to wild populations. This fertile area of research is allowing us to scrutinize the genetic basis of (co)variation within-and among-traits, increasing our understanding of adaptive evolution in nature. Wilson & Poissant review some of the key principles, developments, challenges, and emerging directions in this field of research.
Widespread evolution of poricidal flowers: A striking example of morphological convergence across flowering plants (FREE)
The evolution of tube-like floral morphologies that control pollen release via small openings (functionally poricidal flowers) represents a taxonomically and geographically widespread instance of repeated and independent evolution of a functionally similar morphology. Poricidal flowers are also often closely associated with buzz pollination by bees. Yet we lack an updated angiosperm-wide survey of their phylogenetic distribution. Leigh Russell et al identify all known angiosperm genera containing poricidal flowers via a literature survey.
Intraspecific plant chemodiversity at plot level has contrasting effects on arthropod functional groups (FREE)
Plant chemistry mediates interactions between plants and their environment. While intraspecific chemodiversity at the individual plant level is well studied, the effects of chemodiversity at the plant community level on arthropod interactions need more attention. Ojeda-Prieto et al conducted a field experiment to test how intraspecific chemodiversity affects plant–arthropod interactions.
Glucosylation of endogenous haustorium-inducing factors underpins kin avoidance in parasitic plants ($)
Parasitic plants can be devastating to crops. Plants in the Orobanchaceae family are typically parasitic but rarely parasitize their own or closely related species. Xiang et al. identified an enzyme in the parasitic plant Phtheirospermum japonicum that conjugates sugars to phenolic compounds involved in stimulating the formation of the parasitic organ called the haustorium.
Scaling back DEI programmes and the loss of scientific talent ($)
Programmes that support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in science are under attack in the USA. Data indicate that diversity in the scientific workforce increases creativity and success in tackling challenging problems. Loss of promising talent supported by these programmes will substantially weaken our research capacity, limit innovation and substantially reduce discoveries important for driving scientific advancements.
Read free via ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/eMLnD
Disulfide bond sculpts a peptide fold that mediates phytocytokine recognition (FREE)
Precise ligand recognition by closely related leucine-rich repeat receptor kinases (LRR-RKs) is essential for plants to coordinate immunity, development, and environmental adaptation. Jimenez Sandoval et al show how HAESA-LIKE 3 (HSL3) specifically recognizes the folded, disulfide-stabilized CTNIP/SCREW phytocytokines in Arabidopsis.
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.
PhD: Sustainable food production through insight to genetic and hormonal interactions during pea pod development, Oxford
Oxford has a project to understand molecular mechanisms underlying the coordinated development of seeds and pods in the legume family. Whilst the results of this research will be important to understand the evolution of flowering plants, the generated knowledge may play a crucial role in increasing the sustainability of food production and improvement of human health. Indeed, opportunities to exploit the results from the project for crop improvement are likely to arise during the studentship.
PhD: Effects Of Forest Diversification On Floral Reward Production For Pollinators, London
After completing this project, the applicant would have expertise in forest ecology, forest management, various field work techniques, pollinator ecology and pollen and nectar chemical analyses. This skill set would enable them to continue career in either academia (e.g. as a postdoctoral fellow in projects on forest ecology, chemical ecology, plant-pollinator interactions) or in forest management, policy making (e.g. developing pollinator-friendly forest management approaches) or natural product chemistry.
PhD: Predicting functional plant–microbiome networks for soil remediation, Manchester
This project will combine multi-omics approaches (genomics, metatranscriptomics) with AI-driven predictive modelling to disentangle the ecological and molecular processes underlying zinc mobilisation. By integrating microbiome datasets with machine learning, the student will identify key microbial functions, model their interactions under stress scenarios (including flooding), and design–build–test microbial consortia for application to barley grown across zinc-contamination and soil-water capacity gradients.
W2 Professorship with tenure track to W3 in Computational Biology, Göttingen
We are looking for a committed and team-oriented colleague to represent the field of data-driven research and teaching in life sciences. The post holder will perform research and teaching in the field of big data methods. This may include their exploration, development and application, e.g., digitisation, analysis, visualisation, and integration of large amounts of data obtained using high-throughput methods on biomolecules (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, etc.) and/or imaging methods / high-throughput methods of phenotyping (phenomics).
PhD Position in Plant Developmental Biology, Gießen
We are seeking a motivated researcher to join our team for a four-year appointment. This position is perfect for someone eager to further their academic qualifications while contributing to fundamental research in the field of molecular evolution and plant sexual reproduction.
Bolsa de PD em Ecologia de Comunidades Vegetais, Rio Claro
O pós-doutorando terá oportunidade de trabalhar em equipe transdisciplinar e internacional, dentro do projeto Biota-Cerrado on Fire. O projeto tem como base experimentos de longa duração de fogo no Cerrado, com grande banco de dados disponível.