š» The Week in Botany September 11, 2023
Itās been a busy week, but itās one of those weeks where it feels like thereās something to show for some of the effort. We have ten stories out this week including one with a Buzzfeed-like title. Iām not sure if that will become more common. On this occasion, it got across two elements of the post, but I donāt want to end up with clickbait titles that promise more than they deliver.
Whatever we have next week, we should also have the email with you at the same time as usual. Until then, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
On Botany One
Temperate Steppes Thrive Under Mowerās Blade
A new research study reveals mowing may actually fortify grassland ecosystems by stimulating enhanced plant defence traits and biodiversity.
Urban Tree Removal Experiments Reveal the Importance of Trees to People and Nature
Cutting down big old trees in an Australian park led to fewer birds and possums as well as lower appreciation of the park from people, revealing the outsized ecological and social values of mature urban trees.
When it comes to removing invasive species, timing can help
Discovering the power of patience in combating invasive plant species, this study highlights the critical role of timing in the successful removal and ecological restoration process.
The Light They Canāt See Draws Bees to Tomato Plants
Research found that far-red light, which boosts tomato growth and flowering in greenhouses, also makes the plantsā flowers more appealing to bumblebee pollinators through enhanced scents and sugars, attracting more bees.
Want to help conserve plants in your garden? Thereās an app for that.
Scientists hope to encourage the German public to take part in Conservation Gardening, and help protect native species.
Much Plant Life Is Invisible to AI
ChatGPT may know a lot, but when it comes to botany basics, this AI still has a lot to learn according to researchers who gave it a āplant awarenessā quiz.
Insects Down Under Get on Top of Green Roofs
A new green roof in Melbourne, Australia, was rapidly colonized by insects, but results show that a green roof needs more than just plants to make a helpful ecological contribution.
Healing Power of Sunflowers Helps Bumblebees
No matter how old or where itās from, frozen sunflower pollen helps bumblebees fight off a common gut parasite that threatens bee health and pollination.
Scientists Put 5 Different Ways To Calculate Pollinatorsā Favourite Flowers To The Test. The Best Is Simple Enough To Apply To Your Own Garden.
Scientists found that methods for quantifying beesā floral preferences fundamentally disagree on which flowers bees find most attractive. In a new article, they identify the most reliable method, one thatās simple enough to apply to your own garden.
Newsflash: Plants are pollinated by insects
New research reveals the secret nightlife of moths, fluttering under cover of darkness to carry out their vital work as unsung heroes pollinating blackberry brambles.
News & Views
Suppressing growth of invasive species, planting native trees: Delhi forest dept likely to accept proposals for eco-restoration
When trees are cut in Delhi, 10 times the number of trees that are felled are to be planted as compensatory plantation under the Delhi Preservation of Trees Act (DPTA).
Over 300 saplings planted for urban forest
The International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Karachi, on Saturday planted more than 300 saplings on its premises to create an Urban Forest. A variety of saplings of different trees were planted including medicinal as well as fruit trees, a communique said.
scidraw.io
SciDraw is a free repository of high quality drawings of animals, scientific setups, and anything that might be useful for scientific presentations and posters.
Contours that kill: Geometry influences prey capture in carnivorous pitcher plants
Researchers at the University of Oxford's Botanic Garden and the Mathematical Institute have shown that the shape, size, and geometry of carnivorous pitcher plants determines the type of prey they trap. The results have been published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The vast bog that helps fight climate change
To the untrained eye it looks like a vast expanse of empty moorland, but the Flow Country holds a secret.
Botanists from the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and the University of the Philippines Los BanĢos have reinstated a species of Rafflesia
Botanists from the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and the University of the Philippines Los BaƱos (UPLB) have reinstated a species of Rafflesia ā the genus containing the worldās largest flowers ā in a paper published by Phytotaxa.
Will tree planting fix Canadaās forests? Not without serious changes
Tree planting is an often used tactic by the logging industry to greenwash the great harm they do to the environment.
Harrogate banana plant flowers for first time
Horticulturists at a garden in Harrogate have celebrated the blooming for the first time ever of a 15ft (4.5m) banana plant.
Kew Gardenās āqueer natureā LGBTQ-friendly event attracts angry tirade from Piers Morgan
The presenter didnāt seem to accept that the plant kingdom can be more complex than just āmaleā and āfemaleā.
When lush deciduous forests covered the Arctic
Around 50 million years ago there were extensive, lush deciduous forests in the polar regions of the Arctic, where today there is sparse vegetation. The forests existed due to the conditions in the Eoceneāa combination of a greenhouse climate and almost twice the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is today.
Early botanical gardens were diverse with few species in common, study reports
Five botanical gardens in the United States dating to the early 1800s were high diversity horticultural microcosms representing nearly every continent, yet had few plants in common, according to Penn State researchers.
Scientific Papers
ā»ļø Seeing clearly ā Plant anatomy through Katherine Esau's microscopy lens
One of the seminal authors whose books are familiar to nearly everyone in the plant biology community is Katherine Esau (1898ā1997), a phenomenal plant anatomist and microscopist whose textbooks are still used daily around the world ā 70 years after their first publication. Several technical innovations in microscopy have emerged since Esau's time and plant biological studies by authors who were trained using her books are shown side-by-side with Esau's drawings.
Underground trees inhabit varied environmental extremes across the Afrotropics
Using occurrence records of four Afrotropical genera, Parinari (Chrysobalanaceae), Ozoroa (Anacardiaceae), Syzygium (Myrtaceae) and Lannea (Anacardiaceae), and environmental data of nine climate and disturbance variables, the biogeography and niche of underground trees are compared with their open and closed ecosystem congeners.
Evolution of cereal floral architecture and threshability
Xie et al. review morphological similarities, principal regulators, and common mechanisms implicated in the easy-threshing traits of crops. Understanding the shared and unique features in the developmental process of cereal threshability may not only shed light on the convergent evolution of cereals but also facilitate the de novo domestication of wild cereal germplasm resources through genome-editing technologies.
A perspective on cross-kingdom RNA interference in mutualistic symbioses
Qiao et al. review the current understanding of ckRNAi as it relates to interactions between plants and their pathogenic and mutualistic endosymbionts, with particular emphasis on evidence in support of ckRNAi in the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis.
Exploring the identity of individual plant cells in space and time
Using recently published studies in plant sciences, Oliva & Lista highlight how single-cell technologies have enabled a better comprehension of tissue organisation, cell fate dynamics in development or in response to various stimuli, as well as identifying key transcriptional regulators of cell identity.
Drought survival in conifer species is related to the time required to cross the stomatal safety margin
Do conifer species native to mesic and xeric environments display different hydraulic strategies and temporal sequences under drought? A dry-down experiment was performed on seedlings of four conifer species differing in embolism resistance, from drought-sensitive to extremely drought-resistant species.
Host functional traits as the nexus for multilevel infection patterns
Understanding pathogen transmission and infection patterns at multiple biological scales is a central issue in disease ecology and evolution. Huang et al. suggest that functional traits of host species readily affect infection patterns of species, communities, and landscapes, and thus serve as a linkage for multilevel studies of infectious disease.
Using photogrammetry to create virtual permanent plots in rare and threatened plant communities
Tirrell et al. propose using photogrammetry, specifically photograph-based digital surface models (DSMs) developed using structure-from-motion, to establish virtual permanent plots in plant communities where the use of permanent structures may not be possible.
Parallels between drought and flooding: An integrated framework for plant eco-physiological responses to water stress
Drought and flooding occur at opposite ends of the soil moisture spectrum yet their resulting stress responses in plants share many similarities. Drought limits root water uptake to which plants respond with stomatal closure and reduced leaf gas exchange. Flooding limits root metabolism due to soil oxygen deficiency, which also limits root water uptake and leaf gas exchange. As drought and flooding can occur consecutively in the same system and resulting plant stress responses share similar mechanisms, a single theoretical framework that integrates plant responses over a continuum of soil water conditions from drought to flooding is attractive. Based on a review of recent literature, Chen et al. integrated the main plant eco-physiological mechanisms in a single theoretical framework with a focus on plant water transport, plant oxygen dynamics, and leaf gas exchange.
Nichima gen. nov. (Alismataceae) based on reproductive structures from the Oligocene-Miocene of Mexico
Nichima gen. nov. is a perfect, actinomorphic flower with an expanded receptacle, three persistent sepals with multi-vasculature, delicate and caducous petals, six stamens, and gynoecium composed of three to more superior carpels, maturing into achenes. These characteristics resemble flowers of Alismataceae.
The inability of barley to germinate after submergence depends on hypoxia-induced secondary dormancy
GĆ³mez-Ćlvarez et al. tested the capacity to germinate of a large barley panel after a short period of submergence followed by a period of recovery. They demonstrate that sensitive barley varieties activate underwater secondary dormancy because of a lower permeability to oxygen dissolved in water.
Careers
Senior Editor ā Journal of Ecology
Are you an active researcher with broad interests in plant ecology?
Lecturer, Senior Lecturer or Reader, Essex
The School of Life Sciences at The University of Essex is recruiting a lecturer/senior lecture/reader to join any one of our four research groups. Our philosophy is to deliver research across all levels of biological organisation, from genes and cells through to communities and ecosystems, which is undertaken within our Ecology and Environmental Microbiology, Genomics and Computational Biology, Plant Productivity, and Protein Structure and Mechanisms of Disease research groups. We welcome applicants who could work within or across any of these sub-disciplines. We particularly encourage applicants who would complement or expand research and teaching in our Plant, Genomics or Protein research groups.
Research Assistant, Edinburgh
We are looking for a Research Assistant in plant/microbial synthetic biology to assist with the engineering development, characterisation and maintenance of cyanobacterial strains and support the running of the laboratory.
Postdoctoral Tropical Plant Ecophysiologist, Leeds
We are looking for a tropical plant ecophysiologist to be part of the project team for a new drought experiment being installed in the southern Amazon. The successful candidate will be responsible for leading data collection and analysis and also for training postgraduate students based in partner institutes in Brazil. The successful candidate will be expected to spend prolonged periods of time in Mato Grosso, Brazil.
Senior Research Laboratory Technician, Cambridge
We invite applications for a Senior Laboratory Technician to join the Plant-Parasite Interactions group at the University of Cambridge, Department of Plant Sciences. The group, run by Dr Sebastian Eves-van den Akker, is proudly international, diverse, and welcoming.
Assistant Professor - Plant Science, NY State
The Department of Plant Science at The State University of New York College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskill (SUNY Cobleskill) invites applications for a tenure track position in Plant Science beginning August 2023. The Department of Plant Science educates students with diverse interests ranging from Horticulture, Turfgrass, Landscape, Cannabis, Agriculture, Fermentation, Precision Agriculture, and Ag Business. The department embraces innovative ideas while working to keep our programs aligned with industry needs.
Research Fellow (Biological Sciences), Singapore
This is one of the three open positions for Postdoctoral Fellows (Research Fellows) in the lab of Yuchen Long. The successful candidate will work on an interdisciplinary project on the biomechanical regulations in plant development. Our lab is interested in how biomechanical inputs, particularly tissue mechanics and hydraulics, contribute to the developmental processes in the plant meristematic tissues.
AGBS- Open Rank Faculty Position in Plant Pathology, Morocco
The Biodiversity and Plant Sciences program at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) is seeking applications for a full-time Professor in the field of Plant Pathology. The successful candidate is expected to participate in an interdisciplinary team to develop and lead research programs on applied and molecular plant pathology.