đ¤ TWiB April 18, 2022
The email was disrupted a little last week. I was working on it when the room I was working in began to pitch and yaw like it was being tossed on the high seas. This was a surprise as I live sixty miles inland. I've reduced my workload for this week, and also for next as I have a trip to the surgery - on the off chance that it's me that has the problem and not the house.
It seems like a good time to remind you that we're looking for new editors for Botany One, and there are some tips to help you apply. If you know someone who'd be perfect for the role, tell them before the deadline of May 3.
As a result, there will probably be another newsletter with you next week, but it might be a little reduced. Until then, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
News & Views
Spruce trees' reconquest of Sweden after the last Ice Age took 10,000 years â phys.org A new study from scientists at Uppsala University shows that it took more than 10 millennia from when the first spruces returned to Sweden after the glacial stage of the last Ice Age until the species became widespread. This sluggish rate of initial dispersal has surprised the researchers, since the spruce might have had good prospects of expanding its range.
Brazil sets âworryingâ new Amazon deforestation record â www.aljazeera.com Brazilian Amazon sees 64 percent jump in deforestation in first three months of 2022 compared with a year earlier.
Ep. 364 - The Versatility of Living Plant Collections â In Defense of Plants â www.indefenseofplants.com Living plant collections at botanical gardens can serve many functions. They can be aesthetic, they can be educational, they can be conservation focused... the list goes on and none of these functions are mutually exclusive. In this episode, we sit down with Sean Lahmeyer, Collections and Conservation Manager for The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens to talk about these ideas and more at one of North Americas most beautiful and diverse botanical gardens.
REDUX: Ten things my lab learned in 2010â2019 (aside from everything else) â kamounlab.medium.com By the time this gets posted, youâll probably be sick and tired of all those retrospective articles looking back at the 2010â2019 decade.
Have Cities Really Made Allergies Worse by Planting Mostly Male Trees? â slate.com Is there any truth to viral TikTok and Twitter claims that cities have made allergies worse by planting mostly male trees?
The Latest Computer Vision Model Updates Weâve released a new computer vision model for iNaturalist. This is our first model update since July 2021. The iNaturalist website, mobile apps, and API are all now using this new model.
Even the Cactus May Not Be Safe From Climate Change â www.nytimes.com More than half of species could face greater extinction risk by midcentury, a new study found, as rising heat and dryness test the prickly plantsâ limits.
Litter-strewn Bay Bridge entrance will soon transform into an urban forest â www.sfexaminer.com It doesnât look like much now, but a barren patch of cement strewn with trash and scrawled with graffiti at the mouth of the Bay Bridge will be transformed into a nursery growing future trees for San Francisco streets.
Scientific Papers
Thank you for biting: dispersal of beneficial microbiota through 'antagonistic' interactions: Trends in Microbiology â www.cell.com Predation, herbivory, and parasitism are generally considered to be antagonistic in their effects on resource species (e.g., prey). Yet resource species can indirectly benefit from these interactions via increased access to symbiotic microbiota, suppression of competitor species, and potentially, acclimatization to changing environments.
Using fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based Pi biosensors, Zhang et al. mapped the relative cytosolic and plastidic Pi content of Brachypodium distachyon mycorrhizal root cells, analyzed responses to extracellular Pi and traced extraradical hyphae-mediated Pi transfer to colonized cells.
Marchantia polymorpha is a model liverwort and its overall low genetic redundancy is advantageous for dissecting complex pathways. Proximity-dependent in vivo biotin-labelling methods have emerged as powerful interactomics tools in recent years. However, interactomics studies applying proximity labelling are currently limited to angiosperm species in plants. Here, Melkonian et al. established and evaluated a miniTurbo-based interactomics method in M. polymorpha using MpSYP12A and MpSYP13B, two plasma membrane-localized SNARE proteins, as baits.
Protoplasts: small cells with big roles in plant biology: Trends in Plant Science â www.cell.com Compared with Agrobacterium-mediated stable transformation, which is often expensive, time-consuming, and technically challenging, plant protoplasts provide a versatile cell system for conducting plant biology research by taking advantage of its low cost, high speed, high flexibility, and convenience. So far, techniques for protoplast isolation, transfection, and incubation have been well-established in many plant species, such as arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), rice (Oryza sativa), and maize (Zea mays).
Climatic and biogeographical drivers of functional diversity in the flora of the Canary Islands
Functional traits can help us to elucidate biogeographical and ecological processes driving assemblage structure. Hanz et al. analysed the functional diversity of plant species of different evolutionary origins across an island archipelago, along environmental gradients and across geological age, to assess functional aspects of island biogeographical theory.
In this updated pathogen profile, Derbyshire et al. review the evolutionary and molecular features of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum and discuss avenues for future research into this important species.
Drought self-propagation in drylands due to landâatmosphere feedbacks | Nature Geoscience â www.nature.com
Schumacher et al. isolate the influence of soil moisture drought on downwind precipitation using Lagrangian moisture tracking constrained by observations from the 40 largest recent droughts worldwide. They show that dryland droughts are particularly prone to self-propagating because evaporation tends to respond strongly to enhanced soil water stress.
Using a simplified synthetic bacterial community (SynCom) representing the phylogenetic diversity of bacteria in the root microbiome, Tßrksoy et al. set out to characterize plant growth and defense metabolites when subjected to bacterial VOCs (bVOCs). Moreover, by profiling the SynCom community composition after co-cultivation with the plant, they explored how members of the community influenced each other in their growth setup.
Pseudanthia are widespread and have long been postulated to be a key innovation responsible for some of the angiosperm radiations. The aim of BaczyĹski et al.'s study was to analyze macroevolutionary patterns of these flower-like inflorescences and their potential correlation with diversification rates in Apiaceae subfamily Apioideae. In particular, they were interested to investigate evolvability of pseudanthia and evaluate their potential association with changes in the size of floral display.
Fan et al. show that mutations that disrupt microtubule dynamics are specifically defective for the non-cell autonomous actions of mobile miRNAs, including miR165/6 that is produced in the endodermis and moves to the vasculature to pattern xylem cell fates in Arabidopsis roots.
Northern Hemisphere vegetation change drives a Holocene thermal maximum
Thompson et al. use time slice simulations of the Community Earth System Model to assess the impact of Northern Hemisphere vegetation change on Holocene annual mean temperatures. Our simulations indicate that expansion of Northern Hemisphere vegetation 9000 and 6000 years ago warms Earthâs surface by ~0.8° and 0.7°C, respectively, producing a better match with proxy-based reconstructions
Careers
Postdoc â Modelling to explore natural variation to improve photosynthesis and productivity of rice under stress The post-doctoral candidate will be responsible for implementing a component of the interdisciplinary project âAdaptive Rice Cultivation for a Changing ClimatE (Ad-RiCCE)â funded jointly by NWO (Dutch Research Council) and DBT (Indian Department of Biotechnology).
Senior Ecologist SE Region The Senior Ecologist will provide high-level expertise, including technical, management and logistical advice to develop our conservation plans, and ensure conservation management, species recovery and research programs are delivered for the purpose of achieving adaptive management on our reserves and partnerships. The role will help implement and recommend ongoing improvements to Bush Heritageâs Conservation Management Process across our reserves and partnerships.
Research Associate-Fixed Term The Haus Lab in the Department of Horticulture at Michigan State University is hiring a research associate (postdoctoral position) to lead ongoing root biology research identifying root developmental traits associated with the multiple origins of dry bean and investigating legume root responses to abiotic stressors.
Research Associate â Crop Genomics You, as the successful appointee, will be responsible for research projects investigating plant pathogen interactions and evolution of disease resistance genes and preparing and publishing scientific publications with a focus on crop plants. You will also be involved in project planning, execution of molecular experiments, data analysis and interpretation, preparation of scientific manuscripts for publication and participation in the supervision of other research personnel engaged in the projects.
Post-doc Modelling tomato plant responses to short and long term environmental fluctuations Would you like to develop numerical models that contribute to improving the yield and sustainability of crop production in greenhouses and vertical farms? Are you interested in understanding how plants behave in a controlled environment? Then this could be the ideal research position for you!
Research Funding Manager We are looking for an experienced individual with a track record of managing research funding operations and who has an excellent understanding of the UK research funding environment.
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