đ± TWiB August 23, 2021
Here's another collection of stories shared by people following @BotanyOne on Twitter. It's been a busy week for me, so a lot of these stories are ones I missed and will want to catch up on.
I'm hoping this all works ok. I'm writing this following a late night spent trying to capture an injured wild hedgehog. I gave up in the small hours as I wouldn't have been in a fit state to drive. Wildlife cameras showed it hobbled past ten minutes later. I'm now in a 'too tired to sleep' state, so my apologies if I've broken a link to a story or paper somewhere.
The next issue will be with you at the same time next week unless I'm rescuing more wildlife. In that case, I'll take a nap and send it a little later. Until then, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
In Botany One
Simulating the effects of local wind reduction on shrub seed dispersal â www.botany.one How does a local wind reduction zone influence seed dispersal around a single shrub element?
The size and light requirements of plants might determine the future of a whole forest â www.botany.one If you take a look at a tropical rainforest, the species of plants you see can tell you the story about their life.
Newly recognised carnivorous plant Triantha occidentalis â www.botany.one Between leaves and flowers, the peduncle of this plant serves as an insect sticky-trap
Predicting native plant responses to Japanese knotweed invasion â www.botany.one Can plant functional traits help to predict responses to Reynoutria japonica invasion in riparian and fallow ecosystems in southern Poland?
Does investigating the seed coat in Gnetum gnemon reveal how fruiting plants evolved? â www.botany.one Gnetales are a puzzle. They look like the closest relatives to angiosperms, the fruiting plants. But when you examine their genes, they appear to be distant. An investigation into the development of their seed coats might explain some of the mystery.
What sound does Botany make? â www.botany.one On this site, it's going to sound like an electronic assistant reading blog posts to you.
The Why and How of Horizontally Expanding Leaf Patterns â www.botany.one A new study uses multiple approaches to determine why horizontally expanding leaf patterns exist and how they are formed.
News & Views
Indigenous Peoples are key to a healthier planet â news.globallandscapesforum.org
How first peoples can help tackle the climate, food and biodiversity crises.
Plantations and roads strip away Papuaâs forests. Theyâre just getting started â news.mongabay.com Indonesiaâs Papua region, comprising the western half of the island of New Guinea, lost an area of rainforest five times the size of London since 2001, according to a new study.
Gender inequity in academia: The need for active dialogue Look around you, and you can easily identify an area riddled with gender disparity.
Learning to Love G.M.O.s Overblown fears have turned the public against genetically modified food. But the potential benefits have never been greater.
Stranger in a strange land: my experience as an immigrant researcher
"I propose that the percentage of foreign-born scientists should be considered as a measure of diversity that is applied to committees and other decision bodies. There is a lot of trumpeting of #ScienceisGlobal by funding agencies and learned societies, but Iâm not so sure that their diversity record in terms of foreign-born scientists is that great."
Academic Institutions Must Do Better to Protect Caregivers This Fall
Schools, colleges and universities that fail to impose mask mandates and other COVID protections put working parents in an excruciating position.
A well-known wildflower turns out to be a secret carnivore â www.sciencenews.org Triantha occidentalis sets a deathtrap for small insects just beneath its flower
Glacier forelands reveal fundamental plant and microbial controls on short-term ecosystem nitrogen retention â jecologyblog.com Author Franciska de Vries gives her insight into newly published Journal of Ecology article: Glacier forelands reveal fundamental plant and microbial controls on short-term ecosystem nitrogen retention.
Why Sunflowers Face East Sunflowers face the rising sun because increased morning warmth attracts more bees and also helps the plants reproduce more efficiently, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, Davis. The results were published Aug. 9 in New Phytologist.
They safeguarded nature, but now Malaysiaâs Mah Meri face eviction for an eco-resort â news.mongabay.com Members of the Mah Meri Indigenous community in Malaysia are fighting an attempt to evict them to make way for the expansion of a beach resort.
Scientific Papers
Revisiting florivory: an integrative review and global patterns of a neglected interaction
Boaventura et al. created a global, continuously-updated, open-access database comprising 180 species and 64 families to compare floral damage between tropical and temperate plants, to examine the effects of plant traits on floral damage, and to explore the eco-evolutionary dynamics of flower-florivore interactions. Flower damage is widespread across angiosperms, but was two-fold higher in tropical vs. temperate species, suggesting stronger fitness impacts in the tropics.
Endoparasitic plants and fungi show evolutionary convergence across phylogenetic divisions
Thorogood et al. review life history, anatomy, and molecular genetics across the four independent lineages of endoparasitic plants. They highlight convergence across these clades and a striking trans-kingdom convergence in life history among endoparasitic plants and disparate lineages of fungi at the molecular and physiological levels. They hypothesize that parasitism of woody plants preselected for the endoparasitic life history, providing parasites a stable host environment and the necessary hydraulics to enable floral gigantism and/or high reproductive output.
Farm robots: ecological utopia or dystopia? Farm robots may lead to an ecological utopia where swarms of small robots help in overcoming the yield penalties and labor requirements associated with agroecological farming â or a dystopia with large robots cultivating monocultures. Societal discussions and policy action are needed to harness the potential of robots to serve people and the planet.
Fairy lanterns in focus â nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
So-called fairy lanterns (Thismia) are among the most extraordinary flowering plants, yet little is known about their ecology. There has been a spate of recent species discoveries revealing a bewildering diversity of flower forms. But why these peculiar flowers are so diverse remains a mystery. Thorogood and Yunoh review recent discoveries, placing focus on Southeast Asia as a center of diversity of fairy lanterns.
To what extent can rising [CO2] ameliorate plant drought stress?
De Kauwe et al. identify the experimental challenges and limitations to our understanding of plant responses to drought under eCO2. In particular, they argue that future studies need to move beyond exploring whether eCO2 played âa roleâ or âno roleâ in responses to drought, but instead more carefully consider the timescales and conditions that would induce an influence.
PIN-FORMED (PIN)-mediated polar auxin transport is involved in key developmental processes in plants. Various internal and external cues influence plant development via the modulation of intracellular PIN polarity and, thus, the direction of polar auxin transport, but the mechanisms underlying these processes remain largely unknown. PIN proteins harbor a hydrophilic loop (HL) that has important regulatory functions. Lee et al. used the HL as bait in protein pulldown screening for modulators of intracellular PIN trafficking in Arabidopsis thaliana.
A metabolic daylength measurement system mediates winter photoperiodism in plants â www.cell.com
Liu et al. use bioinformatics to identify photoperiod-induced genes in Arabidopsis. They show that one, PP2-A13, is expressed exclusively in, and required for, plant fitness in short, winter-like photoperiods. They create a real-time photoperiod reporter, using the PP2-A13 promoter driving luciferase, and show that photoperiodic regulation is independent of the canonical CO/FT mechanism for photoperiodic flowering.
de Vries et al. used three ecosystem chronosequences in front of retreating glaciers in the European Alps to test their hypothesis that the retention of added reactive 15N increases as succession proceeds, and to identify the plant and microbial controls on ecosystem N retention.
Landâuse controls on carbon biogeochemistry in lowland streams of the Congo Basin The flux and composition of carbon (C) from land to rivers represents a critical component of the global C cycle as well as a powerful integrator of landscape-level processes. In the Congo Basin, an expansive network of streams and rivers transport and cycle terrigenous C sourced from the largest swathe of pristine tropical forest on Earth. Increasing rates of deforestation and conversion to agriculture in the Basin are altering the current regime of terrestrial-to-aquatic biogeochemical cycling of C. To investigate the role of deforestation on dissolved organic and inorganic C (DOC and DIC, respectively) biogeochemistry in the Congo Basin, six lowland streams that drain catchments of varying forest proportion (12%â77%) were sampled monthly for 1Â year.
Sexual dimorphism in the dioecious willow Salix purpurea This study aims to examine sexual dimorphism for 26 traits in three populations of Salix purpurea (a diversity panel and F1 and F2 populations) and determine the effect of the traits on biomass yield, a key trait in Salix bioenergy crops across multiple years, locations, and under manipulated growth conditions.
van Wijk et al. developed a resource, the Arabidopsis PeptideAtlas (www.peptideatlas.org/builds/arabidopsis/), to solve central questions about the Arabidopsis thaliana proteome, such as the significance of protein splice forms and post-translational modifications (PTMs), or simply to obtain reliable information about specific proteins. PeptideAtlas is based on published mass spectrometry (MS) data collected through ProteomeXchange and reanalyzed through a uniform processing and metadata annotation pipeline.
Iwase et al. observed a significant overlap between WIND1-induced genes and genes implicated in cellular reprogramming, vascular formation and pathogen response. They demonstrated that WIND transcription factors induce several reprogramming genes to promote callus formation at wound sites.
Careers
Research Fellow in Plant Development and Plant Stress at University of Leeds This project will explore how a subset of emerging contaminants, pharmaceuticals, can affect plant growth and development. Early work by our research group has demonstrated that pharmaceuticals can effect plant hormone concentrations and nutrient composition of crops at environmentally relevant soil concentrations.
CERC Fellow - Phyllosphere Microbiome Engineering As part of a broader plant-associated microbiome project team, the successful CERC Fellow will focus on above ground plant (phyllosphere)-microbiome interactions to identify rules governing microbiome assembly and function, with a specific focus on tolerance to biotic stress. They will work closely with a Microbial Genome Biologist to understand the functionality of individual organisms within the microbiome and engineer Synthetic Communities (SynComs) through experimental manipulation.Â
Postdoctoral Researcher (Morris Group) As part of an ERC Synergy Grant between Professor Morris, Professor Kehr (Hamburg University) and Professor Kragler (Max Planck Institute in Potsdam), the post-holder will develop models of long-distance microRNA and mRNA movement in plants and carry out associated analyses.
Supervisory Research Plant Pathologist/Entomologist The incumbent will serve as a Supervisory Research Plant Pathologist or Entomologist and serves as Research Leader of the Crop Diseases, Pests and Genetics Research Unit (CDPGRU) at the San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center in Parlier, California. As Research Leader of the unit, incumbent is responsible fundholder for all appropriated projects, provides primary supervision for unit scientists, and secondary supervision for other lab personnel.
Strategic Fuel Breaks Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Coordinator We are looking for a highly motivated individual with experience in developing and implementing scientific research projects to inform policy, to join the Wildlife Ecology Section as the Strategic Fuel Breaks (SFB) Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting (MER) Project Coordinator. This role is responsible for coordinating and contributing to a set of MER projects to inform decisions about how to balance a large SFB program to reduce bushfire risk with the protection of environmental values. A key accountability of the role is to lead the design and delivery of a monitoring, evaluation and reporting program to assess environmental impacts, mitigations and inform key knowledge gaps of establishing SFB.
Conservation Outcomes Advisor - Woodland Creation â jobs.woodlandtrust.org.uk The Conservation Outcomes Adviser for woodland creation is an integral part of the Conservation Outcomes and Evidence team of experts and advisers who provide a central UK-wide function for the Woodland Trust. The role will lead on embedding the Trustâs evidence-based approach to woodland creation, providing technical and practical advice, support, and guidance to enable the delivery of high impact conservation outcomes.
CSIRO MOSH Postdoctoral Fellowship in Root Microbiome Assembly and its Influence on Plant Immunity This is an exciting opportunity for a CERC Fellow to be part of a broader plant-associated microbiome project team that will focus on below ground plant-microbial interactions in order to decipher the rules governing assembly of functional rhizosphere and root microbiomes expressing disease suppression. You will work closely within a team that includes a microbiome Genome Biologist to understand the functionality of microbial groups within the belowground microbiome and investigate how the understanding of microbiome assembly and function can be employed to design disease suppressive microbiomes.
Research Assistant The role of the Research Assistant is to contribute to a large collaborative project on traits of the Australian flora (AusTraits) funded by a grant from the Australian Data Partnerships program of Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). The project will consolidate long-term efforts by Daniel Falster (coordinator, UNSW) and Rachael Gallagher (co-lead, Macquarie University) to build a database of Australian plant traits and by Hervé Sauquet (co-lead, Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust) to develop a global database of floral traits (eFLOWER).
Senior Research Associate in Metabolic Modelling Applications are invited for a postdoctoral research position in metabolic modelling at the Lancaster photosynthesis research team under the supervision of Prof Elizabete Carmo-Silva and Prof Steve Long. This position is part of the project PhotoBoost, funded by the European Unionâs Horizon 2020 programme, which aims to improve the photosynthetic performance and productivity of two essential C3 crops: potatoes and rice.
Senior Research Associate / Research Associate in Plant Metabolic Engineering Applications are invited for a postdoctoral research position in plant metabolic engineering at the Lancaster photosynthesis research team under the supervision of Prof Elizabete Carmo-Silva. This position is part of the project PhotoBoost, funded by the European Unionâs Horizon 2020 programme, which aims to improve the photosynthetic performance and productivity of two essential C3 crops: potatoes and rice.
Post-doctoral Fellow We are seeking a post-doctoral fellow for a NASA-funded project âLeveraging multiscale airborne and spaceborne imaging spectroscopy to monitor grassland plant diversity under different management practicesâ at Oklahoma State University. The post-doctoral associate will use fine-resolution airborne and coarse-resolution spaceborne DESIS imaging spectroscopic data to determine (1) how grassland management practices affect our ability to detect grassland plant diversity remotely and (2) the mechanisms underlying remote sensing of biodiversity
Research Fellow (Fixed Term) A postdoc position is available in the Professor Mahmut Tör group at the School of Science and the Environment, University of Worcester to work on a collaborative project funded by the BBSRC. The appointee will deploy state-of-the-art methods to the development of tools to increase our understanding of plant â biotrophic oomycete microbe interactions. We will use a high-throughput, sRNA-based genetic screen to identify and study genes specifically involved in processes that are poorly understood in obligate oomycetes such as Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis and Peronospora viciae.
Senior Scientist We are looking for a dynamic, self-motivated and proactive Cell Biologist to join our fast-growing team, who is committed and passionate about developing 21st century solutions to address global food challenges.
Postdoc position in Ecological genetics HÀr hittar du information om lediga anstÀllningar vid SLU. LÀs mer om respektive arbete genom att klicka pÄ varje annonsrubrik. Var noga med att följa anvisningarna för ansökan.
Assistant Professor Must have demonstrated experience with: theoretical models in population genetics; transcriptomic and differential gene expression analysis in non-model organisms; de novo assembly of dioecious plant genomes; genotyping arrays and genome-wide association studies; and inference of evolutionary forces in processes of population divergence and speciation.
Two M.S. Graduate Research Assistantships in Small Grains Genetics at Utah State University in Logan, Utah The small grains breeding program (http://wheat.usu.edu) at Utah State University (USU) in Logan, UT is seeking qualified applicants for two graduate research assistantship (GRA) positions beginning in January 2022.
Tenure-Track Position in Biochemistry We seek applicants from all areas of biochemistry, broadly defined, who are using advanced approaches to study molecular mechanisms of cellular function. New faculty will join a rich and collaborative atmosphere with existing strengths in host-pathogen interactions, stem cell biology, epigenetics, cell polarity, cytoskeletal function, DNA repair, and protein evolution
Post doctoral Research Fellow Level 1 or 2 This research project will resolve a significant gap in the understanding of how plants interact with both pathogenic and beneficial symbionts in natural soil systems, critical to the wider understanding of ecosystem evolution and function. We will use the latest X ray computed tomography CT techniques to determine how beneficial symbionts and pathogens compete for plant resource allocation.
Assistant or Associate Professor in Indigenous Natural Sciences The Faculty of Forestry (Vancouver Campus, The University of British Columbia â UBC) invites applications for a tenure-track academic position in Indigenous Natural Sciences at the Assistant or Associate Professor level, to commence on July 1, 2022 or when a suitable candidate is found. The position will be nominated for a Canada Research Chair, Tier 2, in Indigenous Natural Sciences.Â
Postdoctoral Position: Quantifying the Impacts of invasive species in British Columbiaâs Foreshore and Riparian Ecosystems The position is based at the Okanagan campus, and is co-supervised by Dr. Jason Pither (UBC Okanagan) and Dr. Chandra Moffat (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Summerland, Adjunct UBC Okanagan). Some activities (e.g. the knowledge synthesis) may be conducted remotely (initially and outside the field season), but the postdoctoral fellow is expected to spend the majority of the term of the position (field season) in the Okanagan, interacting with the supervisorsâ research labs and networking with regional and provincial partners. Â
Postdoctoral Fellow (Population Genomics & Restoration) The Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development (CCSD) at the Missouri Botanical Garden seeks to hire a full-time postdoctoral scholar to work in the Conservation Genetics Laboratory (PI, Dr. Christy Edwards).
Postdoctoral Researcher- plant genomics and epigenetics An exciting opportunity has arisen to join a multidisciplinary team studying the regulation of protein abundance in plants: https://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/news/multi-million-pound-magic-conjuring-answers-one-life%E2%80%99s-basic-questions
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