đ± TWiB May 24, 2021
I learned a few things this week. Not least, that warming temperatures might not drive plants uphill as I had assumed. Rachael Olliff-Yang shows that plants moving uphill run into more problems than simply making sure there's enough space uphill to move into.
I also found that there are no tautonyms in botany, unlike zoology which has Gorilla gorilla and Rattus rattus. While you can find the rule in the international code on nomenclature (Article 23.4), there's no explanation why tautonyms are not allowed in botany.
If I find out why Larix larix could not be, I'll let you know. Otherwise, it'll be the usual collection of the most popular links shared by people following @BotanyOne on Twitter. Until then, stay safe.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
Botany One
Protecting oaks doing conservation genetics with an open heart â www.botany.one
Blending traditional knowledge and Western science to strategise the battle against climate change.
También en español.
Citizen Science meets Urban Botany in ZĂŒrich â www.botany.one A citizen science project improves appreciation of plants and the ecological processes they play a part in.
Fascination of Plants and Drones â www.botany.one Drones are helping find plants hiding where humans cannot go.
Fascination of Fruits and Vegetables â www.botany.one Special edition of Fascination of Plant Day infographics.
Species may not always move in the directions we predict under climate change â www.botany.one
A recent field experiment reveals the nuances of plant responses to climate change.
También en español.
Invasive alien clones, autonomous apomixis in Praxelis clematidea â www.botany.one Clonal reproduction is a desirable trait to possess as an invasive plant and has helped Praxelis clematidea to become highly invasive around the world.
Sub-lethal pesticides might still kill ecosystems â www.botany.one The damage caused by sub-lethal pesticides to pollinators may show up first in plants, not bees.
News & Views
5 key themes for the sustainable use of wild plants Many wild plant species are at risk in the Andean region and there is an urgent need to engage local communities, recognize the importance of wild plant use, and increase international collaboration.
Most people unaware of the dangers of our shrinking natural world, new survey says Most people are unaware of the dangers of our shrinking natural world, new survey says.
Record heat in northwestern Russia, Siberian wildfire season kicks off early â www.euronews.com Western Europe is experiencing a colder and wetter than normal spring. So is much of North America. This meteorological depression might make the very real spectre of global warming fade from view, but look north and you will see it's very much in operation.
This year at Botany 2021 - Virtual! (July 18-23) the BSA are highlighting SciCommers during their SciComm Celebration Day!
A never-before-documented flower blooms on one of worldâs rarest trees Only about two dozen trees from the Karomia gigas tree exist in its wild Tanzanian habitat. Its new flower is a hopeful sign for its survival.
Improving Watermelons by Harvesting Genes From Wild Species An international team of researchers has taken a comprehensive look at the genomes of all seven species of watermelon, creating a resource that could help plant breeders increase the domestic fruitâs quality and ability to thrive during an era of climate change.
What to Save? Climate Change Forces Brutal Choices at National Parks. For decades, the core mission of the Park Service was absolute conservation. Now ecologists are being forced to do triage, deciding what to safeguard â and what to let slip away.
Rainbow Research: Contribute to our Pride Month Blog Series! We are inviting contributions fromâŻLGBTQ+ ecologists and evolutionary biologists for a series of blog posts across the British Ecological Society journals for UK Pride Month, which takes place in June.
Shrinking sea meadows store more carbon than forests. Scientists are racing to track whatâs left âThere are a lot of unknowns -- even things as simple as how much seagrass we have,â said Oxford University earth observation scientist Gwilym Rowlands, who is helping the Seychelles government map the island nationâs seagrass and estimate how much carbon it stores.
Scientific Papers
Chesnais et al. compared the effects of Arabidopsis infection with mild (CM) and severe (JI) CaMV isolates on the feeding behaviour (recorded by the electrical penetration graph technique) and fecundity of the aphid vector Myzus persicae.
Physiological and molecular attributes contribute to high night temperature tolerance in cereals
Schaarschmidt et al. provide a summary of current knowledge on the physiological and molecular basis of contrasting high night termperature tolerance in rice and wheat cultivars.
Crop origins explain variation in global agricultural relevance â www.nature.com
Milla and Osbourne analyse a dataset of 866 crops to show that seed crops and species originating from seasonally dry environments tend to have the greatest agricultural relevance, while phylogenetic affinities play a minor role. ReadCube https://rdcu.be/ckLju
Fungal endophytes can eliminate the plant growthâdefence tradeâoff
A trade-off between growth and defence functions is commonly observed in plants. BastĂas et al. propose that the association of plants with EpichloĂ« fungal endophytes may eliminate this trade-off. This would be a consequence of the double role of these endophytes in host plants: the stimulation of plant growth hormones (e.g. gibberellins) and the fungal production of antiherbivore alkaloids.
RNA silencing by CRISPR in plants does not require Cas13
Sharma et al. report the use of CRISPR-Cas13 in plants to reduce both viral and endogenous RNA. Unexpectedly, they discovered that crRNA designed to guide Cas13 could, in the absence of the Cas13 protein, cause substantial reduction in RNA levels as well.
Cellular export of sugars and amino acids: Role in feeding other cells and organisms
Kim et al. provide an update on the status of research on intercellular and long-distance translocation of key metabolites such as sucrose and amino acids, communication of the plants with the root microbiota via root exudates, discuss the existence of transporters for other important metabolites and provide potential perspectives that may direct future research activities.
Zhang et al. report that in Arabidopsis, two types of basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors, named PERICYCLE FACTOR TYPE-A (PFA) proteins and PERICYCLE FACTOR TYPE-B (PFB) proteins, govern the competence of pericycle cells to initiate lateral root primordium formation. ReadCube: rdcu.be/ckQdJ
During automated phenotyping, trait measurement errors, i.e., differences between automatically extracted trait values and ground truth, are often treated as random effects that can be controlled by increasing population sizes and/or replication number. By contrast, there is some evidence that trait measurement errors may be partially under genetic control. Consistent with this hypothesis, Zhou et al. observed substantial non-random, genetic contributions to trait measurement errors for five maize (Zea mays) tassel traits collected using an image-based phenotyping platform.
Wang et al. examined whether the tree pathogen Phytophthora kernoviae could infect the model plant Nicotiana benthamiana. They transformed P. kernoviae to express green fluorescent protein (GFP) and demonstrated that it forms haustoria within infected N. benthamiana cells.
Careers
Research Associate on photosynthesis in rice (Fixed Term) (Cambridge UK) A position is available for a highly motivated post-doctoral research assistant/associate working on improving photosynthesis in rice.
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Plant Development Biology Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Plant Developmental Biology with a particular emphasis on vascular development in Arabidopsis. The research project, funded by BBSRC, is led by Dr Peter Etchells in collaboration with Dr Ari Pekka MÀhönen at the University of Helsinki.
Research Zoologist/ Research Molecular Biologist/ Research Plant Pathologist This position is located in the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC), Mycology and Nematology Genetic Diversity and Biology Laboratory, in Beltsville, MD. The incumbent will conduct research on the systematics of agriculturally important nematodes and novel methods for plant-parasitic nematode identification.
Post-Doc/Associate Scientist â Molecular Pre-Breeder CIMMYT is seeking an innovative, self-motivated and results oriented Molecular Pre-Breeder to join a successful wheat pre-breeding team.
Post-Doc in Plant Development The person to be hired will work on the model moss Physcomitrium patens to explore the fundamental question of how phyllotaxis emerges from biochemical and physical signals, at single cell-resolution, using approaches in developmental genetics, optical live imaging and optogenetics.
Green or Crispy: Which Plants Use Transpiration to Survive Heatwaves? The Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment (HIE)(opens in new window) looking for a highly motivated and qualified candidate to undertake PhD research.
Associate or Senior Editor, Ecology in Washington, DC for Science Magazine The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Science are seeking a talented scientist to join our editorial team as an Associate or Senior Editor. This is a full-time position and candidates may be based in Washington, DC, Cambridge, UK, or Remote (US-based in select states).Â
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