Looking different to your parents can provide species with a way to escape evolutionary dead ends, according to new research from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).
University of Adelaide researchers are rethinking plant breeding strategies to improve the development of new high-yielding, stress-tolerant cereal varieties.
Scientists have tracked the flight paths of a group of bumblebees throughout their entire lives to find out how they explore their environment and search for food.
UF/IFAS researchers are looking for ways to thwart angular leaf spot, a pathogen that can destroy up to 10 percent of Florida’s $300 million-a-year strawberry crop in years with multiple freezes.
A joint University of Adelaide-Shanghai Jiao Tong University study has provided the first broad picture of the evolution and possible functions in the plant of pollen allergens.
New research from the University of British Columbia suggests evolution is a driving mechanism behind plant migration, and that scientists may be underestimating how quickly species can move.
PNNL scientists have untangled a soil metagenome – all the genetic material recovered from a sample of soil – more fully than ever before, reconstructing portions of the genomes of 129 species of microbes. While it’s only a tiny proportion of the species in the sample, it’s a leap forward for scientists who have had only a fraction of that success to date.
First discovered in 2009, there are now a total of six known UK infestations of the Lasius neglectus which thrive in greenhouses and domestic gardens. Originating from Asia, they are likely to have arrived in the UK through the import of plants from infected areas.
The precise mechanisms involved in tomato softening have remained a mystery until now. Research led by Graham Seymour, Professor of Plant Biotechnology in the School of Biosciences at The University of Nottingham, has identified a gene that encodes an enzyme which plays a crucial role in controlling softening of the tomato fruit.
A UF/IFAS scientist has identified two areas of the sorghum genome that could boost the plant’s resistance to the anthracnose disease. Sorghum is a grain known to produce feed for livestock and biofuel.
Since the discovery of their true nature 140 years ago, lichens have been the poster children for symbiosis. In the textbook definition of a lichen, the filaments of a single fungus provide protection for photosynthetic algae or cyanobacteria, which in turn provide food for the fungus.
Forests take up 25 - 30 percent of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide -- a strong greenhouse gas -- and are therefore considered to play a crucial role in mitigating the speed and magnitude of climate change. However, a new study that combines future climate model projections, historic tree-ring records across the entire continent of North America, and how the growth rates of trees may respond to a higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has shown that the mitigation effect of forests will likely be much smaller in the future than previously suggested.
Dublin, Ireland, Tuesday July 19, 2016 - An international consensus demands human impacts on the environment "sustain", "maintain", "conserve", "protect", "safeguard", and "secure" it, keeping it within "safe ecological limits". But, a new Trinity College Dublin-led study that assembled an international team of environmental scientists shows that policy makers have little idea what these terms mean or how to connect them to a wealth of ecological data and ideas.
Chimpanzees who travel are more frequent tool users, according to new findings from the University of Neuchâtel and the University of Geneva, Switzerland, to be published in eLife.
An international team of scientists has sequenced the whole genomes and epigenomes of more than 1,000 Arabidopsis thaliana plants, sampled from geographically diverse locations. The collection of 1,001 genomes and 1,001 epigenomes not only illuminates new aspects of its evolutionary history, but also provides a comprehensive, species-wide picture of the interaction between genetic and epigenetic variation in this important model plant.
"We have been asking ourselves for many years what molecular components plants use to exchange information among each other and how they sense the changes in electric voltage," says Professor Rainer Hedrich, Head of the Chair for Molecular Plant Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Würzburg.
During the Ordovician period, the concentration of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere was about eight times higher than today. It has been hard to explain why the climate cooled and why the Ordovician glaciations took place. A new study, published in Nature Communications, shows that the weathering of rock caused by early non-vascular plants had the potential to cause such a global cooling effect.
Plant cell walls resist deconstruction. Pretreatment can loosen the structural integrity of cell walls, reducing their recalcitrance. This study offers insights into how pretreatment induces such cell wall modifications in different types of biomass.
The gene identified and characterized in this study will enhance the understanding of how woody perennial plants begin their growth cycle, enabling development of new approaches to population management.
The nectar of tree tobacco (Nicotiana glauca) is composed of a particularly bitter combination of nicotine and anabasine – and yet sunbirds never stop visiting the plant. A new study conducted at the University of Haifa – Oranim Campus points to the reason why: the mixture of chemicals in the nectar affects the sunbird’s memory
COLLEGE PARK, Md. – A team of scientists from the University of Maryland and Sigma Space Corporation has shown that 3D forest structure and topography can be measured rapidly, efficiently and accurately over large areas, using an innovative laser technology called single photon lidar (SPL).
For the valerian plant, higher elevations in the Colorado Rocky Mountains are becoming much more co-ed. And the primary reason appears to be climate change.
Plants can grow faster as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase, but only if they have enough nitrogen or partner with fungi that help them get it, according to new research published this week in Science.
A major component of wood, grain, and forage, xylan provides a strong, flexible molecular scaffolding; however, if xylan synthesis is disrupted, plants do not grow normally. Researchers identified two enzymes that synthesize xylan.
The University of Illinois at Chicago has received a five-year, $1.225 million federal grant to discover progesterone-like compounds from commonly consumed botanicals and learn how the hormones can aid women’s health.
From 2008 to 2015, state and federal water resource managers spent about $125 million to control invasive aquatic plants in Florida, according to an April Extension document co-written by Lyn Gettys, a UF/IFAS assistant professor of agronomy and aquatic weed specialist. Of all the invasive plants in Florida’s waterways, hydrilla costs the most to contain -- $66 million over a seven-year period.
Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- The genome of the corn plant - or maize, as it's called almost everywhere except the US - "is a lot more exciting" than scientists have previously believed. So says the lead scientist in a new effort to analyze and annotate the depth of the plant's genetic resources.
A new study by Simon Fraser University marine ecologists Jessica Schultz, Ryan Cloutier and Isabelle Côté has discovered that a mass mortality of sea stars resulted in a domino effect on B.C.'s West Coast Howe Sound marine ecology.
Knowing what physical traits a plant has is called phenotyping. Because it is such a labor intensive process, scientists are working to develop technology that makes phenotyping much easier. The tool is called the Phenocart, and it captures essential plant health data. The Phenocart measures plant vital signs like growth rate and color, the same way a Fitbit monitors human health signals like blood pressure and physical activity.
A new test could save time and money diagnosing plant viruses, some of which can destroy millions of dollars in crops each year in Florida, says a University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences researcher.
Crop yields will fall within the next decade due to climate change unless immediate action is taken to speed up the introduction of new and improved varieties, experts have warned.
New research has discovered peptides from two crop species that have antimicrobial effects on bacteria implicated in food spoilage and food poisoning
They are similar in structure to a human peptide used to guard against beer-spoiling bacteria
Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered a previously unknown strategy photosynthetic organisms use to protect themselves from the dangers of excessive light, providing further insight into photosynthesis and opening up new avenues for engineering this process, which underlies the global food chain.
Because the Q-biotype whitefly feeds for longer periods on some plants, it has a greater chance of acquiring a plant virus, said Jane Polston, a UF/IFAS plant pathology professor. The more time a whitefly spends feeding on a plant, the more likely it is to acquire a virus from an infected plant.
Finding water in the desert is a relatively easy task for a species of moss that seems to flourish in even the most arid regions. That's according to a new study by a team of scientists and engineers who wanted to understand how Syntrichia caninervis succeeds despite its limited and inconsistent water supplies.
It's a win-win situation for the environment and the economy when it comes to introducing legumes into agricultural systems, says new research published in Frontiers in Plant Science, carried out by an international team of scientists as part of the European Union project, Legume Futures.
A hominin in the same genus as humans and an ape nicknamed “Laia” are among the discoveries identified by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry as the Top 10 New Species for 2016. Also on the list are a giant Galapagos tortoise, a seadragon, an anglerfish, three invertebrates, a carnivorous sundew and a small tree.
Scientists have mapped changes in composition of plant cell walls over space and time, providing new insights into the development and growth of all plants.
In a landmark finding, Cornell University and Florida State University researchers report they have identified 1 to 2 percent of the maize genome that turns genes on and off, so they may now focus their attention on these areas for more efficient plant breeding.