High latitude and altitude plants experience short growing seasons, consistent low temperatures, windy environments and unpredictable sunny spots. These plants are usually small and rely on self-pollination, but in Campbell, a Sub-Antarctic island, there are gardens of megaherbs that defy the predictions of what the flora should be according to the environment. Little et al. […]
The evolution of fruits might have been the most important feature that made angiosperms so successful. Fruits protect seeds and contribute to seed dispersal, as well as comprise a food source for humans and other animals, therefore, studying their evolution would help us shed light on the evolution of angiosperms themselves and also understanding their […]
Animals can easily establish associations between environmental cues and food sources, acquiring conditional information that guides their foraging behaviour and in consequence, their survival. Proving whether plants show association or conditional learning has been tricky, but fortunately for us, Gagliano et al. have come with a way to show that learning by association is, in […]
The transition between vegetative and reproductive stages in the plant life cycle implies a change in the developmental program of the shoot apical meristem to stop developing leaves and start developing floral buds. The factors that allow this transition to happen are many and the underlying mechanisms by which those factors induce flowering have been […]
Farming mutualisms, in which an organism benefits from another to promote growth, have evolved in many lineages. In particular, symbioses between plants and ants are mostly defensive mutualisms. In this paper, Chomicki and Renner describe the obligate mutualism observed between epiphytes in the genus Squamellaria and Philidris nagasau ants. They observed that P. nagasau ants […]
Earth colonization by life happened billions of years ago. Weathering of soils by microbial mats leave a characteristic signal that can be used to shed light on the mechanisms involved in colonization. In this review, Lenton and Daines discuss the growing mass of evidence that points to the biogeochemical changes caused by microbial mats during […]