Tag: Botany

Our understandings of the forces that have shaped Earth and the forces that have shaped life on Earth have common roots. Charles Darwin was famously inspired by the work of early geologists such as Charles Lyell, who proposed that Earth was subject to slow but gradual change. This idea recurs in Darwin’s…

It has been stated that adaptive evolution occurs in plant populations with respect to various complex traits. Olofsson et al. validated the hypothesis that different components of a complex trait can evolve in isolation and later be combined by gene flow by using C4 photosynthesis as a study system.…

Unravelling the mechanism and signals originating from roots and able to contribute to stomatal control has been the subject of research for decades. In this commentary, Tardieu summarizes and discusses many studies and models on root-shoot signals, including work in the same issue by Visentin et…

Smell is one of the many senses that insects use to locate the plants that they use as food sources. Plants have evolved ways to exploit insects’ sense of smell, for example by producing volatile compounds that attract pollinators. Pickett and Khan review plant volatile–mediated signals in terms…

The other day I was talking to a friend about the need to demystify plants, so that teachers feel as confident in their teaching of plant biology as they do about animal biology. I wonder if sometimes we teach plants too much in isolation, so it’s not always clear how plants relate to other organisms…