and fall each year as plants through photosynthesis and respiration take up the gas in spring and summer and release it in fall and winter.
Although plant activity can increase with warmer temperatures and higher carbon dioxideconcentrations the change in carbon dioxide amplitude over the last 50 years is expected larger than from these effects.
or changes in the timing of plant photosynthesis and respiration. Simulating complex processes in land-based ecosystems with models is a challenge scientists have found.
and reliability were also big factors for small farmers in choosing a system for drip irrigation--an efficient means of delivering small amounts of water directly to the base of each plant.
and oil spillssome time around 37000 BCE a massive volcano erupted in the Campanian region of Italy blanketing much of Europe with ash stunting plant growth
while overhead thundering cloudbursts of late October rains drive new plant growth filling pockmarks across this largest inland delta in the world.
The MODIS sensors capture growing conditions by measuring the reflectance of near-infrared light from plants.
because the timing of their food--insect hatches greening plants for example--no longer coincides with their travel this can have serious consequences for their continued survival.
Carey collaborated with lead study author Nikos Papadopoulos an entomologist at the University of Thessaly Greece and Richard Plant a UC Davis professor emeritus of plant sciences and biological and agricultural engineering.
and possibly several more fruit-fly species are established in California said Plant who provided mathematical modeling and statistical analysis for the study.
and water a tree exchanges with the environment in relation to its overall size independently of the species. This theory can be used to scale the size of plants to their function such as amount of photosynthesis water loss
and Aquaculture the team has proven that a completely plant-based food combination can support fast-growing marine carnivores like cobia
The study Taurine Supplementation of Plant Derived Protein and n-3 Fatty acids are Critical for Optimal Growth
The researchers first thought that thawing frozen broccoli in the refrigerator might rupture the plant's cells and kick-start the enzyme-substrate interaction.
That event lasted about 200000 years and warmed Earth by 5-9°C (9-16°F) with massive migrations of animals and plants and shifts in climate zones.
what's called age-from-stage mathematical modeling a way of estimating plant age from its size to investigate how harvesting affects a plant's life expectancy and other life history traits such as age at maturity.
and moist regions in Benin the study found that plant harvesting affects life history in different ways depending on the climatic conditions.
For indigenous people who are harvesting these plants knowing how long a particular species is going to persist
or how soon it is going to reproduce is valuable information for planning and management especially for plants for
if you could compare it to much more closely related plants like grapefruit and lemons
which could give insight into how each came from an ancestral citrus plant. In this study instead of comparing leaf and fruit shapes the team looked at gene regulation in mice that had diverged only recently from one another.
But what might be even more troubling for humans plants and animals is speed the of the change.
The geologic record shows that 20000 years ago as the ice sheet that covered much of North america receded northward plants
As the climate continued to warm those plants and animals moved northward to cooler climes.
The scientists also projected the velocity of climate change defined as the distance per year that species of plants
#Temperature alters population dynamics of common plant peststemperature-driven changes alter outbreak patterns of tea tortrix--an insect pest
But in 1980 the Bayh-Dole Act gave universities the ability to retain the intellectual property rights for their research with limited plant-based royalties.
while a complete shift from animal to plant-based diets may not be feasible even a partial shift would benefit food security.
They noted that humans can completely meet protein needs with plant-based diets but that crop systems would need to shift (e g. toward more production of protein-rich legumes) to meet human dietary needs.
and Richard Newcomb of Plant and Food Research in New zealand found that for four of the ten odors tested there was indeed a genetic association suggesting that differences in the genetic make-up determine
Discovered in 1878 by the Florentine botanist Odoardo Beccarini the Titan arum another common name given the plant by Sir David Attenborough in his BBC nature documentary series heats up as it blooms
The plant's temperature began to rise at 7 p m. Tuesday night and peaked at 95.5°F at 12:23 a m. Wednesday morning.
Staff at the UCSB biology greenhouse had the foresight to contact the U s. Botanic Garden in Washington D c. to secure pollen from its plant (nicknamed Mortimer in social media that bloomed July 21.
Any seeds that Chanel and Mortimer produce from their cross-continent union will help further conservation efforts for this bizarre majestic and threatened plant Taber said.
This is a tremendous opportunity to show students and the general public about plant diversity and biology in general.
The plant does need water to grow though so coastal areas where desalinated seawater can be made available are ideal.
Further after a few years the plants would produce bioenergy (in the form of tree trimmings) to support the power production required for the desalination and irrigation systems.
what kind of plants grow where. They aerate soil and do a lot of excavation. Having aerated soil is good for plants--it lets oxygen get into the soil
and water percolate through it better. So far there are about 15000 known species of ants worldwide based largely on difference in body structure and perhaps as many as 30000.
More research is needed regarding the effects of wolves on plants and animals consumed by grizzly bears.
There is precedent for high levels of ungulate herbivory causing problems for grizzly bears who are omnivores that eat both plants and animals.
because of lack of plant-based food caused by livestock overgrazing. And in the absence of wolves black bears went extinct on Anticosti Island in Canada after over-browsing of berry shrubs by introduced while-tailed deer.
In addition to eliminating wolf-livestock conflicts retiring livestock allotments in the grizzly bear recovery zone adjacent to Yellowstone could benefit bears through increases in plant foods.
Another advantage of baculoviruses is that they are innocuous to man vertebrae and plants. Moreover each viral strain attacks a very limited number of insect species. This host specificity means that the Guatemalan potato moth can be targeted
Lastly unlike the molecules in chemical plant-protection products viruses are able to mutate which limits the development of resistance in their host.
Nerea Abrego-Antia and Isabel Salcedo-Larralde biologists in the Department of Plant Biology and Ecology of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country have quantified recently this effect on fungi populations that live off dead
Identification of the closest known relatives of this fungus makes it possible to move forward with genetic work to examine the molecular toolbox this fungus uses to kill bats according to Lindner a research plant pathologist.
#Secret of plant geometry revealed: How plants set the angles of their branchesresearchers at the University of Leeds have discovered how plants set the angles of their branches.
While the other principle features governing the architecture of plants such as the control of the number of branches
and positioning around the main shoot are understood now well scientists have puzzled long over how plants set
and maintain the angle of their lateral branches relative to gravity. The mechanism is fundamental to understanding the shape of the plants around us:
explaining how for instance a young Lombardy poplar sends its branches up close to the vertical while an oak sapling's spread is much flatter.
and other plant species from a distance is informed largely by the angle at which their branches grow.
The apparently simple puzzle of how a plant sets and maintains these angles in its architecture is complicated by the fact that the angle of root
If a plant is put on its side these branches will begin a phase of bending growth known as gravitropism that reorientates them back toward their original angle of growth relative to gravity.
gravity sensing cells called statocytes detect that the plant has been tilted prompting an increase in the movement of a growth-regulating hormone called auxin to the lower side of the shoot or root and driving upward growth
Scientists did not understand how plants were able to set relative to gravity the particular non-vertical angle of growth for their branches--known as their gravitropic set-point angle--that determines their architecture.
which slowly rotates a plant growing on its side thereby withdrawing a stable gravity reference and enabling the researchers to monitor the anti-gravitropic offset mechanism working unopposed by a coordinated gravitropic response.
because it determines the plant's capacity to capture resource above and below ground. Depending on what sort of soil a plant is in it might be beneficial to be foraging for nutrients in the top soil
or to be going deeper. Similarly in the shoot a plant might gain an advantage from having more steeply pitched branches to avoid shading from neighbouring plants.
Until now nobody really knew how non-vertical growth angles referenced to gravity like this were maintained set
because breeders and seed companies want to be able to alter plant architecture to optimise the performance of crops.
Kepinski expects the same mechanism to be observed in larger plants and young tree seedlings. In older trees the mechanisms driving gravity sensitive growth in woody tissues are different to those in non-woody plants.
Nitrogen fixation the process by which nitrogen is converted to ammonia is vital for plants to survive
However only a very small number of plants most notably legumes (such as peas beans and lentils) have the ability to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere with the help of nitrogen fixing bacteria.
The vast majority of plants have to obtain nitrogen from the soil and for most crops currently being grown across the world this also means a reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertiliser.
Professor Edward Cocking Director of The University of Nottingham's Centre for Crop Nitrogen fixation has developed a unique method of putting nitrogen-fixing bacteria into the cells of plant roots.
when he found a specific strain of nitrogen-fixing bacteria in sugar-cane which he discovered could intracellularly colonise all major crop plants.
This ground-breaking development potentially provides every cell in the plant with the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen.
The implications for agriculture are enormous as this new technology can provide much of the plant's nitrogen needs.
Helping plants to naturally obtain the nitrogen they need is a key aspect of World Food security.
Applied to the cells of plants (intracellular) via the seed it provides every cell in the plant with the ability to fix nitrogen.
Plant seeds are coated with these bacteria in order to create a symbiotic mutually beneficial relationship and naturally produce nitrogen.
The University of Nottingham's Plant and Crop sciences Division is acclaimed internationally as a centre for fundamental and applied research underpinning its understanding of agriculture food production and quality and the natural environment.
The discovery the product of a multiyear effort to provide a high-quality full genome map of the oil palm plant
and a rallying point for activists in recent years says Robert A. Martienssen Ph d. scientific cofounder of Orion Genomics who is also a professor of plant genetics at CSHL.
whether an oil palm plantlet is a high-yielding palm Even with selective breeding 10 to 15 percent of plants are the low-yielding dura form due to uncontrollable wind and insect pollination particularly in plantations
and estimating the amount of carbon locked up in plants from dense forests to shrublands. The researchers then were able to scale up the plot and Lidar data with freely available satellite data on topography rainfall and vegetation to model carbon stocks at the national level.
The results show how reduced competition among pollinators disrupts floral fidelity or specialization among the remaining bees in the system leading to less successful plant reproduction.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the study co-authored by ecologist Heather Briggs of the University of California-Santa cruz. About 90 percent of plants need animals mostly insects to transfer pollen between them
Some studies have indicated that plants can tolerate losing most pollinator species in an ecosystem as long as other pollinators remain to take up the slack.
Their team conducted field experiments to learn how the removal of a single pollinator species would affect the plant-pollinator relationship.
Most pollinators visit several plant species over their lifetime but often they will display what we call floral fidelity over shorter time periods Brosi explains.
They'll tend to focus on one plant while it's in bloom then a few weeks later move on to the next species in bloom.
Floral fidelity clearly benefits plants because a pollinator visit will only lead to plant reproduction
when the pollinator is carrying pollen from the same plant species . When bees are promiscuous visiting plants of more than one species during a single foraging session they are much less effective as pollinators Briggs says.
The researchers conducted their experiments at the Rocky mountain Biological Laboratory near Crested Butte Colorado. Located at 9500 feet the facility's subalpine meadows are too high for honeybees
Across the steps of the pollination process from patterns of bumblebee visits to plants to picking up pollen to seed production the researchers saw a cascading effect of removing one bee species
These changes had direct implications for plant reproduction: Larkspurs produced about one-third fewer seeds
We reconstructed the fire history by picking charcoal fragments out of sediments preserved over thousands of years said University of Illinois doctoral student Ryan Kelly who led the study with Illinois plant biology professor Feng Sheng Hu.
A farmer with costly equipment and high-yielding varieties can efficiently plant seeds and grow more productive crops than a farmer planting low-yielding varieties one seed at a time.
#Irish potato famine-causing pathogen even more virulent nowthe plant pathogen that caused The irish potato famine in the 1840s lives on today with a different genetic blueprint
and kill plants. In a study published in the journal Nature Communications North carolina State university plant pathologist Jean Ristaino
and colleagues Mike Martin and Tom Gilbert from the University of Copenhagen compared the genomes
The researchers found that the genes in historical plant samples collected in Belgium in 1845 as well as other samples collected from varied European locales in the late 1870s
and 1880s were quite different from modern-day P. infestans genes including some genes in modern plants that make the pathogen more virulent than the historical strains.
since Roman times to improve plant nutrition and to control the spread of disease. A new study to be published in Nature's The ISME Journal reveals the profound effect it has on enriching soil with bacteria fungi and protozoa.
which in turn helps the plant to acquire nutrients regulate growth and protect itself against pests
(which include humans plants and animals as well as fungi). After only four weeks of growth the soil surrounding wheat contained about 3%eukaryotes.
what they are doing there including how they might be helping the plants out. Our work helps explain the experience of farmers in the field said Professor Poole.
The findings of the study could be used to develop plant varieties that encourage beneficial microbes in the soil.
Small changes in plant genotype can have unexpected complex and effects on soil microbes surrounding the roots said Professor Poole.
or resources to set up a water purification plant. Scarcity of clean waterthe scarcity of clean water is expected to worsen in the future due to over usage lack of conservation methods and dwindling natural supply of clean water even in countries with significant water resources.
and of plants and animals familiar to us or would the cast of characters be entirely different?
which tend also to be plant defense chemicals Olsen says but it is weed basically a.
When a plant is domesticated it acquires a suite of traits called the domestication syndrome that made it easier to grow as a crop.
#Monitoring nutrient intake can help vegetarian athletes stay competitivea balanced plant-based diet provides the same quality of fuel for athletes as a meat-based diet provided vegetarians seek out other sources
or exclusively plant-based sources when a variety of these foods are consumed daily and energy intake is wrote adequate Ghosh in his presentation.
and pathogens in North america has likely been facilitated by the similarity of the flora among these three continents the study suggests.
There are plenty of highly-damaging invasive species in Western United states forests such as sudden oak death and white pine blister rust according to Frankel a plant pathologist with the Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station.
RNA interference is a natural process that affects the level of activity of genes in animals and plants.
#How successful plants take the leadwhy are some plant species rare and others common? Why do certain exotic plant species become invasive
--while others do not? Scientists from the University of Bern now identified the most important environmental
and species characteristics for plants to colonize and establish in novel places. Germinating quickly growing fast withstanding competitors
since decades ecologists have suggested that these are important characteristics of successful plants. However it has also been suggested that species characteristics are less important as determinants of plant establishment success than other factors such as seed availability or environmental characteristics like dense vegetation.
In Bern researchers of the Institute of Plant sciences and the University of Konstanz carefully examined the importance of those species characteristics
or failure of species. Field and greenhouse experiments combinedsome unique features of the Bernese study are the high number of used plant species and the sophisticated combination of several independent experiments.
In a comprehensive field experiment the scientists sowed more than 90 different native and exotic plant species into 16 grasslands with different vegetation densities in the Canton of Bern.
which of the sown plant species established in the field. At the same time the scientists conducted several greenhouse experiments to assess as accurately as possible the characteristics of each species--from seed mass
and competition are relevant for plant establishment the response of many plants to those factors is measured rarely due to the large amount of work comments Markus Fischer professor of plant ecology at the University of Bern.
Interestingly at the end mainly traits related to interactions between plants and plants or plants and animals were important reports Anne Kempel first author of the study.
The study now published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences helps to better understand the assembly of plant communities.
With such a screening future plant invasions may eventually be prevented in Switzerland says Kempel. Story Source:
Clemens did acknowledge many variables can impact how efficiently the body extracts energy from plant-based foods
or ingredients especially those high in dietary fiber cereals and plant extracts nuts and seeds.
and understanding of the digestibility of plant-based foods and ingredients could contribute to more appropriate energy values
which can have profound influences on the most significant environmental processes from plant growth and health to nutrient cycles in terrestrial and marine environments the global carbon cycle and possibly even climate processes.
#Sexual reproduction only second choice for powdery mildewgenetically powdery mildew is adapted perfectly to its host plants. Evidently sexual reproduction and new combinations of genetic material usually prove disadvantageous for the fungus.
Asexual reproduction however is considerably more successful for mildew as plant biologists from the University of Zurich
and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne demonstrate. Nonetheless the fungus still allows itself a sexual reproduction cycle.
Beat Keller and Thomas Wicker both plant biologists from the University of Zurich and their team have been analyzing the genetic material of wheat mildew varieties from Switzerland England
and Israel while the team headed by Paul Schulze-Lefert at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne studies the genetic material of barley mildew.
Mildew fungi detected on afflicted host plants have reproduced only successfully sexually every few centuries primarily reproducing asexually
In order to infect the host plant the mildew fungus needs to be able to successfully disable the plant's defense mechanisms--the parasite has to be adapted perfectly to its host.
which may reduce the number of seedlings becoming established and overall plant diversity. Publishing their results next month in a special edition of the academic journal Annals of Botany the research team has shown the impact of Deroceras reticulatum
Herbivory is a fundamental driver of plant diversity explains Dr Sarah Barlow who carried out the work
--and drawbacks--of grazing by larger vertebrates such as cows and sheep but we haven't studied in detail the impact slugs might have particularly on very young plants in meadows that we are trying to restore
and rate of damage suffered by each plant species was analysed and each species ranked for their acceptability--and hence potential vulnerability--to slugs in meadows.
and will eat some plants in preference to others. We have to cope with native slugs in our gardens
Studies have predicted long that plants would begin to use water more efficiently as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose.
and changes in rainfall patterns will in coming decades have very negative consequences for plant growth in many ecosystems around the world..
To take in the carbon dioxide they need plants open tiny pores called stomata on their leaves.
or for as long meaning the plants lose less water and grow faster. To take advantage of that fact Keenan said commercial growers have pumped for years carbon dioxide into greenhouses to promote plant growth.
To test whether such a carbon dioxide fertilization effect was taking place in forests Keenan Richardson
#Plant molecular biologist are getting to the root of the matterworking to identify key genes in the root development of poplar trees three Michigan Technological University scientists have come up with a new model for how genes interact
When the researchers in Michigan Tech's School of Forest Resources and Environmental science started looking at the question of how nitrogen--widely used as an agricultural fertilizer--affects root growth in plants their goal was to find ways to produce plants that require less nitrogen.
or economically smart says Busov who studies the functional genomics of plant development. Only 30 percent is used by the plants.
The rest goes into the ground water. It changes the soil and causes increases in algal blooms greenhouse gases and insects like mosquitoes that carry disease.
The scientists wanted to grow more nitrogen-efficient plants so less nitrogen could be used as fertilizer.
But first they had to unlock the secret to the genetic mechanisms underlying plant root growth.
There's a side benefit to growing plants that like low-nitrogen conditions too. They can suck some of the excess nitrogen from crop fertilization out of ground water.
That's good for the plants and good for nature the researcher observes. Story Source:
Sheng Yang He a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Investigator and an MSU University Distinguished Professor in the DOE Plant Research Laboratory and Plant
A lower number of cortical cells means that the plants spend less nutrients produced by the shoots to maintain the root cells.
In drought-stressed maize this trait increases rooting depth as the plants can spend more nutrients growing deeper
By combining this trait with other plant traits such as improved disease resistance the researchers expect that there is potential to produce improved seeds for agriculture.
These plants due to this new trait could maintain a high yield in areas where drought is increasingly problematic.
Their findings indicated that early plant domestication took place in the western and northern Fertile Crescent.
and animals bone tools animal bones and--perhaps most importantly--the richest deposits of charred plant remains ever recovered from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Near east.
Simone Riehl head of the archaeobotany laboratory in TÃ bingen analyzed over 30000 plant remains of 75 taxa from Chogha Golan spanning a period of more than 2000 years.
The plant remains from Chogha Golan represent a unique long-term record of cultivation of wild plant species in the eastern Fertile Crescent.
Plants including multiple forms of wheat barley and lentils together with domestic animals later accompanied farmers as they spread across western Eurasia gradually replacing the indigenous hunter-gather societies.
Many of the plants that were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent form the economic basis for the world population today.
--and thus absorbed by plants and animals in the food chain. The carbon-14 was formed in the atmosphere by U s. and Soviet atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in Nevada and Siberia from 1952 through 1962.
ever since but still are absorbed by and measurable in plant and animal tissues. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation the National geographic Society and the University of Utah.
but open-air nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s sharply increased atmospheric plant and animal carbon-14 levels followed by a steady decline ever since.
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