Traps of carnivorous pitcher plants as habitats A great diversity of organisms, ranging from bacteria to vertebrates, survive and propagate in the otherwise deadly traps of carnivorous pitcher plants. Adlassnig et al. review the diversity of trap inquilines and the data on their environment, the pitcher fluid. Nepenthes and Cephalotus produce acidic, toxic or digestive [...]
I remember sometime ago when I opened a journal to read a scientific paper, most papers were authored by two or three people from the same laboratory, less often from different laboratories of the same country and rarely from different countries. However the scientific age has been changing like the global climate and nowadays most [...]
Next week, a virtual conference is addressing some very pertinent questions of universal relevance to science. In fact, CIARD (Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development) is asking more specifically about e-agriculture and their e-agriculture platform, but I expect the answers will be of wider value: + What are we sharing and what needs to be shared? [...]
Bacteria and other microorganisms contribute greatly to the Earth’s biomass as they form the bottom of the food chain and orchestrate the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and flow of other nutrients through the ecosystem. They are the ‘dark matter’ of life and may also hold the key to various global problems facing our society e.g. [...]
Cadmium and hypodermal periderm formation in roots Periderm as a result of secondary meristem activity is not usually formed in monocot species. Lux et al. describe periclinal cell division in the hypodermal layer of Merwilla plumbea, an African medicinal species often found on contaminated soils, which results in formation of multilayered suberized tissue when roots [...]
I’m delighted to say that we have reduced the Annals of Botany Open Access charges to £1000 GBP/ $1615 USD/ €1160 EURO for all papers. Open Access papers are freely accessible to everybody over the web, and all rights for reuse, republication and dissemination lie with the authors. Our discussions suggest that the high [...]
C4 photosynthesis in genus Cleome The genus Cleome (Cleomaceae) includes more than 200 species including one, C. gynandra, that is known to be C4 and two others that are believed to be. Koteyeva et al. show that all three have features of C4 photosynthesis in their leaves and cotyledons. They are NAD-malic enzyme-type C4 species, [...]