Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Plant Biology
Ecology and conservation of a living fossil: Australias Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis)
Published: 2021-10-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Horticulture, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Pathology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The iconic Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis) is a critically endangered Australian conifer and one of the world’s rarest trees with only 46 mature individuals remaining in the wild. The species is regarded as a ‘living fossil’ and was discovered on the brink of extinction following a natural historical decline. While its discovery has enabled crucial intervention for its long-term conservation, it [...]
Comment on “Information arms race explains plant-herbivore chemical communication in ecological communities”
Published: 2021-09-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences
Zu et al (Science, 19 Jun 2020, p. 1377) propose that an ‘information arms-race’ between plants and herbivores explains plant-herbivore communication at the community level. However, our analysis shows that key assumptions of the proposed model either a) conflict with standard evolutionary theory or b) are not supported by the available evidence. We also show that the presented statistical [...]
Plant herbivore protection by arbuscular mycorrhizas: A role for fungal diversity?
Published: 2021-07-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences
The symbiotic association between arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and terrestrial plants can enhance plant defences against insect herbivores. Despite advances in our understanding of how AM fungi affect plant tolerance and resistance based defence mechanisms, we contend that the role of fungal diversity in these interactions continues to be largely overlooked. This is problematic considering [...]
ausplotsR: An R package for rapid extraction and analysis of vegetation and soil data collected by Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Published: 2020-12-14
Subjects: Biostatistics, Botany, Life Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Statistics and Probability
The Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), Australia’s national land ecosystem monitoring program, measures critical environmental attributes from local to continental scale and generates quality data for research and land management. Since 2011, TERN has performed standardised field surveys and sampling across a national plot network. At each plot, TERN records vegetation structure, [...]
The photosynthetic pathways of plant species surveyed in Australia’s national terrestrial monitoring network
Published: 2020-11-22
Subjects: Life Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences
The photosynthetic pathway of plants is a fundamental trait that influences terrestrial environments from the local to global level. The abundance of different photosynthetic pathways in Australia is expected to undergo a substantial shift due to climate change and rising atmospheric CO2; however, tracking change is hindered by a lack of data on the pathways of species, as well as their [...]
Resource allocation to growth or luxury consumption drives mycorrhizal responses
Published: 2019-07-17
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences
Highly variable phenotypic responses in mycorrhizal plants challenge our functional understanding of plant-fungal mutualisms. Using non-invasive high-throughput phenotyping, we observed that arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi relieved phosphorus (P) limitation and enhanced growth of Brachypodium distachyon under P-limited conditions, while photosynthetic limitation under low nitrogen (N) was [...]