Celebrating Plants and People
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Bacteria Transforms Plants Into Zombies So It Can Make Insects Into Zombies
When plants are infected by parasitic bacteria called phytoplasmas, their flowers turn into leafy shoots, their petals turn green and they develop a mass of shoots called ‘witches’ brooms’. This transformation sterilizes the plant, while attracting the sap-sucking insects that carry the bacteria to new hosts.
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Invasive Plant Colonizes Mudflats, Creating New Food Web
The invader creates conditions that appear to support a food web where it couldn’t exist before
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Sweet Potatoes Exported From South America 5 Centuries Before Columbus
Sweet potatoes originated in Central and South America. But archaeologists have found prehistoric remnants of sweet potato in Polynesia from about A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1100, according to radiocarbon dating. They’ve hypothesized that those ancient samples came from the western coast of South America.
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How Expanding Soy Markets Destroy Wetlands
In Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, soy expansion results in wetland loss and degradation. Various wetlands of high conservation status are being affected for this expansion. This causes the direct loss of biodiversity, but also the loss of key services that these ecosystems provide.
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Forest Management & Bats
All but four of the 47 species (of bats) found in the United States and Canada feed solely on insects, including many destructive agricultural pests. The remaining species feed on nectar, pollen and the fruit of cacti and agaves and play an important role in pollination and seed dispersal in southwestern deserts.
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Before, Only Algae & Plants Chemically Changed The Planet. Now Add Mankind.
World-changing algae and plants caused disastrous environmental shifts that lasted millions of years. Humans are world changers 3.0—the first animals to make the list.
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The Tale Of The Pilfered Plant: Collecting To Extinction? (Long Read)
In this late, degraded chapter in our planet’s conservation, it is possible to see plant theft as part of a general, depressing quickening: as more plants become endangered, because their habitats are destroyed, they become more desirable to collectors, because they are rare, and so on. Around 20% of the world’s 380,000 plant species are now thought to be threatened by extinction, the same proportion as for mammals. (The only order of life in more trouble are the amphibians). We treasure things in the last second before the lights go out.
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What The Chemicals In Chocolate Could Do For Aging Brains (What COULDN’T They Do???)
Cocoa flavanols have been previously linked with enhanced hippocampus blood flow in younger people. The increase in blood flow in older adults may help prevent age-related memory decline, scientists suggest
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Must All Living Things Age? Some Plants Say “No”
“Random catastrophes aren’t going to kill you, and it’s worth your while to put your investment in yourself rather than just in putting out offspring,” he says. Rather than “live fast, die young,” the campion strategy is more “live slow, die old.” Really, really old.
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It Takes A Forest To Keep Reefs Healthy
Benefits from protected forests such as improved water quality due to decreased runoff and increased distribution of the vegetation are more closely linked to coral reef health than previously thought.