Celebrating Plants and People
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How A Fungus Destroyed Ancient Forests And Might Do It Again
The demise of the world's forests some 250 million years ago likely was accelerated by aggressive tree-killing fungi triggered by global climate change
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Just How Tall Will That Tree Get? Scientists Say They Can Predict It Now
Scientists have developed a mathematical model that predicts the maximum height trees can reach in particular environmental conditions.
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Rat Uses Plant Poisons To Defend Against Lions
The deadly secret of a rat that kills lions and jackals has at last been revealed. Unlike some mammals that produce their own toxins, the African crested rat is the first known to protect itself by daubing its fur with poisons from plants.
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Giant Fungus Discovered In China Beats All Records
The most massive fruiting body of any fungus yet documented has been discovered growing on the underside of a tree in China. The fruiting body, which is equivalent to the mushrooms produced by other fungi species, is up to 10m long, 80cm wide and weighs half a tonne.
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Government Enlists Toucans To Study Seed Dispersal
Nutmeg-loving toucans wearing GPS transmitters recently helped a team of scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama address an age-old problem in plant ecology: accurately estimating seed dispersal.
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Leaves As Sonar Reflectors To Aid Bat Pollination
We have looked at two [bat-pollinated plants] and found amazing things. We are expecting to find many more. I think the acoustic world out there is just waiting for us.
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Flowers Help Long-tongue Flies Help Flowers
Flowers that are pollinated by long-tongued flies do tend to have similar striking marks, even though they can hail from distant families visual guides might be especially important to these insects, which need something to help them aim their long, unwieldy tongues.
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It takes (at least) two: why mutualism and conservation go hand in hand
Apportioning conservation resources to a single species based on rarity or species traits, for example, may have little conservation value if one or more of its mutualists are not also preserved.
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What’s In A Name
Biological taxonomy (naming and classifying living organisms) can be fun and weird!
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Crafty island plants use lizards to disperse their seeds
Lizards eat fruits? Well, they do on some islands, where food is scarce. But instead of being threatened by this, the crafty plants have evolved to rely on the lizards to disperse their seeds into unoccupied areas