"Plant evolution" refers to the gradual changes and developments that occur in plant species over time. It involves the processes of genetic variation, adaptation to the environment, and the emergence of new plant species through evolution.
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Recent research on these remarkable fossils and advances in understanding plant developmental genetics are beginning to reveal how major changes in life cycle had an early influence on the direction
of plant evolution.
It was challenging and fun to connect directly with a true sample of the local community, and they all seemed to really enjoy hearing
about plant evolution!
Dr Sebastian Schornack, who led the research team, says the study indicates that early land plants were already genetically equipped to respond to microbial infections: «This discovery reveals that certain response mechanisms were already in place very early on
in plant evolution.»
«Geckos are notoriously described as having incredible ability to adhere to a surface,» said Karl Niklas, professor of
plant evolution at Cornell University and a co-author of the paper.
Michael Donoghue and Erika Edwards,
plant evolution researchers at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, analyzed water conservation mechanisms in the cactus genus Pereskia, an assortment of leafy shrubs and trees that are thought to represent the ancestral state of living cacti.
«Our goal was to unlock the understanding of those strategies, and our findings offer a new global theory
for plant evolution.
Timescale of early
land plant evolution: controlling for competing topologies and dating strategies on divergence time estimates.
«Ginkgo biloba, primarily known today as a dietary supplement to enhance memory, also plays an important role in the understanding of
seed plant evolution,» says Simon Malcomber, program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology.
These results matched up with Gillman's earlier study
on plant evolution, as well as with independent research on cold - blooded animals.
Researchers from Princeton University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have posed a theory of
plant evolution based on root adaptations that allowed plants to become more efficient and independent.
A new theory of
plant evolution suggests that the 400 million - year drive of flora across the globe may not have been propelled by the above - ground traits we can see easily, but by underground adaptations that allowed plants to become more efficient and independent.
As part of Plant Biology research at CSHL, scientists are using genomic approaches to understand everything
from plant evolution to how plants grow, develop, and reproduce.
Professor Osborne added: «Understanding how the C4 photosynthetic pathway changes plant growth is crucially important
for plant evolution, crop production and ecosystem ecology.
Marchantia is a novel emerging plant model species and will be used together with Arabidopsis in this project to investigate and compare the interactions of ROXY proteins with transcription factors and their nuclear activities during
land plant evolution.
If confirmed, the findings, reported in the current issue of Lethaia, would turn back the clock on a crucial step
in plant evolution — pollination by insects — by about 150 million years.
Settling the debate over the first flower will take a bigger database and more - sophisticated models, says Wenheng Zhang, who studies
plant evolution at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
John Dickie, head of botanical information at the Millennium Seed Bank, added: «For a number of years we have been keen to know just how much phylogenetic diversity, the total outcome of millions of years of
seed plant evolution, we have in the vault.
I'm sure that there were important advances in our understanding
of plant evolution in the last 25 years and that there are paleobotanists out there with thoughtful insights to share.
It's «a wonderful study» which demonstrates that the evolution of water conservation «set the stage for the loss of leaves and the evolution of succulence,» says David Ackerly,
a plant evolution researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.
The day has hardly begun and already you have dabbled in some of the great mysteries of
plant evolution.
Glistening in the humid enclosure are species representing key events during 500 million years of
plant evolution — from primitive liverworts and velvety mosses through horsetails, ferns, and conifers, on up to the flowering plants.
In addition to deepening our basic biological understanding of
plant evolution and development, the research offers further avenues for study, including how and why some plants recruit bacteria that impact drought resistance while others don't.
The fossil find, an ancient relative of today's bleeding hearts, poses a new puzzle in the study of
plant evolution: did Earth's dominant group of flowering plants evolve along with its distinctive pollen?
According the study's lead scientist, Dr. Takeshi Izawa, «The birth and spread of novel agronomical traits during crop domestication are complex events in
plant evolution.»
How important are transposons for
plant evolution?
Some of these, such as the genes that help mosses come back to life after being dried out, are shared with other land plants and so evolved even earlier in
plant evolution.
It's a global view of
plant evolution at a time when global rules are essential for building climate models and understanding the biosphere.»
«This is a novel finding for European flora,» says Doug Soltis, an expert in botany and
plant evolution at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
By studying liverworts - which diverged from other land plants early in the history of
plant evolution - researchers from the Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge have found that the relationship between plants and filamentous microbes not only dates back millions of years, but that modern plants have maintained this ancient mechanism to accommodate and respond to microbial invaders.
So in reality,
this plant evolution study is just the beginning of learning how plants prevent freezing, other environmental challenges, including predator protection theories.
In the past we have used diverse taxa including mosses, lycophytes, ferns and seed plants to investigate how developmental mechanisms were modified during land
plant evolution.
Amanda E. Fisher, Ph.D. (Idaho State University)
Plant evolution and systematics, especially Acanthaceae and Poaceae.
«Each of the four institutions involved has its own strengths and these strengths were nicely interwoven to produce a novel vision of
plant evolution.»
I hold expertise in all the topics that come under Early botany, Early modern botany, Modern botany, Scope and importance of plant studies, Human nutrition, Plant biochemistry, Medicine and materials, Plant ecology, Plants, climate and environmental change, Genetics, Molecular genetics, Epigenetics,
Plant evolution, Plant physiology, Plant hormones, Plant anatomy and morphology, Systematic botany, etc..