Islands contain some of the most remarkable yet imperiled plants anywhere on Earth. Despite remarkable ecological/morphological diversity, insular endemics often retain the ability to hybridize and produce vigorous, fertile progeny. In a recent study published in AoB PLANTS, Kerbs et al. analysed several generations of synthetic interspecific hybrids between two species endemic to the Canary […]

AoB PLANTS, the Open Access journal for environmental and evolutionary plant biology, is looking for a new Editor-in-Chief. Published through Oxford University Press, this journal is dedicated to rapid publication of research articles, reviews, commentaries and short communications. AoB PLANTS provides a fast-track pathway for publishing high-quality research in an open-access environment, where papers are […]

Sun-loving plants react to changes in light quality caused by neighbouring plants via “shade avoidance” responses, including vertical elongation, upward orientation of leaves and reduced branching/tillering. Such responses are favoured by natural selection because they increase the fitness of individuals, but they can be disadvantageous for crops because they reduce the allocation of resources to […]

Actions aimed at reforesting arid areas around the world are becoming increasingly complex. In a recent study published in AoB PLANTS, Carevic et al. evaluated the physiological resistance to drought stress of Prosopis (mesquite) seedlings from different collection sites in the Atacama Desert, northern Chile. Their results show that seedlings from the most hyperarid habitats […]

How does the evolution of herbicide resistance relate to plant physiology? A new paper in AoB PLANTS suggests a few ways to find out.

Edible trichomes have been recorded in several plant families. However, food hairs have not been recorded among the Catasetinae, a subtribe of Orchidaceae. In a recent article published in AoB PLANTS, Pansarin and Maciel used data on floral biology to perform studies involving Cyanaeorchis, a genus for which pollinators and rewards are unknown. They also […]

Habitat variations influence the richness and composition of insect guilds. This affects plant reproduction, which depends upon functional relationships with insects involving both pollination and predation. The impact of changes in insect fauna can be seen in composite landscapes, where forest fragmentation produces transition habitats showing great heterogeneity over small spatial scales. In a recent […]

Aquatic plants can function as conduits for methane from sediment to the air, and thus contribute to the global methane balance. In a recent Editor’s Choice article published in AoB PLANTS, Milberg et al. studied the flux of methane from plots, in two Swedish lakes, dominated by two species (Phragmites australis, Carex rostrata). There were substantial […]

Extreme hypobaria represents an environment that is mostly outside of the evolutionary experience of terrestrial plants, and yet hypobaria may be a part of plant habitats in support of human space exploration. A greenhouse on the surface of Mars, as well as in transit vehicles and space habitats, can be envisioned to operate below the […]

Like the mythical Phoenix, the Portuguese Sundew is reborn from ashes, but that's a problem when people protect your habitat from flames.

Although many studies have documented the effects of global warming on invasive plants, little is known about whether the effects of warming on plant invasion differ depending on the imposed change in different diurnal temperature range. In a recent study published in AoB PLANTS, Chen et al. tested the impacts of unequal night-and-day warming on […]

Within a species, plant traits may vary substantially along environmental gradients. However, is such variation (1) consistent across locations and (2) genetic or non-genetic (i.e., plastic) in nature? In a recent ‘Editor’s Choice’ article published in AoB PLANTS, Pfennigwerth et al. combined field observations and a common garden experiment to assess Rhododendron maximum trait variation […]