Tag Archives: plants

The key to a productive ecosystem may be plant neighbors’ chemistry

Posted on 25 Jul, 2023 by Jeremy Yoder

One of the grand patterns across the diversity of flowering plants is that major groups of species are deeply united by shared chemistry, especially “secondary” biochemical products that don’t directly contribute to processes like photosynthesis, growth, and reproduction. Secondary compounds … Continue reading →

Posted in Coevolution, community ecology, ecology, phylogenetics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Where Did This Flower Come From?

Posted on 19 Jun, 2020 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Sam Gregory wrote this post as a project for  Dr. Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Scientific Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Sam earned a BS in biology and BFA in studio art from Birmingham-Southern College, and is currently pursuing an MS in … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, blogging, Coevolution, demography, ecology, evolution, phylogeography, plants, Science Communication | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The not so singular process of hybridization

Posted on 27 May, 2016 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

What, if anything, are hybrids? Zach Gompert and Alex Buerkle ask this question in a special issue in Evolutionary Applications. Hybrids occur when unrelated individuals mate, but how distant do the taxa need to be to constitute a cross? The varied … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, conservation, domestication, evolution, genomics, natural history, next generation sequencing, plants | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

There and back again: an angiosperm's tale

Posted on 19 Feb, 2016 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Eelgrass (Zostera marina) is the dominant seagrass in the northern hemisphere and provides the foundation of highly productive ecosystems that rival tropical rain forests and coral reefs in ecosystem services. Zostera isn’t really a grass, but a monocot, like a … Continue reading →

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"Hurrah! Hurrah!" DNA barcoding and the lost story of Darwin's meadow

Posted on 8 Dec, 2014 by Karen James

Five years ago, I was a co-author on a consortium paper in PNAS that recommended two genes to serve as universal markers for DNA-based identification (DNA barcoding*) of plants. Five years ago, the world celebrated Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. You … Continue reading →

Posted in DNA barcoding, natural history | Tagged , | 1 Comment