The recent discovery of diverse fossil flowers and floral organs in Cretaceous strata has revealed astonishing details about the structural and systematic diversity of early angiosperms. Exploring ...the rich fossil record that has accumulated over the last three decades, this is a unique study of the evolutionary history of flowering plants from their earliest phases in obscurity to their dominance in modern vegetation. The discussion provides comprehensive biological and geological background information, before moving on to summarise the fossil record in detail. Including previously unpublished results based on research into Early and Late Cretaceous fossil floras from Europe and North America, the authors draw on direct palaeontological evidence of the pattern of angiosperm evolution through time. Synthesising palaeobotanical data with information from living plants, this unique book explores the latest research in the field, highlighting connections with phylogenetic systematics, structure and the biology of extant angiosperms.
Floral Diagrams Ronse De Craene, Louis P.
02/2010
eBook, Book
Floral morphology remains the cornerstone for plant identification and studies of plant evolution. This guide gives a global overview of the floral diversity of the angiosperms through the use of ...detailed floral diagrams. These schematic diagrams replace long descriptions or complicated drawings as a tool for understanding floral structure and evolution. They show important features of flowers, such as the relative positions of the different organs, their fusion, symmetry, and structural details. The relevance of the diagrams is discussed, and pertinent evolutionary trends are illustrated. The range of plant species represented reflects the most recent classification of flowering plants based mainly on molecular data, which is expected to remain stable in the future. This book is invaluable for researchers and students working on plant structure, development and systematics, as well as being an important resource for plant ecologists, evolutionary botanists and horticulturists.
Bhor is an important and floristically rich Taluka of Pune district, Maharashtra state, located on the Western Ghats of India. We provide here a comprehensive checklist of angiosperms occurring in ...this region based on records of the Agharkar Research Institute Herbarium (AHMA). A total number of 663 species of Angiosperms belonging to 420 genera under 99 families are documented in this paper.
Prominent among the many factors now affecting the sustainability of forest ecosystems are anthropogenically-generated carbon dioxide (CO sub(2)) and ozone (O sub(3)). CO sub(2) is the substrate for ...photosynthesis and thus can accelerate tree growth, whereas O sub(3) is a highly reactive oxygen species and interferes with basic physiological functions. This review summarizes the impacts of CO sub(2) and O sub(3) on tree chemical composition and highlights the consequences thereof for trophic interactions and ecosystem dynamics. CO sub(2) and O sub(3) influence phytochemical composition by altering substrate availability and biochemical/physiological processes such as photosynthesis and defense signaling pathways. Growth of trees under enriched CO sub(2) generally leads to an increase in the C/N ratio, due to a decline in foliar nitrogen and concomitant increases in carbohydrates and phenolics. Terpenoid levels generally are not affected by atmospheric CO sub(2) concentration. O sub(3) triggers up-regulation of antioxidant defense pathways, leading to the production of simple phenolics and flavonoids (more so in angiosperms than gymnosperms). Tannins levels generally are unaffected, while terpenoids exhibit variable responses. In combination, CO sub(2) and O sub(3) exert both additive and interactive effects on tree chemical composition. CO sub(2)-and O sub(3)-mediated changes in plant chemistry influence host selection, individual performance (development, growth, reproduction), and population densities of herbivores (primarily phytophagous insects) and soil invertebrates. These changes can effect shifts in the amount and temporal pattern of forest canopy damage and organic substrate deposition. Decomposition rates of leaf litter produced under elevated CO sub(2) and O sub(3) may or may not be altered, and can respond to both the independent and interactive effects of the pollutants. Overall, however, CO sub(2) and O sub(3) effects on decomposition will be influenced more by their impacts on the quantity, rather than quality, of litter produced. A prominent theme to emerge from this and related reviews is that the effects of elevated CO sub(2) and O sub(3) on plant chemistry and ecological interactions are highly context- and species-specific, thus frustrating attempts to identify general, global patterns. Many of the interactions that govern above- and below-ground community and ecosystem processes are chemically mediated, ultimately influencing terrestrial carbon sequestration and feeding back to influence atmospheric composition. Thus, the discipline of chemical ecology is fundamentally important for elucidating the impacts of humans on the health and sustainability of forest ecosystems. Future research should seek to increase the diversity of natural products, species, and biomes studied; incorporate long-term, multi-factor experiments; and employ a comprehensive 'genes to ecosystems' perspective that couples genetic/genomic tools with the approaches of evolutionary and ecosystem ecology.
A new species, Nitraria iliensis sp. nov., is described from the Ili basin, Almaty region, Kazakhstan. It belongs to section Nitraria ser. Sibiricae and is morphologically similar to N. sibirica ...Pall. An integrative taxonomic approach based on molecular, biochemical and morphological analyses, along with palynological data, was used to delimit this new species. The studied species of the genus are illustrated, and photographs of authentic specimens of the new species, as well as a distribution map of the new species and segregate taxa, are provided. Morphological characters were investigated, more important traits for identification were found, and a new key to distinguish between all species of the genus was prepared.
There are very few studies that have investigated host-specificity among tropical herbivorous insects. Indeed, most of the trophic interactions of herbivorous insects in Southeast Asian tropical ...rainforests remain unknown, and whether polyphagous feeding is common in the herbivores of this ecosystem has not been determined. The present study employed DNA bar coding to reveal the trophic associations of adult leaf-chewing chrysomelid beetles in a Bornean rainforest. Plant material ingested by the adults was retrieved from the bodies of the insects, and a portion of the chloroplast rbcL sequence was then amplified from this material. The plants were identified at the family level using an existing reference database of chloroplast DNA. Our DNA-based diet analysis of eleven chrysomelid species successfully identified their host plant families and indicated that five beetle species fed on more than two families within the angiosperms, and four species fed on several families of gymnosperms and/or ferns together with multiple angiosperm families. These findings suggest that generalist chrysomelid beetles associated with ecologically and taxonomically distant plants constitute a part of the plant-insect network of the Bornean rainforest.
New Caledonia is a global biodiversity hotspot facing extreme environmental degradation. Given the urgent need for conservation prioritisation, we have made a first-pass quantitative assessment of ...the distribution of Narrow Endemic Species (NES) in the flora to identify species and sites that are potentially important for conservation action. We assessed the distributional status of all angiosperm and gymnosperm species using data from taxonomic descriptions and herbarium samples. We characterised species as being NES if they occurred in 3 or fewer locations. In total, 635 of the 2930 assessed species were classed as NES, of which only 150 have been subjected to the IUCN conservation assessment. As the distributional patterns of un-assessed species from one or two locations correspond well with assessed species which have been classified as Critically Endangered or Endangered respectively, we suggest that our distributional data can be used to prioritise species for IUCN assessment. We also used the distributional data to produce a map of "Hotspots of Plant Narrow Endemism" (HPNE). Combined, we used these data to evaluate the coincidence of NES with mining activities (a major source of threat on New Caledonia) and also areas of conservation protection. This is to identify species and locations in most urgent need of further conservation assessment and subsequent action. Finally, we grouped the NES based on the environments they occurred in and modelled the habitat distribution of these groups with a Maximum Entropy Species Distribution Model (MaxEnt). The NES were separable into three different groups based primarily on geological differences. The distribution of the habitat types for each group coincide partially with the HPNE described above and also indicates some areas which have high habitat suitability but few recorded NES. Some of these areas may represent under-sampled hotspots of narrow endemism and are priorities for further field work.
Physiological maturity impacts seed quality through various mechanisms including vigor, desiccation tolerance, dormancy induction, synthesis of raw materials (including seed storage proteins), and ...the reorganization of metabolisms. Peanut seed development can be classified into seven classes with four incremental stages per class. Based on the mesocarp color, the final three stages are commonly referred to as “orange”, “brown”, and “black”. In 2017, freshly harvested pods from one genotype of runner market-type peanuts grown under conventional practices were obtained from the University of Georgia research facility. The pods were removed from the plant material and ‘pod blasted’ to reveal the mesocarp. After separation, the remainder of the pod outer layer was removed, and the seeds were segregated for proteomic analysis. The raw peanuts were analyzed by bottom-up LC-MS/MS proteomics, which was conducted by the Proteomics Resource Center at the Rockefeller University, to identify the significant protein composition differences in each maturity class. The proteomic data revealed differentially expressed proteins as a function of maturity class with multiple functions including plant defense, metabolism, cell signaling, nutrient accumulation, and packaging. Understanding the processes needed for seed maturation will enable peanut scientists to evaluate the traits needed for robust germination, hardiness of the seed in response to disease, and nutrient quality.
Recent advances in molecular phylogenetics and a series of important palaeobotanical discoveries have revolutionized our understanding of angiosperm diversification. Yet, the origin and early ...evolution of their most characteristic feature, the flower, remains poorly understood. In particular, the structure of the ancestral flower of all living angiosperms is still uncertain. Here we report model-based reconstructions for ancestral flowers at the deepest nodes in the phylogeny of angiosperms, using the largest data set of floral traits ever assembled. We reconstruct the ancestral angiosperm flower as bisexual and radially symmetric, with more than two whorls of three separate perianth organs each (undifferentiated tepals), more than two whorls of three separate stamens each, and more than five spirally arranged separate carpels. Although uncertainty remains for some of the characters, our reconstruction allows us to propose a new plausible scenario for the early diversification of flowers, leading to new testable hypotheses for future research on angiosperms.
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