News by Subject Agriculture

Researchers have calculated the capacity of North American forests to sequester carbon in a detailed analysis that for the first time integrates natural processes and climate changes that are likely to alter growth over the next 60 years.

The genome of the algae species Chara braunii has been decoded. It already contains the first genetic characteristics that enabled the water plants' evolutionary transition to land.

An international team, which included three University of Maryland researchers, sequenced and analyzed the genome of Chara braunii, a freshwater green alga closely related to land plants. By comparing Chara's genome to multiple land plant genomes, the team was able to identify many important genes that originated in a common ancestor shared by Chara and land plants.

University of Kansas scientists discovered that polyps have no qualms about treating a nonrelated individual like part of the family. This goes way beyond sharing meals or even a roof. Polyps of the marine hydrozoan Ectopleura larynx allow nonrelated individuals to fuse their bodies to the familial colony and share what is essentially skin and a stomach. The findings appeared yesterday in the journal Evolution Letters. 

Invasive plants have the ability to adapt to new environments -- and even behave like a native species, according to University of Stirling research.

Biologists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum characterized new, unknown photoreceptors from the bioluminescent flashlight fish Anomalops katoptron. The photoreceptors known as opsins allow the fish to detect light with a specific wavelength. As published on the July 11, 2018, in PLOS ONE the scientists found new opsin variants, which are specialized to detect low intensity blue light in the wavelength range of bioluminescent light emitted by the fish. The blue light can be used to influence the fish behavior.