Plant Migration


Book Description

Using cases of plant migration documented by both historical and fossil evidence, Jonathan D. Sauer provides a landmark assessment of what is presently known, and not merely assumed, about the process.




The Incredible Journey of Plants


Book Description

Named a Best Book of the Year for the Know-It-All by The Globe and Mail In this richly illustrated volume, a leading neurobiologist presents fascinating stories of plant migration that reveal unexpected connections between nature and culture. When we talk about migrations, we should study plants to understand that these phenomena are unstoppable. In the many different ways plants move, we can see the incessant action and drive to spread life that has led plants to colonize every possible environment on earth. The history of this relentless expansion is unknown to most people, but we can begin our exploration with these surprising tales, engagingly told by Stefano Mancuso. Generation after generation, using spores, seeds, or any other means available, plants move in the world to conquer new spaces. They release huge quantities of spores that can be transported thousands of miles. The number and variety of tools through which seeds spread is astonishing: we have seeds dispersed by wind, by rolling on the ground, by animals, by water, or by a simple fall from the plant, which can happen thanks to propulsive mechanisms, the swaying of the mother plant, the drying of the fruit, and much more. In this accessible, absorbing overview, Mancuso considers how plants convince animals to transport them around the world, and how some plants need particular animals to spread; how they have been able to grow in places so inaccessible and inhospitable as to remain isolated; how they resisted the atomic bomb and the Chernobyl disaster; how they are able to bring life to sterile islands; how they can travel through the ages, as they sail around the world.




Traveling Cultures and Plants


Book Description

The tremendous increase in migrations and diasporas of human groups in the last decades are not only bringing along challenging issues for society, especially related to the economic and political management of multiculturalism and culturally effective health care, but they are also creating dramatic changes in traditional knowledge, believes and practices (KBP) related to (medicinal) plant use. The contributors to this volume – all internationally recognized scholars in the field of ethnobiology, transcultural pharmacy, and medical anthropology – analyze these dynamics of traditional knowledge in especially 12 selected case studies. Ina Vandebroek, features in Nova's "Secret Life of Scientists", answering the question: just what is ethnobotany?




Biotic Borders


Book Description

"This timely book reveals how the increase in traffic of transpacific plants, insects, and peoples raised fears of a "biological yellow peril" beginning in the late nineteenth century, when mass quantities of nursery stock and other agricultural products were shipped from large, corporate nurseries in Japan to meet the growing demand for exotics in the United States. Jeannie Shinozuka marshals extensive research to explain how the categories of "native" and "invasive" defined groups as bio-invasions that must be regulated-or somehow annihilated-during a period of American empire-building. Shinozuka shows how the modern fixation on foreign species provided a linguistic and conceptual arsenal for anti-immigration movements that gained ground in the early twentieth century. Xenophobia fed concerns about biodiversity, and in turn facilitated the implementation of plant quarantine measures while also valuing, and devaluing, certain species over others. The emergence and rise of economic entomology and plant pathology alongside public health and anti-immigration movements was not merely coincidental. Ultimately, what this book unearths is that the inhumane and unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II cannot, and should not, be disentangled from this longer history"--




Monarchs and Milkweed


Book Description

The fascinating and complex evolutionary relationship of the monarch butterfly and the milkweed plant Monarch butterflies are one of nature's most recognizable creatures, known for their bright colors and epic annual migration from the United States and Canada to Mexico. Yet there is much more to the monarch than its distinctive presence and mythic journeying. In Monarchs and Milkweed, Anurag Agrawal presents a vivid investigation into how the monarch butterfly has evolved closely alongside the milkweed—a toxic plant named for the sticky white substance emitted when its leaves are damaged—and how this inextricable and intimate relationship has been like an arms race over the millennia, a battle of exploitation and defense between two fascinating species. The monarch life cycle begins each spring when it deposits eggs on milkweed leaves. But this dependency of monarchs on milkweeds as food is not reciprocated, and milkweeds do all they can to poison or thwart the young monarchs. Agrawal delves into major scientific discoveries, including his own pioneering research, and traces how plant poisons have not only shaped monarch-milkweed interactions but have also been culturally important for centuries. Agrawal presents current ideas regarding the recent decline in monarch populations, including habitat destruction, increased winter storms, and lack of milkweed—the last one a theory that the author rejects. He evaluates the current sustainability of monarchs and reveals a novel explanation for their plummeting numbers. Lavishly illustrated with more than eighty color photos and images, Monarchs and Milkweed takes readers on an unforgettable exploration of one of nature's most important and sophisticated evolutionary relationships.













Plant Competition in a Changing World


Book Description

Competitiveness describes a key ability important for plants to grow and survive abiotic and biotic stresses. Under optimal, but particularly under non-optimal conditions, plants compete for resources including nutrients, light, water, space, pollinators and other. Competition occurs above- and belowground. In resource-poor habitats, competition is generally considered to be more pronounced than in resource-rich habitats. Although competition occurs between different players within an ecosystem such as between plants and soil microorganisms, our topic focusses on plant-plant interactions and includes inter-specific competition between different species of similar and different life forms and intra-specific competition. Strategies for securing resources via spatial or temporal separation and different resource needs generally reduce competition. Increasingly important is the effect of invasive plants and subsequent decline in biodiversity and ecosystem function. Current knowledge and future climate predictions suggest that in some situations competition will be intensified with occurrence of increased abiotic (e.g. water and nutrient limitations) and biotic stresses (e.g. mass outbreak of insects), but competition might also decrease in situations where plant productivity and survival declines (e.g. habitats with degraded soils). Changing interactions, climate change and biological invasions place new challenges on ecosystems. Understanding processes and mechanisms that underlie the interactions between plants and environmental factors will aid predictions and intervention. There is much need to develop strategies to secure ecosystem services via primary productivity and to prevent the continued loss of biodiversity. This Research Topic provides an up-to-date account of knowledge on plant-plant interactions with a focus on identifying the mechanisms underpinning competitive ability. The Research Topic aims to showcase knowledge that links ecological relevance with physiological processes to better understanding plant and ecosystem function.







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