News tagged with tropical plant
First rainforests arose when plants solved plumbing problem
A team of scientists, including several from the Smithsonian Institution, discovered that leaves of flowering plants in the world's first rainforests had more veins per unit area than leaves ever had before. ...
May 03, 2011 |
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Food security for leaf-cutting ants: Workers and their fungus garden reject endophyte invaders (w/Video)
New diseases directly affect human survival and food security, especially as population density climbs. Leaf-cutting ants, one of a few groups of social insects to cultivate crops, have harvested plant material ...
Apr 02, 2009 |
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Climate caused biodiversity booms and busts in ancient plants and mammals
(PhysOrg.com) -- A period of global warming from 53 million to 47 million years ago strongly influenced plants and animals, spurring a biodiversity boom in western North America, researchers from three research museums report ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Aug 05, 2009 |
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NASA map sees Earth's trees in a new light
A NASA-led science team has created an accurate, high-resolution map of the height of Earth's forests. The map will help scientists better understand the role forests play in climate change and how their heights ...
Feb 20, 2012 |
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Ferns took to the trees and thrived
(PhysOrg.com) -- As flowering plants like giant trees quickly rose to dominate plant communities during the Cretaceous period, the ferns that had preceded them hardly saw it as a disappointment.
Jul 02, 2009 |
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Being small has its advantages, if you are a leaf
(PhysOrg.com) -- The size of leaves can vary by a factor of 1,000 across plant species, but until now, the reason why has remained a mystery. A new study by an international team of scientists led by UCLA ...
Jul 06, 2011 |
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Out Of The Woods For 'Ardi': Scientists Rip Habitat Claim for 'Breakthrough of the Year'
(PhysOrg.com) -- Ardipithecus ramidus - a purported human ancestor that was dubbed Science magazine's 2009 "Breakthrough of the Year" - is coming under fire from scientists who say there is scant evidence for he ...
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
May 27, 2010 |
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New research may improve the efficiency of the biofuel production cycle
(Phys.org) -- Using new experimental methods and computational analysis, a team of scientists from the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), led by Lawrence Livermore's Michael Thelen, discovered how certain bacteria ...
May 14, 2012 |
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World's forests' role in carbon storage immense, profound
Until now, scientists were uncertain about how much and where in the world terrestrial carbon is being stored. In the July 14 issue of Science Express, scientists report that, between 1990 and 2007, the world's forests stored ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jul 18, 2011 |
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Tropical biodiversity is about the neighbors
Home to jaguars, harpy eagles and red-eyed tree frogs, tropical forests support some of the rarest species on the planet and are the most biodiverse ecosystems on land. Understanding why some species are common ...
Jun 25, 2010 |
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How ants tame the wilderness: Rainforest species use chemicals to identify which plants to prune
Survival in the depths of the tropical rainforest not only depends on a species' ability to defend itself, but can be reliant on the type of cooperation researchers discovered between ants and tropical trees. ...
May 12, 2011 |
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Trace element plays major role in tropical forest nitrogen cycle
A new paper by researchers from the University of Georgia and Princeton University sheds light on the critical part played by a little-studied element, molybdenum, in the nutrient cycles of tropical forests. Understanding ...
Mar 22, 2012 |
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Flowering lantana draws butterflies -- but little water
Big color, little water, lots of butterflies. How does that sound? That's the story of lantana in a nutshell. But I'm famous for verbosely pontificating on the attributes of plants whenever I have an audience, so let's dig ...
Sep 11, 2009 |
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Sunlight in tropical forest driving force behind ecological niches of tree species
Not water, but sunlight is the main factor in determining the growth of the hundreds of tree species in tropical forests. The variation in physiological characteristics between tree species explains how the various species ...
Nov 29, 2011 |
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The absence of elephants and rhinoceroses reduces biodiversity in tropical forests
The progressive disappearance of seed-dispersing animals like elephants and rhinoceroses puts the structural integrity and biodiversity of the tropical forest of South-East Asia at risk. With the help of Spanish ...
May 11, 2012 |
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