Ferns are notorious for containing massive amounts of DNA and an excessively large number of chromosomes. Defying all expectations, a fern no larger than a dinner plate currently holds the title for highest chromosome count, ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 1, 2022
0
42
Land plants evolved 470 million years ago from algae and have since reshaped our world. Throughout their evolution, ferns have undergone a series of changes that have helped them survive on land. For the first time, researchers ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 25, 2022
0
329
Xishuangbanna is highly renowned as the most biodiverse region in tropical China. To conserve this extraordinary rich biodiversity, more than 20% of Xishuangbanna's land has been protected in protected areas (PAs). However, ...
Plants & Animals
May 19, 2022
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25
The tropical floating fern Salvinia molesta has developed sophisticated structures to allow water to roll off its leaves quickly—even during heavy rainfall. This relieves the pressure on the leaves floating on the water ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 21, 2021
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62
The sensitive fern—named due to its sensitivity to drought and frost—is a widespread species found throughout eastern North America and eastern Asia. It is a dimorphic plant because it has two distinct types of leaves—one ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 30, 2021
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7
The end-Triassic mass extinction (ETME), one of the five most severe extinction events in Earth history, caused the disappearance of ~80 percent of all species.
Paleontology & Fossils
Oct 20, 2021
0
76
New research has shed light on when plants first evolved the ability to respond to changing humidity in the air around them, and was probably a feature of a common ancestor of both flowering plants and ferns.
Plants & Animals
Aug 26, 2021
0
79
Ferns are the second most species-rich lineages of land plants and highly suitable to test the association between genome diversity and lineage diversification. Many studies have recovered substantial differences in genome ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 19, 2021
0
104
Social colonies are nothing new in the animal kingdom. We know bees, ants and termites live in large colonies, divide labor and co-operate to take care of offspring produced by a single queen.
Plants & Animals
May 17, 2021
0
18
One afternoon in the late 1970s, my colleague and fellow student Helen Quirk handed me a brown, shrivelled fern frond. It appeared to be dead, and was so dry that when I crushed it between my fingers it disintegrated into ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 2, 2021
2
10
