With the intensification of global agriculture, the annual production of 14 billion tons of crop straw and 125 million tons of livestock manure poses a significant disposal challenge.
Camouflage is a common defensive strategy among animals and has long been a focus in evolutionary biology. By altering their body color and patterns, animals avoid detection or recognition to either ambush prey or evade predators.
Buzz pollination, a process where bees vibrate flowers to release pollen, occurs in more than 20,000 plant species, including tomatoes and blueberries.
As one of the globally cultivated and consumed staple food crops, potato plays a vital role in ensuring food security. However, intensive potato cultivation has resulted in a series of environmental challenges, including soil degradation, water resource depletion, and increased risks of microbial contamination.
Species within the genus Pseudosolorina are characterized by the discrete, disc-shaped apothecium, exhibiting unique morphological features that facilitate reliable field identification even in natural habitats. Historically, taxa displaying these characteristics were classified under the genus Solorina. However, our research reveals two morphologically distinct clades within Solorina, which ar...
Modern cultivated strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) originates from interspecific hybridization between two octoploid wild species—F. virginiana and F. chiloensis. However, the divergence in centromere characteristics and evolutionary trajectories between the wild and cultivated octoploids has remained poorly understood.
Montane plant radiations have attracted considerable interest, especially for the alpine floras of the Andes and Hengduan Mountains. However, little is known about the diversification of lineages in the adjacent inter-montane valleys.
Feralization is the evolutionary process by which domesticated crops or livestock re-acquire some wild-like traits and escape from intensive management to form independent reproducing populations. Feralization has interested biologists since Darwin, not only because of the implications for evolution but also because feral populations can become invasive and have severe ecological or agricultura...
The flowering plant tree of life, much like our own family tree, allows us to understand how different species are related to each other. The tree of life is revealed by comparing DNA sequences between different species to identify changes (mutations) that accumulate over time like a molecular fossil record. Our understanding of the tree of life is rapidly improving due to advances in DNA seque...
