Tagged: plants

Social plants: in the wild, staghorn ferns grow in colonies to improve water storage for all members - Hot off the press

Guest Author • May 18, 2021 •

• New Zealand stories,
• plants

Kevin Burns, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Social colonies are nothing new in the animal kingdom. We know bees, ants and termites live in large colonies, divide labour and co-operate to take care of offspring produced by a single queen. This behaviour, known as eusociality, has evolved independently in insects, crustaceans (certain species of shrimp) … Read More

Why plants don’t simply grow faster with more carbon dioxide in air - Climate: Explained

Guest Author • Aug 16, 2019 •

• Carbon dioxide,
• climate change,
• plants

Climate: Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz Carbon dioxide is a fertiliser for plants, so if its concentration increases in the atmosphere then plants will grow … Read More

Plants, their predators, and early warning systems - BioBlog

Alison Campbell • Apr 02, 2019 •

• herbivory,
• insects,
• plant signals,
• plants

People tend to think that plants don’t do much from day to day – certainly when I asked my first-year students at the start of the course, they were far more interested in animals than in plants. Poor plants! But then, to the casual eye, I guess they’re fairly static creatures However, it turns out that their responses to the … Read More

How the first trees grew so tall with hollow cores – new research - Guest Work

Guest Author • Mar 30, 2018 •

• China,
• cladoxylopsides,
• growth rings,
• plant cells,
• plants,
• silica,
• trees,
• volcanic fossil

Christopher M. Berry, Cardiff University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Imagine a world without trees, and then try to think about the changes that would need to happen for these trees to evolve from the small primitive plants that came before them. I spend as much time as I … Read More

Why apartment dwellers need indoor plants - Guest Work

Guest Author • Jul 25, 2017 •

• bad bacteria,
• Carbon dioxide,
• good bacteria,
• microbiota,
• nature-therapy,
• plant,
• plants

Danica-Lea Larcombe, Edith Cowan University The number of Australians living in high-rise apartments doubled between 1991 and 2011 and that trend has continued since then. The quarter-acre dream is fast disappearing and larger blocks and family gardens along with it. As more people move from country areas to the city and as land to build homes near … Read More

Local extinctions: Climate change’s vanishing trick - News

John Kerr • Dec 09, 2016 •

• animals,
• biogeography,
• climate change,
• conservation,
• ecology,
• geographic range,
• global warming,
• plants,
• species

Now you see them, now you don’t. Hundreds of species have already undergone ‘local extinctions’ because of climate change, according to new a study. As overall temperatures increase around the world thanks to climate change, plants and animals are starting to shift their geographic range closer to the cooler poles of the planet, or higher up the slopes of mountains. Read More

Dogs, dispersal, & (bio)dynamics - BioBlog

Alison Campbell • Sep 30, 2016 •

• biodynamics,
• GM,
• insecticide,
• organic,
• pesticide,
• plants,
• produce

A couple of days ago I did a spot of live radio with the good folks at 95bFM. It was great fun. One of the topics was dog evolution, which I’ve already written about here; another was the recent publications on human dispersal, covered nicely over on sciblogs.co.nz.  The third was a brief discussion of claims made … Read More

Honeybee decline could sting NZ for $700m - News

John Kerr • Aug 03, 2016 •

• agriculture,
• bee,
• Economy,
• ecosystem services,
• exports,
• honeybee,
• honeybees,
• horticulture,
• insects,
• plants,
• pollination

The pollinating power of the humble honeybee is worth millions of dollars to the New Zealand agricultural sector – but we are at risk of losing it. Bees are having a hard time of it these days; varroa mite, pesticides and a lack of plant diversity are all contributing to the decline of the bee populations crucial for pollinating crops. Read More

When things grow wild – post-earthquake natural succession in Christchurch gardens - Code for life

Grant Jacobs • Dec 20, 2012 •

• Christchurch,
• earthquake,
• gardens,
• New Zealand,
• plants,
• succession

While I madly tackle the pre-Christmas to-do list (sigh) I’d like to give a shout-out to a blog post by Glenn Stewart,  Professor of Urban Ecology, Lincoln University (near Christchurch), about what is happening to gardens in ‘abandoned’ Christchurch homes. As you might expect, they’re growing wild, with a natural succession taking place that is … Read More

Plants in the water cycle - Waiology

Waiology • Jun 30, 2011 •

• Ecohydrology,
• plants,
• water cycle,
• Waterscape

By Daniel Collins When you think about hydrology, the first things that come to mind are often rain and rivers, not plants. But plants have a significant effect on how much rain actually reaches the rivers. We see this most readily in the reduction in river flow when grassland is replaced by shrubland or forest. Low flows, mean flow and … Read More