Arabidopsis

The George Mercer Award recognizes an outstanding and recently-published ecological research paper by young scientists. ESA recognizes Jennifer Williams, Bruce Kendall, and Jonathan Levine with the 2017 Mercer award for their paper “Rapid evolution accelerates plant population spread in fragmented experimental landscapes,” published in Science. Biological invasions, and migrations of native species in response to climate change, are pressing areas…

A study out in Communicative and Integrative Biology shows the mechanism behind plants that can recognize their own siblings.  These plants send out fewer roots when planted next to siblings than when they’re planted next to strangers, a phenomenon the researchers think lessens competition among sibs but increases competition among unrelated plants. The study was done in the lab of…