New paper offers key insights into how new species emerge
...ations to live on flies in apples that the apple fly evolved before it. And so it goes, with the formation of one new species planting the seed that germinates in the beginning of another. But in a plot twist, the apple wasp's ancestors appear to have come from a Rhagoletis fly infesting blueberries rather ...Holy guacamole: invasive beetle threatens Florida's avocados
... widespread and severe levels of Redbay mortality in the Southeastern coastal plain. When the beetles bore into the sapwood of a host tree, the fungus germinates in the tree tissue and can cause tree death. "This beetle is very small roughly two millimeters long but it kills extremely rapidly," Koch says....Invasive plants challenge scientists in face of environmental change
...onsume knapweed seeds and foliage, relegating it to a roadside weed. A second invader targeted in the new study is cheatgrass, a winter annual that germinates in the fall and which is native to Eurasia. Seastedt said the researchers may use grazing animals and re-seeding with native grasses to combat cheatgr...Reproducing early and often is the key to rapid evolution in plants
...trees ever built. A clear pattern emerged. Plants with a shorter generation time from the time they germinate to the time that a seed they produce germinates generally show more rapid rates of molecular evolution. Longer-lived trees and shrubs, by contrast, evolve more slowly and show less variability in t...