Invading species have tough time cracking diverse neighborhood
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL--An exotic species or weed trying to establish itself in a new ecosystem will have a harder time if it encounters a diverse mix of resident species rather than just a few species, according to research at the University of Minnesota. Working with prairie plants, the research t...Seed dormancy may hold the key to fighting weeds
...mancy, that provide for their persistence. Dormant weed seeds in the soil avoid exposure to control practices that target emerging weed seedlings. Scientists from the USDA-Agricultural Research Service and North Dakota State University,...Trees and flowers more akin than dissimilar
...plants, the towering pine and the flowering annual weed shared a common ancestor, but hundreds of millions of years ago, so their genetic differences were expected to be as diverse as their appearances. "Few genes would be expected to retain high sequence similarity for this time," the researchers say, "i...Roads pave the way for weed invasions
...into uninfestedareas, and disturbed roadsides give weed seeds a place to grow. In the April issue of Conse...e biodiversity, but alsoprotect against non-native weed invasions, which are costly forranchers and public agencies."...Researchers discover effective method for killing prostate cancer cells
...iversity Medical Center. "It's similar to using a weed killer -- poison ivy cannot take over the backyard if we don't allow the leaves to breathe. If we stop this protein, which in turn stops the growth of prostate cancer cells, we are one step closer to managing the spread and growth of cancer in the p...Roads pave the way for weed invasions
...nto uninfested areas, and disturbed roadsides give weed seeds a place to grow. In the April issue of Conse... biodiversity, but also protect against non-native weed invasions, which are costly for ranchers and public agencies."...Paving roads can increase weed invasions
..., and clearing land during road construction gives weed seeds a place to become established. Intuitively, it makes sense that improved roads would spread weeds more than primitive roads because the former have more traffic, more exposed soil and more maintenance such as mowing and herbicide treatments, al...MIT research in Hawaii could impact state's management of fresh water
... Frankel's creativity. She volunteered everyone to weed invasive plants for the Kokee Resource Conservation Program in return for four days of free lodging at an original Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Kokee State Park on Kauai. The students also presented papers on herbicides to a rapt audience of C...What to plant when the fires go out
...tear across the region. Cheatgrass, a fast-growing weed that originated in Russia, is one of a number of i...ly. To date, no substantial effort to improve the weed fighting ability of natives has been mounted, nor do I know of such a priority being considered." Du...Invading weeds escaped old enemies, brought immunity
...invading plant species thrives to become a noxious weed or struggles to survive." The Cornell plant study began with 4,100 naturalized plant species, regarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as invaders surviving in wild populations in the United States without human intervention, and focused on 1,1...Ant agriculture: 50 million years of success
...tic that specifically suppresses the growth of the weed fungi, and the ants use this antibiotic to keep th...blished that the ant gardens almost always contain weed molds in the genus "Escovopsis," which are found nowhere else in nature -- only in ant gardens. One...Predicting the movement of genes
...fornia, and the wild sunflower is a native, annual weed that occurs throughout most of the US. Sunflower ...ly wild sunflowers pose a problem for farmers as a weed in domesticated sunflower crops. These already weedy plants could cause even more damage if a gene ...University of Toronto professor finds key protein in fight against plant disease
...tion in Ardmore, Okla., studied a mutant strain of weed with abnormal DIR1 that does not develop SAR when exposed to a certain bacterial disease. "Our studies indicate that the normal protein, DIR1, is required to either make or move the warning signal around the plant," she says....One gene, two important proteins
...ted 30,000 genes - fives times more than a mustard weed plant - the fact that many genes code for more than just one protein assumed greater importance. Such protein variations, researchers reasoned, must play an even larger role in contributing to the remarkable complexity of human beings. This notion ha...Plant compound kills brain tumor cells
A chemical isolated from a weed that grows in mountain meadows in the western United States kills the cells of an aggressive brain cancer that affects some children. The compound, cyclopamine, blocks a signaling pathway that appears to be important for the survival of medulloblasto...Genetically modified crops may pass helpful traits to weeds, study finds
... unknown effects, like whether or not the weed could spread at a faster rate." Adding a transgene to a plant's DNA could potentially weaken that plant's ability to reproduce. To test the effect of the transgene on t...Ecologist's book on introduced species' destructiveness
...ves are non-native down under. Paterson's curse, a weed that invaded Australian pastures, sickens sheep by... of northern South Australia, the damaging pasture weed is considered such a useful fodder, when handled properly, that cattlemen call it "salvation Jane." ...New witchweed-fighting method, presented by CIMMYT and Weizmann Institute scientist
...m is Striga hermonthica, or witchweed, a parasitic weed that ravages grain crops in several parts of the worldparticularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where the weed infests approximately 20 to 40 million hectares of farmland cultivated by poor farmers and is respon...UC Riverside scientists report molecular switch assists plant survival in floods
...aper. "In our study we focused on the thale cress weed and detected a molecular switch in many of the roo...t the molecular switch we found in the thale cress weed is present in most plants. But is the switch working the same way in all of them? We are looking in...Invading species have harder time cracking diverse plant communities
...wding in the neighborhood, the smaller the invader weed size. To further examine the role of spatial crowding, the team chose 100 point locations at random in each plot, counted the resident plants in the 10-centimeter neighborhoods of the points and figured the average for each plot. They found that inv...