Highlights of recent botanical research

For those of you who are not research botanists, i.e., most of you, here's a link to some editor-selected articles from the latest issue of the American Journal of Botany.  One of the things that botanists don't do is talk about their research enough in terms accessible to non-specialists, and these highlights are an attempt to describe these brand new scientific publications of botanical research in more general language than used when professional botanists communicate with each other.  TPP hopes you like seeing how diverse the field of botany is, how many different ideas and topics are being researched, and all the different places this research is being done.  TPP would also like to point out that ~41% of the authors are women (as best this author could determine from the names) demonstrating that the field of botany has a high proportion of females, one of the highest if not the highest in all of the sciences.  The diverse authorship also shows you how collaborative and international science has become, especially botany.  Bonus: here's the link to the cover picture of this issue and its legend.  Our general term for such organisms was scaly, (and bristly), green monads (single-celled organisms with scales for a cell wall). Heterokont refers to having two unlike flagella and this trait helps define a large, diverse lineage of organisms (some might call it a kingdom) that includes the brown algae (kelps and rockweeds among others) and this synurophyte.  

Research tidbits - AJB March 2015

The American Journal of Botany is a publication of the Botanical Society of America. Highlights of several interesting articles is a new feature of each month's volume; this is vol. 102 (3).  Mostly these are brief, non-technical descriptions of a study and they include a nice image. They give you some idea of the types of research, the diversity of scientific interests, and the kinds of questions that interest botanists these days.  You can also access the cover illustration and its legend from this link. Very much bragging rights to get the front cover.  Let TPP know if this is a feature you like or if there are any access problems.