Senecio changii (Asteraceae: Senecioneae), a New Species from Sichuan, China

The diverse plant life on Earth—consisting of nearly 400,000 species—can be divided into three broad categories based on biological characteristics: nonvascular, seedless vascular, and seed plants.

Asexual reproduction allows plants to reproduce without growing flowers, attracting pollinators, or dispersing seeds. Offspring are genetically identical to the parent and produced without the fusion of male and female gametes.

Natural selection influences the frequencies of particular alleles and phenotypes within populations in several different ways. Primarily, natural selection can be directional, stabilizing, or disruptive. Directional selection favors one extreme trait and shifts the population towards that phenotype while selecting against individuals displaying alternate traits. Stabilizing selection favors an intermediate trait with a narrow range of variation. Deviation from the optimal phenotype towards an...

The cultivation of environmental microorganisms has long been hindered by the inability to replicate complex native conditions in vitro. The isolation chip (iChip) addresses this limitation by facilitating the growth of previously uncultivable microorganisms through in situ incubation. Designed for high-throughput microbial cultivation, the iChip comprises hundreds of microchambers, each capable of housing a single microbial cell. These microchambers are loaded with a mixture of molten agar and...

Salt stress—which can be triggered by high salt concentrations in a plant’s environment—can significantly affect plant growth and crop production by influencing photosynthesis and the absorption of water and nutrients.

Seedless Vascular Plants Were the First Tall Plants on Earth