Sphagnum splendens  is a bladmossart described by Maass 1967. Sphagnum splendens included in the genus Sphagnum moss , and family Sphagnaceae . No subspecies are listed in the Catalog of Life .

Sphagnum (Sphagnum splendens)

Agriculture can lead to major disturbances to ecological systems, and the recovery of formally used agricultural land can often take a long period of time. However, according to a new study published in the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.14063">Journal of Ecology</a>, without any active <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/intense-nature-restoration-needed-to-address-the-climate-crisis/">restoration</a> efforts, this recovery can take an exceedingly long time and will frequently be incomplete. These findings shed new light on the recovery process at different scales in former agricultural sites, and identify specific restoration interventions which could assist in the recovery of plant diversity.



The scientists measured the recovery of plant diversity and species composition at 17 temperate grasslands in Minnesota that were previously ploughed and used for agricultural practices. Some of these fields were abandoned between 1927 and 2015 so that natural succession and recovery of the vegetation followed. However, by comparing these abandoned places with sites that were never ploughed, the experts found that the former had significant difficulties in returning to their pre-agricultural state.



“What we wanted to know was how fast and how completely disturbed grasslands can regain their biodiversity if they are left to recover. Understanding that recovery process can give us insights into how we can assist and speed it up using restoration,” said study lead author Emma Ladouceur, an ecologist and conservation biologist at the <a href="https://www.idiv.de/en/index.html">German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research</a> (iDiv).



The analysis revealed that, even after 80 years, the abandoned fields had not managed to recover fully on their own, and although the types of plant species initially present at the sites recovered over time, this process remained incomplete. At the beginning of the recovery process, the fields were colonized by species unique to old sites (such as weeds and other disturbance-tolerant species), followed by many species characteristic of the never-disturbed sites. Yet, across the whole study, there were 63 native species that were unique to the never-ploughed sites, while the recovering old fields had a larger number of introduced grasses and weeds.



These findings suggest that active restoration efforts are needed to help these ecosystems better recover. “By looking closely at the recovery of species composition at different scales, we can get a better idea of what species could be targeted in restoration treatments, and how we could help these systems recover best,” explained study co-author Stan Harpole, an expert in Biodiversity at iDiv.



“Specific restoration measures could include the seeding or planting of species that we know are not part of the composition of recovering fields, combined with the management of exotic species to reduce competition with native species,” concluded Ladoucer.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer



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Plant diversity may never fully recover from agriculture

Agriculture can lead to major disturbances to ecological systems, and...

Sunflower heads consist of hundreds of tiny florets. Due to the way sunflowers grow, the youngest florets are in the center of the flower face and the most mature one at the edges, forming a spiral pattern from the center to the edge.&nbsp;



Now, a team of scientists led by the <a href="https://www.ucdavis.edu/">University of California, Davis</a> has found that an internal circadian clock controls these distinctive concentric rings of flowering in sunflowers in order to maximize visits from pollinators.



An individual sunflower floret blooms over a couple of days. While on the first day it opens the male part of the flower that presents pollen, on the second day the female stigma unfolds to receive pollen. These florets coordinate to open in concentric rings starting from the edge and moving inwards on successive days, with a ring of female flowers always located outside the pollen-bearing male flowers.&nbsp;



Pollinators such as bees usually land on the ray petals around a sunflower head and walk toward the center, picking up pollen while walking over the female florets, then carrying it to a different flower head.



The internal circadian clock of plants or animals run on cycles of about 24 hours, allowing different genes to be activated at different times of the day. While natural day/night cycles keep this clock synchronized to actual day time, changes in the length of day light or darkness can reset the clock.



To understand the role internal circadian clock plays in turning the spiral pattern of florets into concentric rings of flowering, the scientists took time-lapse videos of sunflowers grown in different light/dark or temperature conditions.&nbsp;



The videos revealed that the plants’ circadian clocks control the opening of florets and that, when the clock was disrupted by exposing growing plants to continuous light, florets did not open in concentric rings, but only according to age, starting at the edge and moving toward the center in a continuous gradient. When plants that had matured with a disrupted clock were moved outside, they attracted significantly fewer pollinators than normal sunflowers.



“We think that being able to coordinate in this way makes them a better target for bees,” said study senior author Stacey Harmer, a professor of Plant Biology at UC Davis. “It’s a strategy to attract as many insects as possible.”



As the climate continues to change, it will become increasingly important to make pollination as efficient as possible in crops that require it. Better understanding how circadian clocks and environmental pressures affect flowering can help breeders develop cultivars that flower at the optimal times of day to attract more pollinators.



The study is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.80984">eLife</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer



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Sunflowers use an internal clock to bloom at optimal times

Sunflower heads consist of hundreds of tiny florets. Due to...

Symbiotic relationships are everywhere in nature. Fungi enhance water and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/water-quality-threatened-by-nutrient-pollution-in-40-u-s-states/">nutrient</a> absorption for plants by feeding on their roots. Ants find food and shelter in tree structures, while insects defend the trees from being eaten. However, not all symbiotic relationships are created equal.&nbsp;



Some interactions are specific, where one host pairs off with only one other species. Others are general and flexible. Specific relationships have advantages, allowing the two species to reap mutual benefits and co-evolve. But this type of partnership can also come with a cost, where one partner exploits the other and takes more than it offers in return.



To investigate the evolutionary dynamics of specialization, researchers at the <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/">University of Pennsylvania</a> developed a model framework using game theory.



“Each interaction has very different dynamics,” said study senior author Erol Akçay. “Generalists may evolve to work better with more partners, specialists may be specializing to be more cooperative, and other specialists may be specializing to exploit better. Ours is the first study that gets at that dialectical nature of specialization, not just looking at specialization versus generalization.”



As an undergraduate student, Chris Carlson became interested in understanding why variations in generalism and specialism might persist.&nbsp;



Working with Akçay and Bryce Morsky, a model was developed that imagines the interactions of designated “hosts” with either general or specialized preferences and “symbionts” that provide and receive different benefits and costs from their interactions with various hosts.



The experts found that a cooperative partnering strategy, where both parties benefit, could persist in populations with one specialized host and a corresponding specialized symbiont. Depending on the benefits or payoffs, a generalist partnering strategy could also persist.



On the other hand, in partnerships where the host increased benefits while the symbiont reaped less, a more dynamic outcome arose. Different hosts and symbionts rise and fall in the population over time. Generalists were driven to extinction if the payoff was lower than that of being a specialist.&nbsp;



The researchers applied a spatial layer to their models to reflect that symbiotic relationships require that the two species involved encounter one another in space.



“Neighbors are going to be more likely to interact with neighbors, so who your neighbor is and how they interact can affect the outcome,” said Morsky



The team found that cooperative specialists could develop “patches” of dominance if they could move over short distances. If the payoff was high enough, generalists could persist around the periphery of these patches. If, however, hosts and symbionts could move over greater distances, just one host-symbiont pair could completely dominate a space.



“Let’s say you have a coral reef with different types of coral and different types of algae,” said Akçay. “If a host is a cooperative specialist, and the symbiont it specializes on gets fixed, the host does better, and therefore those hosts may expand. That creates specific spatial patterns that we were able to track.”



An overall takeaway is that cooperative specialization appears to be a valuable strategy, but it comes with risks. A host’s cooperating partner could go extinct, leaving the host without a symbiont.



The researchers hope their work lends insight into the variety of patterns of mutualisms that exist in nature and contribute to biodiversity.



“When people discuss specialization, this dualism is always in the background,” said Akçay. “This work helps bring it out and clarifies the tensions that exist between mutualisms.”



The research is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpac056">Evolution</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:katherinebucko@gmail.com">Katherine Bucko</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer



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How do symbiotic relationships evolve between species?

Symbiotic relationships are everywhere in nature. Fungi enhance water and...

A new study led by the <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/index.aspx">University of Birmingham</a> has found that <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/ancient-trees-are-vital-to-forest-survival/">trees</a> living in conditions where carbon dioxide has been artificially elevated are likely to become more efficient in conserving water. The experts discovered that when trees are exposed to elevated levels of CO2, they increase their water use efficiency through higher carbon uptake. At the same time, the trees conserve water by adjusting the opening and closing of pores on their leaves (called “stomata”).&nbsp;



The findings will contribute to modeling and predicting plant behavior under the increased CO2 conditions that are expected to be the norm by mid-century.



Plants worldwide are characterized by a trade-off between carbon gain and water loss, as a result of their structure. While stomata open and close to allow plants to absorb CO2 for their growth, as the stomata open, water is leaving the plant through a process called “transpiration.” This means that plants must compromise between absorbing as much CO2 as possible while minimizing water loss.



The scientists analyzed data on long-term elevated CO2 experiments in trees over the past two decades, spanning 16 sites worldwide. The investigation revealed that the efficiency of water use in the trees’ leaves increased by 85 percent for a doubling of CO2 (the expected rise by 2050). Then, they used this data to compute the so-called “g1 number,” which expresses the water cost of carbon gain for each tree type, and discovered that this number did not in fact change under elevated CO2 conditions.



“The models we use to predict the responses of trees to future atmospheric CO2 levels still contain lots of uncertainties – and the behavior of stomata is one of these,” explained study lead author Anna Gardner, an expert in Tropical Tree Ecophysiology at Birmingham. 



“In elevated CO2 we might expect water consumption to reduce because stomata are taking in CO2 at a higher concentration so do not have to be open as long. But actually, we found the increased CO2 also caused an increase in photosynthesis – and this behavior was a stronger driver to increase water use efficiency. In effect, under higher CO2, the trees are getting more carbon gain for each ‘buck’ of water spent.”



“One reason trees are so important to ecosystems is because they store carbon – but water is also a valuable resource, so we need to find ways to accurately calculate the carbon cost of that water. All this data helps us build a more accurate picture of the likely behavior of these resources in the future,” she concluded.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.18618">New Phytologist</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer



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Trees respond to rising CO2 levels by conserving water

A new study led by the University of Birmingham has...

View,Of,The,Skyscrapers,Of,Manhattan,Through,The,Trees,On

According to a new study led by the <a href="https://www.isglobal.org/en">Barcelona Institute for Global Health</a> (ISGlobal), over four percent of deaths in cities during the summer months are caused by the formation of “<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/trees-are-the-best-option-to-reduce-the-urban-heat-island-effect/">urban heat islands</a>,” where cities experience higher temperatures than surrounding areas due to less vegetation, larger population density, and the presence of impermeable surfaces for buildings and roads, including asphalt. By analyzing data from 93 European cities (with a total of 57 million inhabitants), the experts determined that one third of these deaths could be prevented by reaching a tree cover of 30 percent.



Exposure to extreme heat has been associated with cardiorespiratory diseases, a higher number of hospital admissions, and premature deaths. While these problems are mainly caused by heatwaves, they also occur with moderately high temperatures in the summer. Due to the formation of urban heat islands, cities are especially vulnerable to higher temperatures, facing spikes in morbidity and mortality during summer worldwide.&nbsp;



“Predictions based on current emissions reveal that heat-related illness and death will become a bigger burden to our health services over the next decades,” warned study lead author Tamara Iungman, a biologist at ISGlobal.&nbsp;



The scientists found that, from June to August 2015, cities were on average 1.5C warmer than the surrounding countryside, a phenomenon leading to 6,700 premature deaths in the 93 cities that were examined (4.3 percent of total mortality during the summer months and 1.8 percent of year-round mortality). Cities with the highest excess heat-mortality rates were in Eastern and Southern Europe. However, projections revealed that one third of these deaths (2,644) could have been prevented by increasing tree cover by 30 percent.



These findings highlight the major benefit of planting more trees in cities, together with other interventions such as green roofs.&nbsp;



“Our results also show the need to preserve and maintain the trees that we already have because they are a valuable resource and it takes a long time to grow new trees. It is not only about increasing trees in the city, it is also about how they are distributed,” added study senior author Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, the director of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.isglobal.org/urban-planning">Urban Planning, Environment and Health</a>&nbsp;Initiative at ISGlobal.&nbsp;



“Vulnerability to heat changes from city to city depending on several factors. Understanding the benefits of policies such as increasing tree cover can help inform action to reduce risks and prevent avoidable deaths, especially with climate change,” concluded co-author&nbsp;Antonio Gasparrini, a professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene &amp; Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)02585-5">The Lancet</a>.&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer



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Increased tree cover could prevent heat-related deaths in cities

According to a new study led by the Barcelona Institute...

A new study led by the <a href="https://www.ncsu.edu/">North Carolina State University</a> has found that, under severe global warming scenarios, the inventory of trees used for timber in the continental United States may decline by up to 23 percent by the end of the century. The largest losses are expected to occur in two of the leading timber regions in the country, both located in the South. While these findings show relatively modest impacts on forest product prices, they suggest larger impacts in terms of carbon storage in U.S. <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/diverse-forests-are-more-resilient-and-productive/">forests</a>.



“We already see some inventory decline at baseline in our analysis, but relative to that, you could lose, additionally, as much as 23 percent of the U.S. forest inventory,” said study lead author Justin Baker, an associate professor of Forestry and Environmental Resources at NC State. “That’s a pretty dramatic change in standing forests.”



The scientists used computer modeling to estimate how 94 tree species will grow under six climate change scenarios, while also considering the impact of two different economic scenarios on demand growth for forestry products.



“Many past studies show a pretty optimistic picture for forests under climate change because they see a big boost in forest growth from additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” Baker explained. “The effect that carbon dioxide has on photosynthesis in some of those models tends to outweigh the losses you see from precipitation and temperature induced changes in forest productivity and tree mortality. We have a model that is specific to individual tree species, and that allows us to better understand how climate factors influence growth rates and mortality.”



The analysis revealed that in several regions trees would grow more slowly and die faster in higher temperatures, particularly in Southeast and South-Central U.S. These regions may see tree inventories shrink by as much as 40 percent by 2095 compared to a baseline scenario. However, the researchers projected gains in tree supplies in the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Southwest regions, which will be driven by higher death rates of certain trees, leading to larger harvests initially, and followed by the growth of more heat-tolerant species (such as juniper trees). Overall, the total projected losses of U.S. tree inventory will likely range between three and 23 percent, with the value of lost carbon spiking up to $5.5 billion per year.



“We saw that the markets could be more resilient than the forests themselves. Your market effects may seem modest in terms of the effect it has on the consumers and producers, but those impacts are small compared to the carbon sequestration value that forests provide on an annual basis,” Baker warned.



“We don’t know a lot about how disturbance-related mortality or loss in tree productivity is going to bear out across the landscape as temperatures get warmer. We did our best to address a couple pieces of the puzzle with temperature and precipitation changes, and interactions between climate and market demand, but a lot more work needs to be done to get a good handle on climate change and forestry,” he concluded.



The study is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2022.102898">Forest Policy and Economics</a>. &nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer



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Forest inventory will be greatly reduced by climate change

A new study led by the North Carolina State University...

At a time when global warming is making many regions of our planet hotter and drier, <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/study-reveals-that-deserts-breathe/">deserts</a> are relatively new biomes that have grown substantially over the past 30 million years, with vast arid areas like those covering much of North America emerging only during the past five to seven million years. Thus, a better understanding of how several species of plants have invaded these harsh environments and were able to survive could help predict how ecosystems will fare in a drier, hotter future.



According to a new study led by the <a href="https://www.berkeley.edu/">University of California, Berkeley</a>, plants that invaded deserts millions of years ago, such as rock daisies, had already developed adaptations to deal with heat and water stress before. These plants adapted while living on exposed rock outcroppings within older, moist areas or even tropical forests, which made it easier for them to invade expanding deserts.



“If you think about aridity only as a stimulus to plant evolution, then in many cases people could say these plants are survivors, they are adaptable, and they will be fine. They will take advantage of these new conditions, and they will thrive,” said study lead author Isaac Lichter-Marck, plant taxonomist, biogeographer, and evolutionary ecologist at UC Berkeley.



However, the history of rock daisies shows that, when deserts emerged, “plants that had the necessary preadaptations to take advantage of new conditions were the ones that thrived. Adding more aridification to the system doesn’t necessarily mean more rapid adaptive evolution will occur. There’s a limited source of lineages that can take advantage of new levels of aridity, and that is important for understanding the effect of climate change on biodiversity.”



By collecting and analyzing hundreds of rock daisy specimens from the deserts of Arizona, California, Texas, and Mexico, and comparing them to fossilized daisies, the scientists managed to develop a timeline of the evolution of these plants’ characteristics as they eventually invaded expanded deserts. The investigation revealed that most rock daisies – particularly the genus&nbsp;Laphamia, which was the first to move into deserts — had already adapted to the multiple stresses of heat, sun, aridity, and wind by growing on cliffs before invading deserts.



“This is a clear empirical demonstration of what was originally Axelrod’s hypothesis - of a desert plant group originating in dry microclimates prior to the widespread emergence of desert habitats. What this means is that the strategies for drought tolerance that are so characteristic of desert vegetation might not actually represent responses to the dry conditions found in deserts. Instead, they could be traits that evolved earlier in association with much older and more stable dry microclimates, such as rock outcrops in tropical settings,” Lichter-Marck concluded.



The study is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2214729120">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a>.



Image Credit: Isaac Lichter-Marck



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer



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Can plants adapt to rapid warming and drought?

At a time when global warming is making many regions...

Sphagnum

Description

Taxonomic tree: