Envisaging a global infrastructure to exploit the potential of digitised collections.

Tens of millions of images from biological collections have become available online over the last two decades. In parallel, there has been a dramatic increase in the capabilities of image analysis technologies, especially those involving machine learning and computer vision. While image analysis has become mainstream in consumer applications, it is still used only on an artisanal basis in the biological collections community, largely because the image corpora are dispersed.

Cell wall polysaccharide and glycoprotein content tracks growth-form diversity and an aridity gradient in the leaf-succulent genus Crassula.

Cell wall traits are believed to be a key component of the succulent syndrome, an adaptive syndrome to drought, yet the variability of such traits remains largely unknown. In this study, we surveyed the leaf polysaccharide and glycoprotein composition in a wide sampling of Crassula species that occur naturally along an aridity gradient in southern Africa, and we interpreted its adaptive significance in relation to growth form and arid adaptation. To study the glycomic diversity, we sampled leaf material from 56 Crassula taxa and performed comprehensive microarray polymer profiling to obtain the relative content of cell wall polysaccharides and glycoproteins.

Are cell wall traits a component of the succulent syndrome?

Succulence is an adaptation to low water availability characterised by the presence of water-storage tissues that alleviate water stress under low water availability. The succulent syndrome has evolved convergently in over 80 plant families and is associated with anatomical, physiological and biochemical traits. Despite the alleged importance of cell wall traits in drought responses, their significance in the succulent syndrome has long been overlooked.

Madagascar's extraordinary biodiversity: Threats and opportunities.

Madagascar's unique biota is heavily affected by human activity and is under intense threat. Here, we review the current state of knowledge on the conservation status of Madagascar's terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity by presenting data and analyses on documented and predicted species-level conservation statuses, the most prevalent and relevant threats, ex situ collections and programs, and the coverage and comprehensiveness of protected areas. The existing terrestrial protected area network in Madagascar covers 10.

Travel Tales of a Worldwide Weed: Genomic Signatures of L. Reveal Distinct Genotypic Groups With Links to Colonial Trade Routes.

Retracing pathways of historical species introductions is fundamental to understanding the factors involved in the successful colonization and spread, centuries after a species' establishment in an introduced range. Numerous plants have been introduced to regions outside their native ranges both intentionally and accidentally by European voyagers and early colonists making transoceanic journeys; however, records are scarce to document this. We use genotyping-by-sequencing and genotype-likelihood methods on the selfing, global weed, , collected from 50 populations worldwide to investigate how patterns of genomic diversity are distributed among populations of this global weed.

Elastic and collapsible: current understanding of cell walls in succulent plants.

Succulent plants represent a large functional group of drought-resistant plants that store water in specialized tissues. Several co-adaptive traits accompany this water-storage capacity to constitute the succulent syndrome. A widely reported anatomical adaptation of cell walls in succulent tissues allows them to fold in a regular fashion during extended drought, thus preventing irreversible damage and permitting reversible volume changes.

A customised target capture sequencing tool for molecular identification of Aloe vera and relatives.

Plant molecular identification studies have, until recently, been limited to the use of highly conserved markers from plastid and other organellar genomes, compromising resolution in highly diverse plant clades. Due to their higher evolutionary rates and reduced paralogy, low-copy nuclear genes overcome this limitation but are difficult to sequence with conventional methods and require high-quality input DNA. Aloe vera and its relatives in the Alooideae clade (Asphodelaceae, subfamily Asphodeloideae) are of economic interest for food and health products and have horticultural value.

Evidence linking life-form to a major shift in diversification rate in Crassula.

Premise: Plants have evolved different ecological strategies in response to environmental challenges, and a higher lability of such strategies is more common in plant groups that adapt to various niches. Crassula (Crassulaceae), occurring in varied mesic to xeric habitats, exhibits a remarkable diversity of life-forms. However, whether any particular life-form trait has shaped species diversification in Crassula has remained unexplored.

, a new succulent species in Kenya from the group in Euphorbiasect.Monadenium (Euphorbiaceae).

, a succulent new species of the group in Euphorbiaceae from Makueni County, Kenya, is described and illustrated. Morphologically, it is most similar to , but differs mainly by its shrubby habit (up to 4 m), abaxial leaves surfaces with densely stellate hairs, 2-4-forked cymes, smaller bracts (ca. 2.

Plastome Evolution in the Hyperdiverse Genus (Euphorbiaceae) Using Phylogenomic and Comparative Analyses: Large-Scale Expansion and Contraction of the Inverted Repeat Region.

With 2,000 species, is one of the largest angiosperm genera, yet a lack of chloroplast genome (plastome) resources impedes a better understanding of its evolution. In this study, we assembled and annotated 28 plastomes from Euphorbiaceae, of which 15 were newly sequenced. Phylogenomic and comparative analyses of 22 plastome sequences from all four recognized subgenera within revealed that plastome length in is labile, presenting a range of variation 42 kb.

Botanical Monography in the Anthropocene.

Unprecedented changes in the Earth's biota are prompting urgent efforts to describe and conserve plant diversity. For centuries, botanical monographs - comprehensive systematic treatments of a family or genus - have been the gold standard for disseminating scientific information to accelerate research. The lack of a monograph compounds the risk that undiscovered species become extinct before they can be studied and conserved.

Museomics Clarifies the Classification of (Asphodelaceae), the Iconic African Tree Aloes.

Arborescent succulent plants are regarded as keystone and indicator species in desert ecosystems due to their large stature and long lifespans. Tree aloes, the genus , are icons of the southern African deserts yet have proved elusive subjects due to the difficulty of obtaining material of known provenance for comparative study. Consequently, evolutionary relationships among representatives of the unusual arborescent life form have remained unclear until now.

Assessing Specialized Metabolite Diversity in the Cosmopolitan Plant Genus L.

Coevolutionary theory suggests that an arms race between plants and herbivores yields increased plant specialized metabolite diversity and the geographic mosaic theory of coevolution predicts that coevolutionary interactions vary across geographic scales. Consequently, plant specialized metabolite diversity is expected to be highest in coevolutionary hotspots, geographic regions, which exhibit strong reciprocal selection on the interacting species. Despite being well-established theoretical frameworks, technical limitations have precluded rigorous hypothesis testing.

Detection of Seasonal Variation in Polysaccharides Using Carbohydrate Detecting Microarrays.

gel is a globally popular natural product used for the treatment of skin conditions. Its useful properties are attributed to the presence of bioactive polysaccharides. Nearly 25% of the 600 species in the genus are used locally in traditional medicine, indicating that the bioactive components in may be common across the genus .

Dynamics of intracellular mannan and cell wall folding in the drought responses of succulent Aloe species.

Plants have evolved a multitude of adaptations to survive extreme conditions. Succulent plants have the capacity to tolerate periodically dry environments, due to their ability to retain water in a specialized tissue, termed hydrenchyma. Cell wall polysaccharides are important components of water storage in hydrenchyma cells.

A phylogenetic road map to antimalarial Artemisia species.

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: The discovery of the antimalarial agent artemisinin is considered one of the most significant success stories of ethnopharmacological research in recent times. The isolation of artemisinin was inspired by the use of Artemisia annua in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2015. Antimalarial activity has since been demonstrated for a range of other Artemisia species, suggesting that the genus could provide alternative sources of antimalarial treatments.

Analyses of Polysaccharides Using Carbohydrate Microarray Profiling.

As the popularity of extracts continues to rise, a desire to fully understand the individual polymer components of the leaf mesophyll, their relation to one another, and the effects they have on the human body are increasing. Polysaccharides present in the leaf mesophyll have been identified as the components responsible for the biological activities of and they have been widely studied in the past decades. However, the commonly used methods do not provide the desired platform to conduct large comparative studies of polysaccharide compositions, as most of them require a complete or near-complete fractionation of the polymers.

Knowledge-Sharing Networks in Hunter-Gatherers and the Evolution of Cumulative Culture.

Humans possess the unique ability for cumulative culture [1, 2]. It has been argued that hunter-gatherer's complex social structure [3-9] has facilitated the evolution of cumulative culture by allowing information exchange among large pools of individuals [10-13]. However, empirical evidence for the interaction between social structure and cultural transmission is scant [14].