Tambarikosy

This post was originally published under the title "Grass Roots Biology" in the December 2015 issue of  The Biologist , the Royal Society of Biology's magazine. If you're a member of the RSB you can also view the article on their website here . The images are not those used by the RSB nor are they mine, the copyright belongs to their credited owners and most are from ARKive.org. Neptune grass ( Posidonia oceanica ) meadow in the Mediterranean © M. San Felix, from  l ivescience.com Grass Roots Biology Home to myriad species and acting as massive carbon sinks, seagrass meadows are key marine habitats – but they are disappearing fast, reports Xaali O'Reilly Berkeley The Biologist  62(6) p16-19 Seagrasses are a group of flowering plants adapted to live in salt water. They grow, flower and pollinate completely submerged in estuaries and along shallow coastal waters around the globe, both in temperate and tropical environments. Although they physi...

Plants are not always as static as they seem. While most individual plants stay relatively still compared to most animals (no, not all), plant populations can shift laterally over time in an analogous way to animal populations. The main difference is the rooted nature of plants means that they move slowly, across generations. The cause of this is usually environmental: the species is shifting as the climate changes or as competition or another form of pressure encroaches it. Richard Brusca and colleagues have published the results of a plant survey in Arizona which shows that species distributions have changed in the last 50 years. Since a survey carried out by Robert Whittaker in 1963, the vegetation on an area of the Catalina Mountains has crept its way higher up the mountain. Given the difference requirements and tolerance range of different plant species, the entire vegetation does not shift simultaneously or equally; this means that community composition has changed as some plan...