Botanical Science Research Articles

Conceptualizing agency: Folkpsychological and folkcommunicative perspectives on plants

The present research addresses cultural variation in concepts of agency. Across two experiments, we investigate how Indigenous Ngöbe of Panama and US college students interpret and make inferences about nonhuman agency, focusing on plants as a critical test case. In Experiment 1, participants predicted goal-directed actions for plants and other nonhuman kinds and judged their capacities for intentional agency. Goal-directed action is pervasive among living kinds and as such we expected cultural agreement on these predictions. However, we expected that interpretation of the capacities involved would differ based on cultural folktheories. As expected, Ngöbe and US participants both inferred that plants would engage in goal-directed action but Ngöbe were more likely to attribute intentional agency capacities to plants. Experiment 2 extends these findings by investigating action predictions and capacity attributions linked to complex forms of plant social agency recently discovered in botanical sciences (communication, kin altruism). We hypothesized that the Ngöbe view of plants as active agents would productively guide inferences for plant social interaction. Indeed, Ngöbe were more likely than US participants to infer that plants can engage in social behaviors and they also attributed more social agency capacities to plants. We consolidate these findings by using bottom-up consensus modeling to show that these cultural differences reflect two distinct conceptual models of agency rather than variations on a single (universal) model. We consider these findings in light of current theories of domain-specificity and animism, and offer an alternative account based on a folktheory of communication that infers agency on the basis of relational interactions rather than having a mind.

Sacred Ecology of Plants

With developments in the botanical sciences regarding signaling and behavior, the idea of plant sensitivity becomes an increasingly real possibility. In conjunction with empirically argued principles of percipience, intelligence, and memory in the plant world, the vegetative soul takes on a new signilcance. Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and other Western commentators delineated between the ensoulment of plants, animals, and humans. They regarded the vegetative soul as the incomplete basis for the emergence of animal and human life. The vegetative soul resonates deeply in the cosmologies of Aboriginal Australian people who regard plants as spiritually imbued participants in creation stories, or the Dreaming. Circumventing a hierarchical typology of ensoulment, the Australian poet Les Murray invokes these diverse notions of soul in his botanical poetry. Shaped by the convergence of Christian beliefs and traditional Australian indigenous conceptions of mora, Murray’s verse positions plants within a sacred ecology as ensouled beings with intelligent capacities proper to their modes of existence.

Postcards from the Field

Increasingly, botanic gardens and arboreta are highlighted as effective partners to conserve plant species diversity and restore natural communities at a time when the need for these activities has become more urgent. Capacity for restoration and conservation at botanic gardens comes directly from staff expertise for horticulture and research. Botanic gardens make good partners for connecting botanical science with conservation practice. They are in a position to communicate information about rare plant species to owners and managers of public and private lands, and they can be instrumental in creating networks for effective conservation action. Several examples from south-eastern United States of America illustrate how this has been put into practice. These examples provide evidence that efforts to expand collaboration between federal agencies, states and non-governmental organisations can lead to effective alliances to conserve plant biodiversity, especially when plants receive a disproportionately low share of resources for conservation.

The pros and cons of being broad: recent and future progress of Nordic Journal of Botany

The pros and cons of being broad: recent and future progress of Nordic Journal of Botany

2nd International Conference on Agricultural and Biological Sciences (ABS 2016)

PrefaceThe 2nd 2016 International Conference on Agricultural and Biological Sciences (ABS 2016) was successfully held from July 23rd to July 26th in Shanghai, China, which is one of the largest urban areas in the world and the showpiece of the booming economy of mainland China.Agriculture is the cultivation and production of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms for food, fiber, and biofuel, medicinal and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. Biological Sciences deals with the study of the many living organisms, which is closely related to agricultural sciences. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization. Promoting scientific and technological progress in the field of agricultural and biological sciences has become the consensus of all the countries in the world. Further challenges come from the climate change caused by global warming, environment pollutions, shortage of water resources and various animal and plant diseases pose new requirements for sustainable agricultural development. ABS conference series was held accordingly to provide a platform for scientists and researchers from all over the world to exchange their researches and new findings in those fields. Based on the success of ABS2015, ABS2016 attracts more than 100 participants from all over the world. With the theme of plant and animal sciences, the key focus of ABS2016 is on the areas of “Botanical Sciences”, “Animal Sciences”, “Soil and Environmental Science” and “Other fields in Agricultural Sciences”. A special session named “Soil and environmental Science” also enriched the content of the Conference.More than 300 papers were submitted to ABS2016, and 82 submitted manuscripts have met the scope of IOP Conference Series on Earth and Environmental Sciences to form this special book. After pre-review on the originality and language, peer review process was arranged by the editorial committee. The editorial board was led by the Guest Editor Professor Mohammad Golabi and Associated Professor Peiyue Li, with support from following editors: Dr. Dionisios Gasparatos, Dr. Zisheng Xing, Dr. Ademir de Oliveira Ferreira, Dr. Elaheh Moussavi Kiassari, Dr. Khaled Ibrahimi, Dr. B. C. Dhananjaya, Hamed Kashi, Maria Regina Gusmao Valerio Menino and Dr. Ankit Garg. The 33 best manuscripts were selected after the pre-review and peer review, and those manuscripts provide some insights in the field of soil and environmental sciences.On behalf of the conference organizers, we would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks to all the reviewers for their tremendous efforts and dedication to the Conference, to all the authors for their trust and contributions to the Conference, as well as all the colleagues from IOP publisher for their support and their endless efforts towards the publication of the proceedings for the Conference.The International Conference on Agricultural and Biological Sciences is convened annually where experts and scholars gather to exchange their newest ideas and experiences in this field, and we believe that with their earnest support and contributions, future ABS Conferences would scale new heights.EditorProf. Mohammad H. Golabi University of Guam, Guam-USA

Laurent Garcin, M.D. F.R.S.: A Forgotten Source for N. L. Burman'sFlora indica(1768)

Abstract. Laurent Garcin (ca. 1681–1751), a Dutch East India Company ship's surgeon, Fellow of the Royal Society and corresponding member of the Academie royale des sciences (Paris), has largely vanished from the annals of botanical and medical science. Yet data presented in this article demonstrate that ca. 1740 he gave some or all of his plant collections from his Asian travels in the 1720s to J. Burman, a correspondent in Amsterdam. Those collections in turn greatly enriched Flora Indica by N. Burman (hereafter Burman fil.) to the tune of 98 specimens. Burman's work is an important historical source for the botany not only of modern-day India, as the title suggests, but also of Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Iran—the “Indies” as they were understood in the eighteenth century. So far only a handful of Garcin's specimens have come to light (G-Burman). These few extant specimens testify to Garcin's collecting zeal and keen eye for materia medica.

Genetics and plant development

There are only three grand theories in biology: the theory of the cell, the theory of the gene, and the theory of evolution. Two of these, the cell and gene theories, originated in the study of plants, with the third resulting in part from botanical considerations as well. Mendel's elucidation of the rules of inheritance was a result of his experiments on peas. The rediscovery of Mendel's work in 1900 was by the botanists de Vries, Correns, and Tschermak. It was only in subsequent years that animals were also shown to have segregation of genetic elements in the exact same manner as had been shown in plants. The story of developmental biology is different – while the development of plants has long been studied, the experimental and genetic approaches to developmental mechanism were developed via experiments on animals, and the importance of genes in development (e.g., Waddington, 1940) and their use for understanding developmental mechanisms came to botanical science much later – as late as the 1980s.

The Plants of Empire: Botanic Gardens, Colonial Power and Botanical Knowledge

ABSTRACTIn this article, the multifaceted relationship between colonial power and scientific knowledge is analysed. The specific focus is on untangling the contested and symbiotic connections between colonialism and the emergence and consolidation of aspects of botanical science. Colonial imperatives and the social consequences of colonial rule in India constituted the context for the idea and project of botanical gardens that facilitated the global transfer of a variety of plants to India. It was in the process of dealing with the problems of the transfer of plants across very diverse ecological and social contexts that natural history was eventually transformed into formal botanical science both in India and in Europe. Particular forms of scientific knowledge and institutions were indispensable for the consolidation of empire even as they facilitated new imperial concerns and projects that constituted the structural context for the development of new forms of scientific knowledge, practices, institutions and power. Without reducing science to nothing more than an appendage of colonial power and imperatives, the significance of empire in the rise of botany as a formal science is analysed in this article.

Botanical gardens and citizen science: An (as yet) under-exploited potential

Participation of citizens to research activities probably began with a “Christmas bird count” in 1900. Citizen science (CS) activities can aim at several purposes: long-term monitoring, environmental education, preservation of traditional ecological knowledge. Citizen scientists can collect data, support scientists in the field, involve decision-makers, plan new research activities, etc. While CS may have critical issues, especially as far as data quality is concerned, it has several relevant advantages as well (reduced costs, production of “big data”, awareness raising, etc.). However, especially in Europe, there is still an under-exploited potential for botanical gardens to act as drivers for CS initiatives.

Characteristics of taxonomic structure of flora in the Middle Urals urban areas (Sverdlovsk Region)

Research in urban floras is a major field of botanical science. By now, flora of many Russian cities has been studied. At the same time the Urals flora of urbanized areas has not practically been the subject of special investigation. This paper is the first to provide a detailed description of the features of the taxonomic structure of the flora of urbanized areas of the Middle Urals within the Sverdlovsk region and to compare it with the parameters of the regional flora of the Sverdlovsk region. Urban floras of 3 cities in the southern part of the Sverdlovsk region have been studied Yekaterinburg, Krasnoufimsk and Kamensk-Ural, which form a latitudinal catena, covering the Urals region, the mountainous part of the Middle Urals and Trans-Urals. It is shown that the flora of the urbanized areas is characterized by a high level of species richness which increases relative to the area of the city. The taxonomic structure of urban floras, compared with the regional flora, is characterized by a reduced participation of spore plants, due to the extremely poor representation of lycopsids. In the flowering plants the proportion of monocots is reduced and, on the contrary, the proportion of bipartite species is increased. The composition of the leading families of urban floras is typical of the boreal floras of the Holarctic floral kingdom, it is distinguished by the lower rank of the Cyperaceae family and by the rise of the Fabaceae family. Generic spectrum of urban floras is marked by the greater participation of thermophilic genera Atriplex and Chenopodium and very limited representation of boreal genera Hieracium and Taraxacum. Species richness of families and genera in urban floras is markedly lower than in regional boreal flora.

Вклад Р. В. Камелина в развитие ботаники в Алтайском госуниверситете

Rudolf Vladimirovich Kamelin’s cooperation with colleagues from Altai State University (Barnaul) in the field of research and teaching activities began in 1992. Thanks to R. V. Kamelin, over the years of his working in high school at the Department of Botany and in the South-Siberian Botanical Garden a botanical research school was established and many qualified botanists were trained. The corresponding member of Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor, Dr., R. V. Kamelin was a scientific advisor of several ASU botanists defended master’s and doctoral theses. Many monographs and learning aids written by Rudolf Vladimirovich were published in Barnaul. He was the mastermind and participant of large-scale expeditions organized by staff of the South-Siberian Botanical Garden in different areas of the Altai Mountains, where the richest herbarium was collected, which became the basis for the subsequent numerous scientific publications The Rudolf Vladimirovich contribution to the development of botanical science in the Altai State University is great and many-sided!

The origins of botanic gardens and their relation to plant science, with special reference to horticultural botany and cultivated plant taxonomy

This paper explores the origin and development of botanic gardens including consideration of the beginnings of plant cultivation and domesticationand the emergence of botanical science. We suggest tha

Using the periodic wavelet descriptor of plant leaf to identify plant species

Plant species identification is one of the most important research branches of botanical science. In this paper, a novel shape descriptor, namely Periodic Wavelet Descriptor (PWD) of plant leaf, is firstly presented. Then based on the PWDs of the leaves of different plant species, we constructed a database of PWDs. At last, a Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) is trained to fulfill the experiment of plant species identification. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm combined the PWD of plant leaf with BPNN is effective with a correct identification rate about 90 %.

150 years of an integrative plant physiology.

In October 1865, Julius Sachs published a monograph entitled Experimental Physiology of Plants, and so initiated a new, quantitative branch of basic and applied botany. In our current post-genomic era the legacy of Sachs is re-emerging as a key discipline of the botanical sciences.

Designing a bespoke App to address Botanical literacy in the undergraduate science curriculum and beyond

At the University of Sydney we are offering a revised botany program within the biology curriculum that has reduced the time dedicated to the study of botany. Given the overall decrease in basic botanical science courses taught at university level and the need to improve the botanical literacy of our future biology graduates and high school teachers, how can we better connect students to the practice of botany and so improve botanical literacy? One solution is to draw on ‘App’, ‘mobile’ technologies to map the campus flora and our aim was to develop a dynamic and interactive geo-locating botany iPhone app, which aligns to the Botany curriculum and offers a unique opportunity for the broader community to view the campus through a botanical lens.

The phycologist Pierre Compère: his contribution to cyanobacterial studies

We are celebrating the 80th birthday of the Belgian phycologist Pierre Compere. This reminds that some research disciplines have birth-like starts, growth and maturation, just like the personalities that become involved and contribute to them. We are referring to Pierre Compere’s work on algae and blue-green algae (as cyanobacteria were called then). Indeed, he was among the few scientists who took these organisms seriously and engaged in the frustrating work with this group of colourful but variable bacteria. As very well described in the biography written by Fabri & Symoens (2000), Pierre Compere was born in 1934 in Aywaille, Belgium, and got a degree in Botanical Sciences at the University of Liege. He had a long and successful career in phycology with a major contribution to systematics and ecology of algae and cyanobacteria. He started his botanical studies in 1959 in Africa, as a part of a survey of flora and vegetation of the lower Congo region, carried out by the National Institute for Agriculture in what was then Belgian Congo. After Congo’s Independence in 1960, Pierre’s work continued within the Belgian Institute for Overseas Scientific Research, which included the elaboration of a large collection of herbarium specimens. This work was published in 1970 as a part of the scientific series of Maps of Soils and Vegetation of Congo (“Cartes des sols et de la vegetation du Congo”) and was awarded the Emile De Wildeman Price of the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium. His phycological career really started in 1963 when Pierre Compere obtained the position for Algology at the National Botanic Garden of Belgium and started a collaboration with Pierre Bourrelly of the Laboratory for Cryptogamic Botany of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. During his career at the Botanic Garden, Pierre has studied the freshwater algal diversity from various regions of the

Integrating botanical science for safer products

Integrating botanical science for safer products

The new drug phenomenon

The new drug phenomenon

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Computer aided identification of the Ficus L. species by the lamina shape

The development of computer aided plant species determination is the urgent task of the botanical science. Identification is often bases on the morphology of the lamina. It is promising to describe the leaf shapes through the harmonic values of elliptic Fourier decomposition, but the effectiveness of this approach requires further verification. Another task is a comparative evaluation of different classification algorithms. The work was conducted on the 2812 leaves images of the 15 Ficus L. species. To solve the described tasks the optimal set of the Fourier decomposition parameters was determined. The best results are achievable by using the classification with 18 Fourier harmonics. Number of reference points on the outline does not affect the result of the models. We compared an identification accuracy of the 30 classification algorithms. Random forest algorithm had the highest classification accuracy – 98%. Combining different prediction algorithms by stacking improves the efficiency of the leaf shapes recognition.