Science Rendue Possible

Canavan, S., D. M. Richardson, J. J. Le Roux, S. A. Kelchner, and J. R. U. Wilson. 2021. The status of alien bamboos in South Africa. South African Journal of Botany 138: 33–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sajb.2020.11.027

The growing interest in commercial cultivation of bamboos (Poaceae subfamily Bambusoideae) has led to the introduction of new alien species into South Africa. The rate at which bamboos are being planted in South Africa is a cause for concern because of the impacts of bamboo invasions in other parts …

Zanatta, F., R. Engler, F. Collart, O. Broennimann, R. G. Mateo, B. Papp, J. Muñoz, et al. 2020. Bryophytes are predicted to lag behind future climate change despite their high dispersal capacities. Nature Communications 11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19410-8

The extent to which species can balance out the loss of suitable habitats due to climate warming by shifting their ranges is an area of controversy. Here, we assess whether highly efficient wind-dispersed organisms like bryophytes can keep-up with projected shifts in their areas of suitable climate.…

Magri, D., I. Parra, F. Di Rita, J. Ni, K. Shichi, and J. R. P. Worth. 2020. Linking worldwide past and present conifer vulnerability. Quaternary Science Reviews 250: 106640. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106640

Inventories of species recently extinct or threatened with extinction may be found in global databases. However, despite the large number of published fossil based-studies, specific databases on the vulnerability of species in the past are not available. We compiled a worldwide database of published…

Yi, S., C.-P. Jun, K. Jo, H. Lee, M.-S. Kim, S. D. Lee, X. Cao, and J. Lim. 2020. Asynchronous multi-decadal time-scale series of biotic and abiotic responses to precipitation during the last 1300 years. Scientific Reports 10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74994-x

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Chase, B. M., A. Boom, A. S. Carr, M. Chevalier, L. J. Quick, G. A. Verboom, and P. J. Reimer. 2019. Extreme hydroclimate response gradients within the western Cape Floristic region of South Africa since the Last Glacial Maximum. Quaternary Science Reviews 219: 297–307. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.07.006

The Cape Floristic Region (CFR) is one of the world's major biodiversity hotspots, and much work has gone into identifying the drivers of this diversity. Considered regionally in the context of Quaternary climate change, climate stability is generally accepted as being one of the major factors promo…

Collins, C., E. Asouti, M. Grove, C. Kabukcu, L. Bradley, and R. Chiverrell. 2018. Understanding resource choice at the transition from foraging to farming: An application of palaeodistribution modelling to the Neolithic of the Konya Plain, south-central Anatolia, Turkey. Journal of Archaeological Science 96: 57–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2018.02.003

The role of the environment in shaping agricultural origins is still not fully understood, despite a century of debate on this topic. Comparison of the expected prevalence of a resource in the landscape with actual archaeological presence of the same resource can provide a metric for assessing resou…

Cross, A. T., T. A. Krueger, P. M. Gonella, A. S. Robinson, and A. S. Fleischmann. 2020. Conservation of carnivorous plants in the age of extinction. Global Ecology and Conservation 24: e01272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e01272

Carnivorous plants (CPs)—those possessing specific strategies to attract, capture and kill animal prey and obtain nutrition through the absorption of their biomass—are harbingers of anthropogenic degradation and destruction of ecosystems. CPs exhibit highly specialised and often very sensitive ecolo…

Brightly, W. H., S. E. Hartley, C. P. Osborne, K. J. Simpson, and C. A. E. Strömberg. 2020. High silicon concentrations in grasses are linked to environmental conditions and not associated with C 4 photosynthesis. Global Change Biology 26: 7128–7143. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15343

The uptake and deposition of silicon (Si) as silica phytoliths is common among land plants and is associated with a variety of functions. Among these, herbivore defense has received significant attention, particularly with regards to grasses and grasslands. Grasses are well known for their high sili…

Chevalier, M., B. M. Chase, L. J. Quick, L. M. Dupont, and T. C. Johnson. 2020. Temperature change in subtropical southeastern Africa during the past 790,000 yr. Geology 49: 71–75. https://doi.org/10.1130/G47841.1

Across the glacial-interglacial cycles of the late Pleistocene (~700 k.y.), temperature variability at low latitudes is often considered to have been negligible compared to changes in precipitation. However, a paucity of quantified temperature records makes this difficult to reliably assess. In this…

de Jesús Hernández-Hernández, M., J. A. Cruz, and C. Castañeda-Posadas. 2020. Paleoclimatic and vegetation reconstruction of the miocene southern Mexico using fossil flowers. Journal of South American Earth Sciences 104: 102827. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsames.2020.102827

Concern about the course of the current environmental problems has raised interest in investigating the different scenarios that have taken place in our planet throughout time. To that end, different methodologies have been employed in order to determine the different variables that compose the envi…