Plants aren't just helpless victims of herbivory. They find ways to fight back against those voracious animals that can ravage them in short order. Plants can produce toxins, spines, thorns, glass crystals in their cells and many other defenses but all of these defenses require a significant allocation of energy. That energy could be spent growing new... Continue Reading →
Long Distance Dispersal via Catastrophic Events
When I give my lecture in class about animal distributions, questions often are raised about how did animals get to some remote islands or even islands that are not that far off from the mainland. Sometimes the answer is that during ice ages the oceans was up to hundreds of meters lower than it is... Continue Reading →