It turns out that the same is likely true for forest trees as well, according to new research from the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC).

"The findings were really quite stunning," says Malcolm Campbell, a biologist and lead author of the study. "People have been talking about a so-called "nursery effect" for a long time."

The size of leaves can vary by a factor of 1,000 across plant species, but until now, the reason why has remained a mystery. A new study by an international team of scientists led by UCLA life scientists goes a long way toward solving it.

In research federally funded by the National Science Foundation, the biologists found that smaller leaves are structurally and physiologically better adapted to dry soil because of their distinct vein systems.

The research will be published in an upcoming print issue of the journal Plant Physiology and is currently available in the journal's online edition.

In the Netherlands, the project was financially supported by the Ministry of EL&I, Technology Foundation STW and resources from the natural gas futures (FES).

Australian scientists today announced they have sequenced the genome of the staghorn coral Acropora millepora, a major component of the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs worldwide.

This is the first animal genome project to be carried out entirely in Australia, and is an important milestone in Australian biotechnology and in the study of coral reefs, said the researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and the Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF).

A University of Alberta study shows that climate change over the past 70 years has pushed some of the province's native wildflowers and trees into earlier blooming times, making them more vulnerable to damaging frosts, and ultimately, threatening reproduction.

U of A PhD candidate Elisabeth Beaubien and her supervisor, professor Andreas Hamann of the Department of Renewable Resources, studied the life cycle of central Alberta spring blooms, spanning 1936 to 2006, evaluating climate trends and the corresponding changes in bloom times for seven plant species.

The study's findings suggest recent conservation efforts have been on target and should reduce uncertainty over global conservation priorities, its team of international authors say. But, they add, the extinction threat for many of the as-yet undiscovered species is worse than previously feared.

A new database of plants’ traits will help scientists around the world learn more about how climate change is affecting ecosystems.

The availability of plant trait data in the unified global database promises to support a paradigm shift in Earth system sciences.

University of Minnesota researchers Peter Reich and Jacek Oleksyn, Department of Forest Resources, and Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, are members of the international collaborative that developed the database, which includes 3 million traits for 69,000 of the world's roughly 300,000 plant species.

"Tree frog feet may provide a design for self-cleaning sticky surfaces, which could be useful for a wide range of products especially in contaminating environments -- medical bandages, tyre performance, and even long lasting adhesives," says researcher, Niall Crawford at the University of Glasgow who will be presenting this work at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Glasgow on 3rd of July, 2011.

The research, led by Dr Mathieu Lihoreau and published in the British Ecological Society's Functional Ecology, explored the movement of bumblebees, Bombus terrestris, as they collected nectar from five artificial flowers varying in reward value.