Ep. 601 - Hybrid Blueberry Ecology Pt. 1
Hybridization in plants is an incredibly interesting subject from an evolutionary perspective. Add in the ecological element, however, and i...
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Science & Medicine
In Defense of Plants Podcast
Plants are everything. They are also incredibly interesting. From the smallest duckweed to the tallest redwood, the botanical world is full of wonder. Join my friends and I for a podcast cel...
Episodes
20 of 604 episodes
Ep. 600 - The Ecological Side of Silviculture
Silviculture is a branch of forestry dealing with the development and care of forests. It can mean a lot of things to a lot of different peo...
Ep. 599 - Exploring the Plant Vibroscape
Plants don't have ears, a nervous system, or any sort of brain-like organ, yet they have the capacity to detect and respond to sounds. Moreo...
Ep. 598 - How Bees Learn & Remember Flowers
Bee cognition is an important topic in the world of plants and pollination. How various bumblebees learn and remember to visit various flowe...
Ep. 597 - Can Amazon Trees Acclimate?
How do individual trees acclimate to changes in their environment over time? This can be a tricky question to answer, especially in remote p...
Ep. 596 - A Carboniferous Video Game?!
Wouldn't it be cool to explore a Carboniferous forest on foot? Alas, until we invent time travel technology, we can't do that in person. How...
Ep. 595 - Disrupt Plants, Disrupt Life: A Climate Change Story
What happens when you disrupts plants? You disrupt ecosystems! Paleobotany provides us with multiple case studies on how change plant commun...
Ep. 594 - Of Orchids & Woodpeckers
What do the white fringeless orchid ( Platanthera integrilabia ) and the red-cockaded woodpecker ( Leuconotopicus borealis ) have in common?...
Ep. 593 - Orchids & their Fungal Partners
Orchids are the botanical poster children for plant-fungi interactions. Every orchid has a close relationship with at least one species of o...
Ep. 592 - What Cherries & Company Can Teach Us About Evolution
The genus Prunus gives us apricots, plums, cherries, and almonds, but also a ton of under appreciated plant diversity. Prunus around the wor...
Ep. 591 - Justice for Habitats
Habitats face pressures from all sorts of threats. Illegal logging, mining, and poaching are driving extinctions, accelerating climate chang...
Ep. 590 - The Complex Ecology of Puerto Rico's Forests
Puerto Rico may not be a very large island but its forests certainly are complex. Historically, Puerto Rico lost nearly 95% of its forest co...
Ep. 589 - Epiphytes & the Water Cycle
Epiphytes of one kind or another are ubiquitous components of ecosystems around the globe, but we still know little about what they are doin...
Ep. 588 - Investigating Boreal Rarities
Rare plants aren't rare for the same reasons. They aren't even rare at different points in time. Figuring out the causes and consequences of...
Ep. 587 - Cloning & Conservation in Plants
Cloning may seem like a futuristic topic largely reserved for science fiction but plants are doing it all the time. Clonality is one of the...
Ep. 586 - Restoring a Galápagos Forest
Daisy trees, petrels, and pink iguanas... The Galápagos Islands are home to unique endemic species found nowhere else in the world. Sadly, t...
Ep. 585 - Dragonflies Need Plants
Dragonflies and damselflies are voracious aerial predators that help keep populations of other insects like mosquitoes in check. These amazi...
Ep. 584 - Understanding Forest Disturbance
Disturbances from fire and wind to insects and humans play a huge role in forest dynamics through time. Throw in the impacts of climate chan...
Ep. 583 - Commonness, Rarity, and Invasive Species
How common or rare are species in an ecosystem? The answer to this might seem simple, but as with everything in nature, it is not. This ques...
Ep. 582 - Extreme Aquatic Plants
When you start studying a group of plants, you never know what you are going to find. Sometimes it's important insights into pollination and...