Terrestrial plant biomarkers and their carbon isotopes provide insights into carbon cycling,
paleovegetation and paleoclimate, ranging in scale from local to global. Over the past …

It is estimated that pollen allergies affect approximately 40% of allergic individuals. In
general, tree pollen allergies are mainly elicited by allergenic trees belonging to the orders …

How coniferous forests evolved in the Northern Hemisphere remains largely unknown.
Unlike most groups of organisms that generally follow a latitudinal diversity gradient, most …

Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) are one of the major superradiations of insects,
comprising nearly 160,000 described extant species. As herbivores, pollinators, and prey …

Conifers have dominated forests for more than 200 million years and are of huge ecological
and economic importance. Here we present the draft assembly of the 20-gigabase genome …

Inferring the intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of species diversification and phenotypic disparity
across the tree of life is a major challenge in evolutionary biology. In green plants, polyploidy …

Competition among species and entire clades can impact species diversification and
extinction, which can shape macroevolutionary patterns. The fossil record shows successive …

Background The size and complexity of conifer genomes has, until now, prevented full
genome sequencing and assembly. The large research community and economic …

Water stress is one of the primary selective forces in plant evolution. There are characters
often cited as adaptations to water stress, but links between the function of these traits and …

The state-dependent speciation and extinction (SSE) models have recently been criticized
due to their high rates of “false positive” results. Many researchers have advocated avoiding …