As the Anthropocene advances, there are few parts of Earth that have not been impacted by
human influence. Humans have had a long-sustained interaction with grassy ecosystems …

Grasses are widespread on every continent and are found in all terrestrial biomes. The
dominance and spread of grasses and grassland ecosystems have led to significant …

Disentangling species strategies that confer resilience to natural disturbances is key to
conserving and restoring savanna ecosystems. Fire is a recurrent disturbance in savannas …

Woody encroachment is ubiquitous in grassy ecosystems worldwide, but its global impacts
on the diversity of herbaceous plants that characterise and define these ecosystems remain …

Early natural historians—Comte de Buffon, von Humboldt, and De Candolle—established
environment and geography as two principal axes determining the distribution of groups of …

Plants are critical mediators of terrestrial mass and energy fluxes, and their structural and
functional traits have profound impacts on local and global climate, biogeochemistry …

Inflorescence branching in the grasses controls the number of florets and hence the number
of seeds. Recent data on the underlying genetics come primarily from rice and maize …

Plants with the C4 photosynthesis pathway typically respond to climate change differently
from more common C3-type plants, due to their distinct anatomical and biochemical …

Background Numerous groups of plants have adapted to CO2 limitations by independently
evolving C4 photosynthesis. This trait relies on concerted changes in anatomy and …

Grasses fuel most fires on Earth and strongly influence local fire behaviour through traits that
determine how flammable they are. Therefore, grass communities that differ in their species …