DECRYPTION – A team of researchers has estimated the diversity of tricks developed by plants to fight against drought and predation. And it seems that species from arid zones are much more ingenious than those from temperate zones.
Salt, calcium, aluminum, this is the recipe found by some plants to adapt to the most arid climates on the planet. Extreme conditions that these plants have learned to thwart through very sophisticated adaptation strategies, the result of millions of years of evolution. And if we compare to more temperate zones, the strategies adopted by plant species to cope with the constraints of their habitat are far from being as diverse.
Which suggests that throughout their evolutionary history, plants in arid areas have shown greater creativity. This is the conclusion of a study published in the journal Nature which mobilized an international team comprising 121 scientists from twenty-seven countries. « Until then, 90 % of current knowledge concerns agricultural species and species from temperate zones, while arid zones occupy 50 % of land area
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