A dated phylogeny shows Plio-Pleistocene climates spurred evolution of antibrowsing defences in the New Zealand flora.

Some plant traits may be legacies of coevolution with extinct megafauna. One example is the convergent evolution of 'divaricate' cage architectures in many New Zealand lineages, interpreted as a response to recently extinct flightless avian browsers whose ancestors arrived during the Paleogene period. Although experiments have confirmed that divaricate habit deters extant browsers, its abundance on frosty, droughty sites appears consistent with an earlier interpretation as a response to cold, dry Plio-Pleistocene climates.

Comparing diversity of fungi from living leaves using culturing and high-throughput environmental sequencing.

High-throughput sequencing technologies using amplicon approaches have changed the way that studies investigating fungal distribution are undertaken. These powerful and time-efficient technologies have the potential for the first time to accurately map fungal distributions across landscapes or changes in diversity across ecological or biological gradients of interest. There is no requirement for a fungus to form a fruiting body to be detected, and both culturable and nonculturable organisms can be detected.

Systematics of Kirk (Poaceae, Agrostidinae) - an endemic, threatened New Zealand grass genus.

A new species of the New Zealand endemic grass , is described. The new species is segregated from and compared with and . occurs mostly in lightly shaded areas of seasonally dry alluvial forest.

When do plant radiations influence community assembly? The importance of historical contingency in the race for niche space.

Plant radiations are widespread but their influence on community assembly has rarely been investigated. Theory and some evidence suggest that radiations can allow lineages to monopolize niche space when founding species arrive early into new bioclimatic regions and exploit ecological opportunities. These early radiations may subsequently reduce niche availability and dampen diversification of later arrivals.

Intraspecific relationships among wood density, leaf structural traits and environment in four co-occurring species of Nothofagus in New Zealand.

Plant functional traits capture important variation in plant strategy and function. Recent literature has revealed that within-species variation in traits is greater than previously supposed. However, we still have a poor understanding of how intraspecific variation is coordinated among different traits, and how it is driven by environment.

Subfamilial relationships within Caryophyllaceae as inferred from 5' ndhF sequences.

DNA sequences of the 5' end of the chloroplast ndhF gene for 15 species of Caryophyllaceae have been analyzed by parsimony and neighbor-joining analyses. Three major clades are identified, with little or no support for monophyly of traditionally recognized subfamilies. The first of the three major clades identified (Clade I) is constituted by part of the subfamily Paronychioideae.