Evolution and Diversification of Land Plants

ISBN-13: 9784431702030 / Angielski / Twarda / 1997 / 330 str.

K. Iwatsuki; Kunio Iwatsuki; Peter H. Raven

Opis

It is agreed by most scientists that there is a real possibility of mankind's being plunged into crisis around the middle of the twenty-first century because of insufficient crop production to support the explosively increasing world popula tion and because of serious pollution of the global environment. Plants should play the major role in alleviating this crisis. Consequently, plant science will become of crucial importance in the next century. The application of plant science to crop improvement and the pro duction of plants resistant to environmental pollution will be achieved through complete understanding of the basic functions of plants. Fun damental understanding of individual species and the evolution of plants is also important. The Botanical Society of Japan, which was established in 1882, decided to publish a series of special issues of the Botanical Magazine, Tokyo (now the Journal of Plant Research). The aim of this series was to present overviews of recent advances in various fields of plant sciences. As a result, The Botanical Society of Japan published Controlling Factors in Plant Development in 1978, Regulation of Photosynthetic Processes in 1991, and Cellular and Molecular Bio logy in Plant Cell Cultures in 1993. The contributions to these high-quality special issues were written by leading international scientists in each field, and these publications had a great impact worldwide."

Spis treści

Origin and Diversification of Primitive Land Plants.- 1. Charting Diversity in Early Land Plants: Some Challenges for the Next Millennium.- 2. Morphological Diversity and Evolution of Vegetative Organs in Pteridophytes.- 3. RNA Editing in Land Plants.- 4. Phylogenetic Reconstruction of Some Conifer Families: Role and Significance of Permineralized Cone Records.- Origin and Diversification of Angiosperms.- 5. Evolutionary Biology of Flowers: Prospects for the Next Century.- 6. Fossil History of Magnoliid Angiosperms.- 7. Molecular Phylogenetic Relationships Among Angiosperms: An Overview Based on rbcL and 18S rDNA Sequences.- 8. Evolution of MADS Gene Family in Plants.- 9. Palynological Approaches to the Origin and Early Diversification of Angiosperms.- 10. Chromosomal Evolution of Angiosperms.- Speciation and Mechanisms of Diversification.- 11. Mating Systems and Evolution in Flowering Plants.- 12. Plant Speciation on Oceanic Islands.- 13. Relations of Environmental Change to Angiosperm Evolution During the Late Cretaceous and Tertiary.- 14. Modes and Mechanisms of Speciation in Pteridophytes.- 15. Speciation and Morphological Evolution in Rheophytes.