Kapok trees are challenging the notion that African and South American rainforests are similar.
Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation
Kapok trees are challenging the notion that African and South American rainforests are similar.
Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation
The Kapok Connection: Africa and South America Were Once Joined - A tree confirms that
By: Stefan Anitei, Science Editor
The kapok tree is going to solve a mystery that has puzzled the biologists for a long time: the similarity between African and South American rainforests.
The two continents split 130 millions years ago; still, their forests are too similar, and it seems that 96 million years ago, they were still exchanging flora.
A team led by evolutionary ecologist Christopher Dick at the University of Michigan showed that kapok, and perhaps other rainforest trees, entered Africa after the continents split, apparently through the seeds that traveled across the (back then narrow) Atlantic ocean...”
IMO the original research report bears very little similarity to the published article. Enter the spin:
“This research provides vital information for one of the most highly threatened areas of the planet, tropical rainforests,” said Sam Scheiner, program director in National Science Foundation’s Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research. “In order to plan for and mitigate global climate change, we need to understand the history of life on Earth through studies like this one.”
Spot the contradiction?
Kapok trees are challenging the notion that African and South American rainforests are similar.
Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation
I remember when kapok was the sound you heard when you pulled the cord of the lawn mower and it didn’t start. :)
