The study of bark morphology reveals significant although not absolute relationships between bark types, tree species, and their environmental conditions. This paper aims to review the inter- and intraspecific ecological and evolutionary drivers that seem to have shaped the macromorphological features of bark, especially in temperate forest ecosystems and especially in Europe. Extensive literature research shows that various f...

Isolation by environment (IBE) is a widespread phenomenon in nature. It is commonly expected that the degree of difference among environments is proportional to the level of divergence between populations in their respective environments. It is therefore assumed that a species' genetic diversity displays a pattern of IBE in the presence of a strong environmental cline if gene flow does not mitigate isolation. We tested this co...

Aim We tested the elevational herbivory defence hypothesis, which predicts that plants from low elevations are better defended than plants from higher elevations. Location The Qinghai‐Tibetan Plateau in south‐western China—the world's highest plateau. Taxon Angiosperms. Methods We collated binary spinescence data for 10,622 angiosperm species ranging from 600 to 6,000 m a.s.l. Logistic regression was used to quantify the eleva...

Summary Thorns, spines and prickles are among the rich arsenal of antiherbivore defence mechanisms that plants have evolved. Many of these thorns are aposematic, that is, marked by various types of warning coloration. This coloration was recently proposed to deter large herbivores. Yet, the mechanical defence provided by thorns against large herbivores might be only the tip of the iceberg in a much more complicated story. Here...