Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Understand the nutritional adaptations of plantsDescribe mycorrhizaeExplain nitrogen fixation

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Corals form diverse and valuable communities at all ocean depths. Unfortunately, they face a variety of threats, including increasing ocean temperatures, disease, and pollutants from human activities. But another less-expected threat may cause stress to ocean corals. Apicomplexans are a large group of parasites that cause major human diseases including malaria and toxoplasmosis. But these species don’t always live as human parasites – they also live among coral in tropical reefs. How the microbes can mitigate or exacerbate stress on coral communities, particularly those in deeper ocean environments, is unknown. A recent study evaluated the coral-residing microbes in deep-sea corals from the Gulf of Mexico. DNA sequencing identified 23 different types of apicomplexans, each with different patterns of niche and host. Some closely related microbes associated only with closely related corals, while others were present on a variety of coral types..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The symbiotic microbial community that many animals have floating freely in their gut is critical to their health and well-being. But some insects, like cereal weevils, take this a step further and host bacteria inside their own cells. These endosymbiotic bacteria reside in massive, specialized cells organized in an organ called the bacteriome. Previous studies have suggested that the cereal weevil bacteriome participates in immune responses. But how, or if, the bacteriome protects its resident bacteria from that immune activity remains unclear. To answer this, researchers activated the cereal weevil innate immune system with pathogen protein fragments and examined the gene expression changes in the bacteriome and its residents. Rather than differentiate between pathogens and symbionts, the cereal weevils protected their endosymbionts with physical separation..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Domesticated edible insects are a sustainable protein source that has been gaining global attention. P. brevitarsis is one such species, and their larvae can also eat decaying organic waste and turn it into a plant-growth promoting mixture. But organic matter like this is high in lignocellulose, which is difficult to digest. In fact, these larvae lack the enzymes needed to break lignocellulose down on their own. So, researchers checked their microbiome for microbial genes able to fill in the gaps. The researchers established a comprehensive reference catalog of gut microbial and host genes. Between the two sets of genes, lignocellulose-degrading enzymes were abundant and highly diversified. P. brevitarsis larvae also selectively enriched their microbiome for lignocellulose-degrading microbes and had physiological adaptations that assisted in lignocellulose degradation..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Marine sponges and the microbial communities they host are critical to carbon and nutrient cycling in global reefs, and they often share unique, but poorly understood, symbiotic relationships. Lamellodysidea herbacea sponges, for example, obtain energy from photosynthetic Hormoscilla bacteria that live inside their bodies. These bacteria naturally produce compounds found in flame-retardant pollutants derived from consumer products. A new study describes how researchers are using metagenomics to understand how these creatures maintain a mutually beneficial relationship with sea sponges. Researchers obtained genetic material describing the relative abundance and metabolic capacities of 21 previously uncharacterized microbial populations associated with Lamellodysidea sponges. Analyses revealed genes coding for enzymes that break down halogenated aromatics, which could enable microbes to use pollutant-like compounds as carbon and energy sources..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.