Join Lotta and Dom on their first Deep Dive, where they get excited about plants!

The south west of Western Australia is a biodiversity hotspot, meaning we have far more plant species here than in most other places in the world! Lotta and Dom discuss why this is the case, and what plants to look out for that are particularly weird and wonderful. We also mention some of the risks this area faces and what we can all do to help protect our incredible environment.

A couple of ecology terms are used that they totally forgot may not be in everyone's vocabularies. Here is a bit of a glossary:

Productive (ecology) - the rate at which things grow

Species - a group of organisms that are alike enough to make babies

Subspecies - A classification level finer than species - describing variation within species

Taxa - all the organisms within one classification group

Taxonomic diversity - The diversity of organisms that can be classified differently

Functional diversity - The diversity of different ways of doing things - like obtaining nutrients, getting pollinated, getting seed spread...

Morphology - the shape and structure of the plants - like what the flowers look like

Nutrient acquisition strategy - The ways in which plants get their nutrients from the soil (or, spoiler alert, through eating insects...)

Exudates - a fluid that is released from the plant

Plant available Phosphorus - If a nutrient is plant available, it means it is in a form in which plants can just lap it up in the soil. Plant unavailable nutrients are locked up or need to be changed chemically to become useful

Mycorrhizal - a mutually beneficial relationship between plants and fungi in which the fungi basically extends the plant roots, and nutrients or protection from pathogens is traded for sugars

Let us know in the comments if there is anything we've missed!