Scientists unlock key to drought-resistant wheat plants with longer roots

Access to deeper water supplies helped increase yield

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - DAVIS

 

IMAGE: PHOTO OF ROOTS THAT CONTAIN DIFFERENT DOSAGES OF A FAMILY OF GENES THAT AFFECTS ROOT ARCHITECTURE, ALLOWING WHEAT PLANTS TO GROW LONGER ROOTS AND TAKE IN MORE WATER. view more 

CREDIT: GILAD GABAY / UC DAVIS

Growing wheat in drought conditions may be easier in the future, thanks to new genetic research out of the University of California, Davis.

An international team of scientists found that the right number of copies of a specific group of genes can stimulate longer root growth, enabling wheat plants to pull water from deeper supplies. The resulting plants have more biomass and produce higher grain yield, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

The research provides novel tools to modify wheat root architecture to withstand low water conditions, said Gilad Gabay, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis and the first author on the paper.

Roots key to better yield in drought

“Roots play a very important role in plants,” he said. “The root absorbs the water and the nutrients to support plants’ growth. This finding is a useful tool to engineer root systems to improve yield under drought conditions in wheat.”

Much has been done to improve wheat production but losses from water stress can erase other improvements. Plants that can adapt to low water conditions but have increased yield will be key to growing enough food for a growing population in the face of global warming.

Until now, little has been known about the genes that affect the root structure of wheat. The discovery of the gene family – known as OPRIII – and that different copies of these genes affect root length is a significant step, said Distinguished Professor Jorge Dubcovsky, the project leader in the lab where Gabay works. 

“The duplication of the OPRIII genes results in increased production of a plant hormone called Jasmonic acid that causes, among other processes, the accelerated production of lateral roots,” Dubcovsky said. “Different dosages of these genes can be used to obtain different roots.”

From genomics to breeding

To get longer roots, the team of researchers used CRISPR gene editing technology to eliminate some of the OPRIII genes that were duplicated in wheat lines with shorter roots. By contrast, increasing the copies of these genes caused shorter and more branched roots. But inserting a rye chromosome, which result in decreased OPRIII wheat genes, caused longer roots. 

“Fine-tuning the dosage of the OPRIII genes can allow us to engineer root systems that are adapted to drought, to normal conditions, to different scenarios,” Gabay said. 

Knowing the right combination of genes means researchers can search for wheat varieties that have those natural variations and breed for release to growers planting in low-water environments.

Junli Zhang, Germán Burguener and Tyson Howell from the Department of Plant Sciences contributed to the paper, as did researchers from China Agricultural University in China, Fudan University in China, Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland, Karolinska Institute in Sweden, National University of San Martin in Argentina, Technological Institute of Chascomús in Argentina, UC Berkeley, University of Haifa in Israel and UC Riverside Metabolomics Core Facility.

Funding for the researchers came from BARD US-Israel Agricultural Research and Development Fund, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and National Natural Science Foundation of China.

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-023-36248-y 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

News article

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Cells

ARTICLE TITLE

Dosage differences in 12- OXOPHYTODIENOATE REDUCTASE genes modulate wheat root growth

Exercise more effective than medicines to manage mental health

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

University of South Australia researchers are calling for exercise to be a mainstay approach for managing depression as a new study shows that physical activity is 1.5 times more effective than counselling or the leading medications.

 

Published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the review is the most comprehensive to date, encompassing 97 reviews, 1039 trials and 128,119 participants. It shows that physical activity is extremely beneficial for improving symptoms of depression, anxiety, and distress.

 

Specifically, the review showed that exercise interventions that were 12 weeks or shorter were most the effective at reducing mental health symptoms, highlighting the speed at which physical activity can make a change.

 

The largest benefits were seen among people with depression, pregnant and postpartum women, healthy individuals, and people diagnosed with HIV or kidney disease.

 

According to the World Health Organization, one in every eight people worldwide (970 million people) live with a mental disorder. Poor mental health costs the world economy approximately $2.5 trillion each year, a cost projected to rise to $6 trillion by 2030. In Australia, an estimated one in five people (aged 16–85) have experienced a mental disorder in the past 12 months. 

 

Lead UniSA researcher, Dr Ben Singh, says physical activity must be prioritised to better manage the growing cases of mental health conditions.

 

“Physical activity is known to help improve mental health. Yet despite the evidence, it has not been widely adopted as a first-choice treatment,” Dr Singh says.

 

“Our review shows that physical activity interventions can significantly reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety in all clinical populations, with some groups showing even greater signs of improvement.

 

“Higher intensity exercise had greater improvements for depression and anxiety, while longer durations had smaller effects when compared to short and mid-duration bursts.

 

“We also found that all types of physical activity and exercise were beneficial, including aerobic exercise such as walking, resistance training, Pilates, and yoga.

 

“Importantly, the research shows that it doesn’t take much for exercise to make a positive change to your mental health.”

 

Senior researcher, UniSA’s Prof Carol Maher, says the study is the first to evaluate the effects of all types of physical activity on depression, anxiety, and psychological distress in all adult populations.

 

“Examining these studies as a whole is an effective way to for clinicians to easily understand the body of evidence that supports physical activity in managing mental health disorders.

 

“We hope this review will underscore the need for physical activity, including structured exercise interventions, as a mainstay approach for managing depression and anxiety.”

 

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

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JOURNAL

British Journal of Sports Medicine

DOI

10.1136/bjsports-2022-106195 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Systematic review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Effectiveness of physical activity interventions for improving depression, anxiety and distress: an overview of systematic reviews

Marine heatwaves decimate sea urchins, molluscs and more at Rottnest

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CURTIN UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A ROTTNEST ISLAND ECHINODERM PHOTOGRAPHED DURING THE RESEARCH. view more 

CREDIT: CURTIN UNIVERSITY

Curtin University researchers believe rising sea temperatures are to blame for the plummeting number of invertebrates such as molluscs and sea urchins at Rottnest Island off Western Australia, with some species having declined by up to 90 per cent between 2007 and 2021.

Lead author Adjunct Professor Fred Wells, from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said the west end of Rottnest Island had suffered a “catastrophic decline” in biodiversity.

“Since 1982, we have monitored biodiversity of marine molluscs and echinoderms including sea snails, clams, starfish and sea urchins on rocky reefs at Rottnest Island, Cottesloe, Trigg Point and Waterman,” Professor Wells said.

“Despite being sanctuary zones with the highest level of protection from human activities, we found that Radar Reef and Cape Vlamingh at Rottnest Island had suffered a catastrophic decline in biodiversity between 2007 and 2021, likely due to exposure to the warm Leeuwin Current.

“By contrast, the metropolitan coastline, which is not under the influence of the Leeuwin Current, was found to have well-preserved biodiversity and species richness.

“Overall, at the west end of Rottnest Island, the rocky reefs are badly depleted with a decline of 90 percent or more in biodiversity and density of molluscs.

Professor Wells said a number of marine heatwaves on the west coast of WA in recent years that caused abnormally high ocean temperatures had impacted the area’s marine plant and animal populations.

“Our surveys in 1982 and 2007 showed Radar Reef and Cape Vlamingh had a mixture of tropical, temperate and WA endemic species. With increased sea temperatures we expected to see the proportion of tropical species increase, but this did not happen at the West End of Rottnest where all three groups declined substantially,” Professor Wells said.

“These findings demonstrate that even with the high degree of protection from direct human activities, these areas are not immune to the effects of global climate change.

“As far as we know, molluscs and echinoderms on other rocky reefs at Rottnest and other areas off the metropolitan coast are in reasonable numbers and we hope that in the near future these can provide larvae for repopulating Radar Reef and Cape Vlamingh.”

Published in Frontiers in Marine Science, the research is titled ‘Responses of intertidal

invertebrates to rising sea surface temperatures in the southeastern Indian Ocean’ and is available online here.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Marine Science

DOI

10.3389/fmars.2023.1075228 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Responses of intertidal invertebrates to rising sea surface temperatures in the southeastern Indian Ocean

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Feb-2023

 How the close dinosaurian relatives of birds evolved gigantic and miniature sizes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

An analysis of fossils of non-avialan theropod dinosaurs – a dinosaur clade that includes an array of body sizes – has provided findings that run contrary to expectations regarding the factors that inform the evolution of body size diversity. “Once quantified and analyzed in a phylogenetic framework [like this], we predict that diverse growth strategies will be recognized in other clades,” say the study’s authors. Over evolutionary history, many taxa have evolved very large and very small body sizes, and even closely related species can exhibit widely disparate sizes. The predominant mechanisms underlying the evolution of gigantism and miniaturization is widely considered to be changes to growth rate rather than duration of growth during development. However, despite this assumption, very few studies have explored the evolution of developmental rate and duration across many species within a comparative phylogenetic framework. This is partly because there are few abundantly sampled, long-lived clades containing a diversity of body sizes with which to evaluate these questions. Michael D’Emic and colleagues performed a large-scale phylogenetic comparative analysis examining the developmental strategies underlying the evolution of body size in non-avialan theropod dinosaurs, which can range from tiny (<.5 meters in length) to gigantic (>12 meters in length) in size. Using fossil measurements from 42 non-avialan species, including annually deposited cortical growth marks, D’Emic et al. compiled a comprehensive histological dataset of body size and growth rate. The findings show that, contrary to expectations, changes in growth rate and duration played nearly equal roles in the evolution of body size diversity in non-avialan theropods.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adc8714 

ARTICLE TITLE

Developmental strategies underlying gigantism and miniaturization in non-avialan theropod dinosaurs

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Feb-2023

How birds got their wings

The origin of a structure in bird wings essential to flight has been found in dinosaurs

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

 

IMAGE: THIS COMPARISON BETWEEN THEROPOD ARMS AND BIRD WINGS SHOWS HOW RESEARCHERS THINK THE PROPATAGIUM ALLOWED FOR DIFFERENT KINDS OF MOVEMENT AS THE FORMER EVOLVED OVER MILLIONS OF YEARS INTO THE LATTER. view more 

CREDIT: ©2023 YURIKA UNO AND TATSUYA HIRASAWA CC-BY

Modern birds capable of flight all have a specialized wing structure called the propatagium without which they could not fly. The evolutionary origin of this structure has remained a mystery, but new research suggests it evolved in nonavian dinosaurs. The finding comes from statistical analyses of arm joints preserved in fossils and helps fill some gaps in knowledge about the origin of bird flight.

For a long time now, we have known modern birds evolved from certain lineages of dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago. This has led researchers to look to dinosaurs to explain some of the features unique to birds, for example, feathers, bone structure and so on. But there’s something special about the wings of birds in particular that piqued the interest of researchers at the University of Tokyo’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science.

“At the leading edge of a bird’s wing is a structure called the propatagium, which contains a muscle connecting the shoulder and wrist that helps the wing flapping and makes bird flight possible,” said Associate Professor Tatsuya Hirasawa. “It’s not found in other vertebrates, and it’s also found to have disappeared or lost its function in flightless birds, one of the reasons we know it’s essential for flight. So, in order to understand how flight evolved in birds, we must know how the propatagium evolved. This is what prompted us to explore some distant ancestors of modern birds, theropod dinosaurs.”

Theropod dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor, had arms not wings. If the scientists could find evidence of an early example of the propatagium in these dinosaurs, it would help explain how the modern avian branch of the tree of life transitioned from arms to wings. However, it’s not so simple, as the propatagium is made up of soft tissues which do not fossilize well, if at all, so direct evidence might not be possible to find. Instead, the researchers had to find an indirect way to identify the presence or lack of a propatagium in a specimen.

“The solution we came up with to assess the presence of a propatagium was to collect data about the angles of joints along the arm, or wing, of a dinosaur or bird,” said Yurika Uno, a graduate student at Hirasawa's lab. “In modern birds, the wings cannot fully extend due to the propatagium, constraining the range of angles possible between connecting sections. If we could find a similarly specific set of angles between joints in dinosaur specimens, we can be fairly sure they too possessed a propatagium. And through quantitative analyses of the fossilized postures of birds and nondinosaurs, we found the telltale ranges of joint angles we hoped to.”

Based on this clue, the team found that the propatagium likely evolved in a group of dinosaurs known as the maniraptoran theropods, including the famous Velociraptor. This was backed up when the researchers identified the propatagium in preserved soft tissue fossils, including those of the feathered oviraptorosaurian Caudipteryx and winged dromaeosaurian Microraptor. All the specimens they found it in existed prior to the evolution of flight in that lineage.

This research means it’s now known when the propatagium came into being, and it leads researchers on to the next question of how it came to be. Why these particular theropod species needed such a structure to better adapt to their environment might be a harder question to answer. The team has already begun exploring possible connections between the fossil evidence and embryonic development of modern vertebrates to see if that will shed any light on it. The team also thinks some theropods might have evolved the propatagium not because of any pressure to learn to fly, as their forelimbs were made for grasping objects and not for flying.

“Dinosaurs portrayed in popular media are becoming more and more accurate,” said Hirasawa. “At least now we get to see features like feathers, but I hope we can see an even more up-to-date representation soon where theropods have their propatagium too.”

###

Journal article: Yurika Uno and Tatsuya Hirasawa. “Origin of the propatagium in non-avian dinosaurs”, Zoological Letters. DOI

Funding:
This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI grant nos. 17H06385 and 19K04061.

Useful links:
Department of Earth and Planetary Science - https://www.eps.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/  

Graduate School of Science - https://www.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/

About The University of Tokyo
The University of Tokyo is Japan's leading university and one of the world's top research universities. The vast research output of some 6,000 researchers is published in the world's top journals across the arts and sciences. Our vibrant student body of around 15,000 undergraduate and 15,000 graduate students includes over 4,000 international students. Find out more at www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ or follow us on Twitter at @UTokyo_News_en.

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JOURNAL

Zoological Letters

DOI

10.1186/s40851-023-00204-x 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Imaging analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Origin of the propatagium in non-avian dinosaurs

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Feb-2023

Although soft tissue such as that found in the propatagium don’t fossilize well, there are some exceedingly rare, well-preserved examples such as these. The propatagium is labeled ppt in image D.

A more accurate version of a typical maniraptoran dinosaur, a common species to feature in popular media.

A branch of the tree of life that includes the time when the propatagium, vital to flight in future birds, came about.

 

The way arm joints are articulated in fossils gives away the presence or absence of the propatagium.

The way arm joints are articulated in fossils gives away the presence or absence of the propatagium.

CREDIT

©2023 Yurika Uno and Tatsuya Hirasawa CC-BY

Psychedelics may help people reinvent themselves

People stopped smoking by seeing themselves as nonsmokers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

 

IMAGE: UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER NEŞE DEVENOT STUDIES PSYCHEDELICS IN UC'S INSTITUTE OF RESEARCH IN SENSING. view more 

CREDIT: ANDREW HIGLEY

Psychedelics might help people change unwanted behaviors by helping them reinvent their perceptions of themselves.

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati examined the post-treatment journals kept by participants in a 2014 smoking cessation study that found psychedelics were effective in helping some people quit smoking for years.

In a new paper published in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, researchers analyzed the participants’ own words and found that psychedelics combined with talk therapy often helped longtime smokers see themselves as nonsmokers. This new core identity might help explain why 80% of participants were able to stop smoking for six months and 60% remained smoking-free after five years.

The 2014 study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that participants who wanted to quit smoking and used psilocybin, the active hallucinogenic ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, combined with cognitive behavioral therapy were far more likely to succeed than those who try other traditional quit-smoking methods.

Lead author and University of Cincinnati postdoctoral researcher Neşe Devenot said the results demonstrate the potential psychedelics have to reshape self-perceptions to help people break free of old habits or addictions in the face of life’s daily triggers and temptations.

“We saw again and again that people had this feeling that they were done with smoking and that they were a nonsmoker now,” Devenot said.

She studies the science, history and culture of psychedelics in UC’s Institute for Research in Sensing.

Devenot said this new sense of self might help arm people against temptation or old triggers.

“If you want to give up meat but you smell a delicious steak, it might be hard to resist,” she said. “But if you identify as a vegetarian and your sense of who you are is someone who does not eat meat, that identity helps encourage a different choice.”

During the smoking cessation study, therapists gave participants guided imagery exercises in which they were asked to envision smoking as a behavior external to their core identity. The participants documented their experience in writing.

One guided imagery exercise from the study framed nicotine addiction as an external force, manipulating behavior for its own ends like the zombie-creating fungus in HBO’s popular series “The Last of Us.”

“Like the Cordyceps fungi that functionally transforms insects into ‘zombified’ marionettes to serve the fungi’s own reproductive purposes, smoking behavior is characterized as a form of parasitic manipulation,” the study found.

Albert Garcia-Romeu, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University, said psilocybin could serve as a catalyst to help motivate and inspire people to make a change with the help of cognitive behavioral therapy.

“Cognitive behavioral therapy asks us to tune into the thoughts and feelings that we experience in our day-to-day lives and how those relate to our behaviors,” Garcia-Romeu said. “In turn, people often tend to build a narrative or sense of self around those cognitions and behaviors.

“This sets the stage for actually having the psilocybin experience, which can both provide novel insights and perspectives as well as serve as a marker of that identity shift like a rite of passage, signifying the change for instance from smoker to nonsmoker.”

Devenot said the experiment’s sample size was relatively small at just 15 participants. But the results are encouraging.

“I feel that I am somehow fundamentally different to yesterday,” one participant wrote. “I guess I feel like some sort of metamorphosis has taken place!”

Some participants said the treatment with psilocybin made quitting feel easy compared to past experiences. Another said the cravings for nicotine used to be unbearable. But during the dosing session, the participant was unable even to imagine craving a cigarette.

“The concept seems firmly cemented into my reality even today, that cravings are not something that are real,” one said.

A photo illustration of the mind. University of Cincinnati postdoctoral researcher Neşe Devenot studies psychedelics in UC's Institute of Research in Sensing.

CREDIT

Andrew Higley and Margaret Weiner

How do psychedelics help with this transformation?

Devenot says people often get stuck in the same ruts of behavior, responding the same way to stressors or other triggers. She likens it to a downhill skier who uses the same grooved path down the mountain that they have used a thousand other times.

“It’s not that simple, but it’s a metaphor for how we talk about psychedelics,” Devenot said. 

“Psychedelics have been compared to skiing in fresh snow. Some researchers suggest that you might have more freedom to maneuver your skis anywhere down the mountain,” she said. “The entrenched grooves of bad habits might not have as much pull on our skis, so we can lay down other paths.

“We’re looking for ways to help people shift behaviors and overcome the inertia of their habits that are more in line with their goals and aspirations,” Devenot said. “That’s why psychedelics are of wider interest to researchers.”

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JOURNAL

Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal

DOI

10.1353/ken.2022.0022 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

restricted access Psychedelic Identity Shift: A Critical Approach to Set And Setting

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Dec-2022

COI STATEMENT

ND is an unpaid board member of Psymposia, a 501c3 nonprofit research organization. TN is a part-time scholar-in-residence at Tactogen Public Benefit Corporation. AGR is a paid scientific advisor to ETHA Natural Botanicals and NeonMind Biosciences. MWJ has been in paid advisory relationships with the following organizations regarding the medical development of psychedelics and related compounds: AJNA Labs LLC, AWAKN Life Sciences Inc., Beckley Psychedelic Ltd., Entheon Biomedical Corp., Field Trip Psychedelics Inc., Mind Medicine Inc., Silo Pharma, Inc., and Otsuka Pharmaceutical Development & Commercialization Inc.

New book offers radical view of Shakespeare’s ecopolitics

A new book by the University of Huddersfield’s Dr Todd Borlik proposes that William Shakespeare was making radical statements about ecopolitics and environmental issues in many of his later plays.

Book Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD

 

IMAGE: DR BORLIK’S STUDIES AND RESEARCH HAVE BEEN LINKING SHAKESPEARE TO ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS OF THE 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES FOR AROUND 20 YEARS. NOW HE HAS BROUGHT IT TOGETHER IN SHAKESPEARE BEYOND THE GREEN WORLD - DRAMA AND ECOPOLITICS IN JACOBEAN BRITAIN, PUBLISHED BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. view more 

CREDIT: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

A new book by the University of Huddersfield’s Dr Todd Borlik proposes  that William Shakespeare was making radical statements about ecopolitics and environmental issues in many of his later plays.

Dr Borlik’s studies and research have been linking Shakespeare to environmental concerns of the 16th and 17th centuries for around 20 years. Now he has brought it together in Shakespeare Beyond the Green World - Drama and Ecopolitics in Jacobean Britain , published by Oxford University Press.

He states that aspects of many of Shakespeare’s plays written after the accession of King James I  to the throne in 1603 tackle issues like overfishing, mining, the fur trade, the draining of wetlands for agriculture and the use of land for hunting by the king that were causing both social upheaval and environmental degradation. 

Dr Borlik says that Shakespeare’s dialogue, plots and geographical settings in plays including Macbeth, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, and The Tempest reflected an unhappiness in the mass of the population at what was being imposed on them by the country’s ruling classes.

“But in fact it has one foot very firmly planted in England, because at the time there was a very heated debate about the draining of The Fens, in the east of the country, and the destruction of these vast wetlands to convert them to arable land for agriculture.

“There was a lot of popular resistance to it in parliament and in The Fens, there were acts of sabotage and what we could categorise as eco-terrorism to prevent it." 

One of Shakespeare’s most famous stage directions – ‘Exit, pursued by a bear ’, from The Winter’s Tale – is also under the spotlight. Polar bears had been captured and presented to King James I and it is possible that an actor playing the unfortunate Antigonus, about to meet an untimely and unseen end, may have been chased off stage by a very real bear or possibly an actor in bear skin.

But Dr Borlik says that the same play strangely humanizes animals hunted for furs worn by the ruling classes.

“One of the most exciting discoveries in the book is that we have been mis-pronouncing the name of Hermione for 400 years! Hermione is the queen in The Winter’s Tale, who is described as Russian, from the snowy north. Scanning the meter shows her name must have been disyllabic. They dropped h’s in that time, so Hermione would have sounded like ‘ermion’, which is another name for the ermine. 

“An ermine is a stoat in its white winter coat, a luxury fur that at the time that only royalty could wear. Ermine fur was a symbol of royalty and chastity as well. When the queen is accused of adultery, she is stripped of her white furs, so her trial scene re-enacts the skinning of an animal. It changes our perceptions of the play if you view the queen as an ermine, and the scene where she or her statue is brought back to life captures a fascination with the new, death-defying art of taxidermy.

“Macbeth, King Lear, and Pericles are examples of Shakespeare sending his characters out into the wilderness to have an epiphany or realisation about the arrogance and puniness of humans. Shakespeare uses kingship as a metaphor for human control of the environment. When the kings have their come-uppance out in the wilds and learn the earth doesn’t exist to cater to them, his plays are teaching us all to relinquish our the delusions that we are entitled to dominate the planet.” 

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DOI

10.1093/oso/9780192866639.001.0001