“When I first saw this vegetation, I thought I was on another planet. It was all so different. … Not just the architecture of the plants, but the entire place. It seemed like a nanoforest.” Geraldo Fernandes was hooked by the spectacular landscape of rupestrian grasslands in 1980 during his studies to become a biologist. Since then, he has been working within the ecosystem, which is largely unknown to Brazilians. A pioneer of rupestrian grassland studies, Fernandes is a professor of ecology at Minas Gerais Federal University and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. His interest in insects led him to investigate the interactions between the flora and fauna here. His first field study was on cancer in plants. Just like humans and animals, plants develop cancerous cells due to causes like high temperatures, lack of water or nutrients, pollution and also a variety of organisms — mostly insects like flies and wasps — that genetically manipulate the plant so it will produce the cancer upon which they feed. These tumors, called galls, don’t all kill the plant. Some are even beautiful, looking like ornaments or flowers, but “inevitably, 90% of the plants found in rupestrian grasslands have some sort of cancer or other,” Fernandes says. This is due to the fact that most of them grow at the tops of mountains; the strong UV exposure and lack of resources create stress for these plants and, with their defense mechanisms debilitated, they are more susceptible to developing tumors.…This article was originally published on Mongabay