Life Sciences

Prickly holly leaves are a traditional Christmas decoration, from wreaths adorning homes, to greeting card scenes. Yet, look closer at a holly tree and while some leaves are prickly, others are not. Scientists writing in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society believe variations within a single tree are the combined result of herbivore activity and molecular responses to environmental change.

Winning Paper Explores Regulation of Adult Neural Stem Cells

Ash dieback fungal disease is threatening to devastate Britain's ash tree population. To explore the problem a timely virtual issue of Plant Pathology brings together the latest research into emerging diseases on ash, chestnut, birch, horse chestnut and oak trees. Studies also consider the danger posed by global plant trade as a means of spreading disease and evaluate successful tree disease management.

Could vast geo-engineering projects offset the impact of climate change? Even if they could, would it be ethical, would it have popular support and could we afford it? A new issue of WIREs Climate Change brings together a range of experts to answer these questions, exploring historical precedents, popular perception of weather manipulation, as well as ethical and governance considerations.

Insects are pivotal to our ecosystems, yet their great continental migratory journeys remain a mystery. Scientists, writing in Ecography, explain how citizen science and traditional entomological studies combined to reveal the migration of the painted lady butterfly Vanessa cardui. The study reveals how the butterflies have evolved a highly successful strategy to fly thousands of kilometers by cruising on favorable winds.

Long before mankind developed flight, humans were changing the skies above us. From industrial pollution to jet engine contrails, man-made clouds have become a permanent feature of the sky. Writing in Weather, scientists from Barcelona explore the origins of these man-made cloud formations and argue that ‘anthropoclouds’ should be promoted as an entirely new and separate classification.

New Palaeontology study reveals the past of our most fearsome predator

Flocking birds find safety in numbers, but new research shows that when united in greater numbers, birds also find attack to be the best form of defence as they ‘mob’ potential predators. 

Power cuts, such as the outage which plunged all of Northern India into darkness in July, could trigger a serious food crisis, reveals research published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.

From sweeping longshots of monument valley, to intimate close ups of the leading lights, a study published in Significance explores the work of great directors frame by frame, shot by shot and picture by picture using ‘cinemetrics.’

Species of badger are found across the world, but it is only in Britain where their presence is linked to TB infection in cattle

New research in Boreas explores if changes to Europe's ancient climate resulted in smaller Hippos

Combat-ready spikes which shoot from fingers sounds like the weaponry of a comic book hero, but a Japanese scientist has found exactly this in a rare breed of frog. The discovery, which is published in the Journal of Zoology, reveals how the Otton frog uses spikes which protrude from a false thumb for both combat and mating.

An inclusive viewpoint of the species problem from a biologist point of view.