If you happen to come across plants of the Balanophoraceae family in a corner of a forest, you might easily mistake them for fungi growing around tree roots. Their mushroom-like structures are actually inflorescences, composed ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 21, 2023
1
271
Around 4 billion years ago there lived a microbe called LUCA: the Last Universal Common Ancestor. There is evidence that it could have lived a somewhat 'alien' lifestyle, hidden away deep underground in iron-sulfur rich hydrothermal ...
Evolution
Dec 18, 2018
38
464
More than 150 years ago, Darwin proposed the theory of universal common ancestry (UCA), linking all forms of life by a shared genetic heritage from single-celled microorganisms to humans. Until now, the theory that makes ...
Evolution
May 12, 2010
150
0
An international team of scientists have identified candidate resistance genes that could protect ash trees from the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB), a deadly pest that is expected to kill billions of trees worldwide.
Ecology
May 25, 2020
1
13925
It's one of the greatest mysteries of modern science: how did life begin exactly? While most scientists believe that all lifeforms evolved from a common, primitive ancestor microorganism, the details are blurry. What kinds ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jul 26, 2016
20
1975
(Phys.org)—The Tree of Life is a beautiful and elegant metaphor that has proven deceptively difficult to reconstruct. The main culprit may be the overwhelming reliance on so-called concatenation methods, which combine different ...
Containing more than 850 species, fig trees are one of the most diverse groups of plants in the world.
Evolution
Jul 14, 2023
0
575
The Saharan cousin of Mediterranean olive trees remains largely unknown. However, this subspecies (called the Laperinne's olive tree) is of great interest for several reasons. IRD researchers and their partners showed that ...
Ecology
May 3, 2013
0
0
While some people may first associate daddy longlegs with, well, their long legs, researchers Guilherme Gainett and Prashant Sharma have been especially focused on the arachnids' eyes. In their paper published last week in ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 29, 2024
0
124
The largest field-based study of genetically modified forest trees ever conducted has demonstrated that genetic engineering can prevent new seedlings from establishing.
Biotechnology
Aug 3, 2018
0
93
