Evolutionary arms race between smut fungi and maize plants

Fungi are a major cause of plant diseases and are responsible for large-scale harvest failure in crops like maize and other cereals all over the world. Together with scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum in Munich, Regine ...

Walk in the park yields biological treasure

A newly identified relationship between a fly and a weedy mustard-type plant promises to answer many long-standing questions surrounding the evolutionary arms race between plant-eating insects and their host plants.

Scientists reveal the sex wars of the truffle grounds

They are one of the most highly prized delicacies in the culinary world, but now scientists have discovered that black truffles are locked in a gender war for reproduction. The research, published in New Phytologist as the ...

Six times more insects in tropical mountains

How many species of insects exist? Umea University researcher, Genoveva Rodriguez-Castaneda, found that in tropical mountains there are six times more insects than shown in global calculations. The insects in these areas ...

Ability to tolerate enemies influences coevolution

Stay and fight, or flee? These are usually the alternatives facing a victim when it is attacked by an enemy. Two researchers from Lund University have now collected and discussed various examples from the animal world where ...

Roundworm Repository Contributes to Agricultural Wellbeing

(PhysOrg.com) -- Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Beltsville, Md., manage a most unusual sort of insurance: 43,000 slides and vials containing all manner of wormlike organisms called nematodes, from the costliest ...

Acacias use ants to guard flowers

(PhysOrg.com) -- Research by Dr Nigel Raine, Senior Lecturer in Animal Behaviour at Royal Holloway, University of London has revealed how a special plant-ant relationship thrives on give and take for mutual benefit.

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