The lifestyles of insects, such as bees and wasps, range from simple solitary arrangements to more recently evolved, highly complex family social structures. One major factor that allowed social complexity to evolve may have been insects’ ability to defend their … Continue reading
Journal Club
Highlighting recently published papers selected by Academy members
Author Archives: Amy McDermott
Cooperative defense against disease may have helped insects evolve complex societies
Categories: Ecology | Evolution | Journal Club
Tagged ambrosia beetle, eusociality, insects, social insects
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Mediating conflict helps community forestry schemes succeed
Empowering people to manage the forests near their homes is one tool of sustainable development. Widely known as “community forestry,” the notion originated in the 1970s with the dream of fair, equitable, and sustainable forest use. But achieving those aims … Continue reading
Categories: Journal Club | Social Sciences
Tagged ACOFOP, community forestry, forests, sustainable development
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Potentially key gene has big role in natural variation of chloroplast size
Worldwide populations of Arabidopsis thaliana all have the same genes, but they vary in many traits, including the size of their chloroplasts. A recent study in Plant Physiology identified one of the genes, FtsZ2-2, contributing to the natural variation in … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Genetics | Journal Club
Tagged Arabidopsis, chloroplast, FtsZ
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Intensive agriculture changes the soil microbiome
California rice farms dot the Sacramento Valley, converting native swampland into flooded paddies. The farms change California’s landscape both above ground and below it. A recent study shows in detail how rice plants shape the soil microbiome into a distinctive … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Microbiology
Tagged agriculture, disease, microbiome, rice, soil
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Hydrogel uses biology and light to release proteins on demand, advancing hopes for synthetic tissues
A wiggly cylinder of protein, hydrogel, and human cells, about the size of a wristwatch battery, could one day serve as a building block for synthetic tissues. The implications could be big for biological research and even organ transplants, according … Continue reading
Smarter birds speciate faster
Evolution favors brainier birds. The most crowded branches of the avian tree of life generally hold the most intelligent birds because larger-brained birds split into new species faster than smaller-brained ones, according to recent work published in Evolution. “Being smart … Continue reading
Categories: Evolution | Journal Club
Tagged birds, diversification, evolution, intelligence, phylogenetics
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Unlocking a mystery of seed development promises fatter, oilier oilseeds
The canola cooking oil lining supermarket shelves comes from the seeds of Brassica napus, a weedy-looking plant in the mustard family. Farmers of this crop understandably want varieties that yield big, oily seeds. A recent study in The Plant Cell … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Genetics | Plant Biology
Tagged Arabidopsis, Brassica napus, canola, LEC2, oilseed rape, rapeseed, UPL3
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Pollen frozen in a glacier reveals the legacy of human impacts in the heart of the Inca Empire
The Illimani glacier sits between the urban sprawl of La Paz, Bolivia, on one side, and the roads and plantations of the Amazon basin on the other. It was no doubt a very different landscape some 550 years ago, when … Continue reading
Categories: Anthropology | Ecology | Journal Club
Tagged Amazon, Andes, glacier, ice core, Inca, paleoclimatology, paleoecology, pollen analysis
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Sweeping study finds big landscape changes on the fringes of Europe’s protected areas
Quaint cobblestone towns and green pastures dot the Pyrenees Mountains, at the gates of Catalonia’s Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici National Park. Hike a few miles into the park, though, and the Spanish landscape of trickling rivers and montane … Continue reading
Categories: Ecology | Environmental Sciences | Journal Club
Tagged buffer zone, conservation, CORINE data
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Honeybee queens influence offspring caste through egg size
Queen bees have surprising sway over the future development of their eggs, a recent study reports. The reigning bee matriarch lays larger eggs in the wax honeycomb cells where workers raise new queens as compared with the eggs laid in … Continue reading
Categories: Developmental Biology | Genetics | Journal Club
Tagged honeybee, maternal effect, queen
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