News

A new study by researchers in the Department of Plant Sciences in collaboration with researchers in the Sainsbury Laboratory shows flowers are employing a materials science phenomenon typically associated with failures in structural engineering to produce exquisite three-dimensional petal patterns to lure pollinators. In...

The rise and fall of Earth’s land surface over the last three million years shaped the evolution of birds and mammals, a new study by researchers in the Department has found, with new species evolving at higher rates where the land has risen most. The Department's Dr Andrew Tanentzap , Head of the Ecosystems and Global...

A collaboration between researchers from the Department of Plant Sciences and the Sainsbury Laboratory has visualised the colonisation of plant roots by fungi in real time. This is the first time that this vital, 400-million-year-old process has been visualised in real time in full root systems of living plants. Almost all...

A little alpine plant has been found to eject cobweb-like threads from tiny holes in specialised cells on its leaves. The small perennial cushion-shaped plant with bright yellow flowers, Dionysia tapetodes , is in the primula family and naturally occurs in Turkmenistan and north-eastern Iran, and through the mountains of...