News

Bumblebees make decisions ‘on the fly’ to maximize amount of energy collected in timeResearch has found that bumblebees make foraging choices to collect the most sugar from flowers in the shortest time – even if that means using more energy in the process – to provide an immediate energy boost for the colony.    It’s amazing that even with a brain …

Whitefly transmission efficiency of a potentially devastating pathogen of cassava - a staple food-source for millions across sub-Saharan Africa – is substantially higher than previously thought.A new approach developed by the Epidemiology and Modelling Group, using model-based Bayesian methods to analyse access period experiments, is uncovering evi…

Breeding for resistance against soil-borne phytopathogenic fungi unintentionally affects the diversity of viruses and viroids in the Phaseolus vulgaris rhizosphereA study by Dr Lucas Braga and colleagues in the Ecosystems and Global Change group shows that breeding for resistance against Fusarium oxysporum affects the diversity of viruses and viroi…

Savannas and grasslands in drier climates around the world store more carbon than scientists previously thought and are helping to slow the rate of climate warming, according to a new study.Because drier savannas are more sensitive to changes in fires, the decreases in burned area in those ecosystems has resulted in soils storing more carbon than t…

New model boosts understanding of how petals develop nanoscale patterns that provide optical guides for pollinatorsThe nanoscopic patterns found on the surface of petal and leaf epidermal cells are known to influence several types of interaction with visiting insects, for example by providing optical and tactile clues for pollinators, by altering p…

The Plant Sciences department contributes to new MPhil in Planetary Sciences and Life in the UniverseThis week sees the launch of Cambridge’s new MPhil qualification in Planetary Sciences and Life in the Universe. The new programme will be jointly taught and led by astronomers, chemists, zoologists, plant biologists, and earth scientists. Applicati…

ARIA, the UK’s new R&D funding agency, has announced its line-up of new programme directors – and three of them are current or former researchers from the University of Cambridge.

Avenues of trees of a single species are a striking feature in many towns and cities across England and Wales. These magnificent landscape features are frequently threatened by the arrival of invasive pests and pathogens which in the case of Dutch Elm Disease, saw the devastating loss of a single species from urbanised areas, within a decade. A new…

Cassava (Manihot esculenta) is one of the most important staple food crops produced globally, primarily grown in low-input subsistence farming systems in the tropics and subtropics. In Africa alone, an estimated 800 million people rely on cassava for their primary calorific intake. Threatening food productionIn recent years cassava production in s…

Modelling the spread and mitigation of an emerging vector-borne pathogen: citrus greening in the U.S.A.Citrus are one of the most popular classes of fruits with an estimated 75 million metric tons consumed globally each year, of which 70% is grown in Brazil, China and U.S.A. One of the most serious threats to citrus production world-wide is citrus …

New initiatives boost access to the University Herbarium collectionThe University Herbarium has taken a major step towards making more of its collections available to the world’s research community with the appointment of Dr Anne Dubéarnès as its first Special Collections Researcher. Dr Dubéarnès will focus on identifying and mobilising some of the…

Visualising long-range atmospheric transport of crop pests and diseasesSome of the greatest challenges to food production in low- and middle-income countries arise when crops are devastated by the sudden outbreak of destructive migratory insects and diseases. Pests and pathogenic spores can be channelled by air streams over long distances, crossing…

A break from the lawn: Can an iconic meadow seed wider changeBy Jacqueline GargetIt's No-Mow May - the month we’re encouraged to let lawns and verges grow, wildflowers bloom, and insects feed. Opinions are divided, and understandably so: letting lawns go wild breaks with a 300 year-old tradition. But the gardeners of an iconic setting are on a redu…

Centromeres are chromosome regions that play the same vital role during cell division across the tree of life, yet display enormous interspecies diversity. An international team of researchers has discovered that variation in centromere DNA sequences can be strikingly large even within a single species. These findings, now published in the journal …

A new study by James Ball and colleagues in the Cambridge Conservation Research Institute has developed a computer vision method for delineating tree crowns in tropical forests from aerial RGB imagery, with the new approach available as an open-source Python package for broader uptake and further development.Monitoring the growth and mortality of u…