Close Encounters

Building up toxic metals in the leaves won’t deter snails from taking a nibble, if the leaf is sweet enough.

It was thought that carnivorous plants put their flowers well away from their traps to avoid catching pollinators. Research from Asia suggests that something more complex could be happening.

You might expect acorn-eating chipmunks to be the enemies of oaks. New research out of Henan and Jiangxi suggests that the chipmunks aid oaks because acorns are not the only babies that the chipmunks eat.

What happens when an unwanted visitor infects a lichen? Plectocarpon lichenum makes it harder for its host to eject it.

Not only can insects view ultraviolet patterns in flowers, they also seem to be sensitive enough to be able to sense heat patterns in flowers too.

The fruit bat has been persecuted due to the belief it destroyed crops of Durian. Now critically endangered, it seems that it is a key pollinator for the fruit tree.

Thousands of trees are being felled in Somerset to stop the spread of a killer disease. Sudden Oak Death attacks more than 100 varieties of plants and is spreading faster than predicted. The National Trust And The Forestry Commissionare having to cut down trees to stop the infection from spreading.

Garg et al. show that resistance to Sclerotinia sclerotiorum in Brassica napus is due to slowed pathogen development