Researchers with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Staiton have found the first evidence that drought and insect herbivory can create lasting, transgenerational effects in soybeans. The stressors not only affect the parent plants but alter the traits and defenses of their offspring. The research demonstrates some of the positive and negative impacts the stressors have on a plant’s progeny and could be used to develop more resilient crops in the same season.

In Nature, 21 leading scientists today prescribe ways to use food systems to halt and reverse land degradation, underlining that doing so must become a top global priority to mitigate climate change and stop biodiversity loss. 

The article breaks new ground by quantifying the impact by 2050 of reducing food waste by 75% and maximising sustainable ocean-based food production, measures that alone could spare an area larger than Africa. 

Harvard SEAS and University of Chicago researchers have tested and validated lightweight nanofabricated structures that can passively float in the mesophere, which is about 45 miles above Earth’s surface. The devices levitate via photophoresis, or sunlight-driven propulsion, which occurs in the low-pressure conditions of the upper atmosphere.

A team led by researchers from the University of Washington used a fiber-optic cable to capture calving dynamics across the fjord of the Eqalorutsit Kangilliit Sermiat glacier in South Greenland. Data collected from the cable allowed them to document — without getting too close — one of the key processes that is accelerating the rate of glacial mass loss and in turn, threatening the stability of ice sheets, with consequences for global ocean currents and local ecosystems.  

The Greenland ice sheet is melting at an increasing rate, a process accelerated by glacier calving, in which huge chunks of ice break free and crash into the sea, generating large waves that push warmer water to the surface. Researchers at the University of Zurich and the University of Washington have now shown that this mechanism is amplifying glacial melt.

A research team from the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) has published a study in Communications Biology showing how ocean acidification and warming — two of the main consequences of global climate change — can simultaneously affect the structure, mineral composition, and microbiome of bryozoans, colonial invertebrates crucial for forming marine habitats. The findings point to potentially serious ecological consequences under a scenario of accelerated climate change.

A 50-year love affair with hairy caterpillars reveals their squirmy secrets

Western tent caterpillars might not be on your mind every year, but during their peak outbreaks, they’re impossible to ignore—hairy larvae wriggling across roads and swarms of caterpillars climbing houses to form yellow silken cocoons.

They’re certainly on the mind of Dr. Judith Myers, UBC professor, who has spent five decades studying this native moth species and their boom-and-bust population cycles.

In this Q&A, she discusses her journey and findings from  a recently published study, including the caterpillars’ surprising resistance to climate change.