Category: People

Once infected, twice infected (Links to an external site)

Plant leaves showing powdery mildew

New research from an international team including Rachel Penczykowski, an assistant professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis shows that infection actually makes a plant more susceptible to secondary infection — in experiments and in the wild. The findings are published Aug. 31 in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

PBS NewsHour program on wildlife trafficking includes LEC Biodiversity Fellow, Odean Serrano (Links to an external site)

The Congo Basin is home to the world’s second-largest rainforest and a unique array of biodiversity. But the ecosystem’s remote location cannot protect it from the threat of poaching. Special correspondent Monica Villamizar and videographer Phil Caller traveled to the Central African Republic before the pandemic to report on indigenous tribal hunters working to protect endangered wildlife.

Mankind is the problem, and we appear to be hastily destroying life around us, says a Washington University in St. Louis biodiversity expert about new research with a WashU connection. (Links to an external site)

A new study co-authored by LEC Biodiversity Fellow and president emeritus of Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter Raven, appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research highlights the alarming rate of vertebrate species extinction, attributing it primarily to human activities.

Spotlight on Science: Adam Smith (Links to an external site)

Adam Smith, Assistant Scientist at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development, uses models to predict how climate change will reshape ecosystems. His work has uncovered startling projections, like rare plants shifting thousands of miles or Madagascar’s forests vanishing entirely by 2080. By integrating past and future climate data, Smith’s research helps guide conservation efforts, including seed banking and habitat preservation, while exploring innovative topics like urban expansion driven by self-driving cars and the importance of microrefugia for biodiversity resilience.

Stop and Smell the Anthuriums (Links to an external site)

Monica Carlsen is one of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s aroid experts, who specializes in Anthurium research. Through a grant from the Living Earth Collaborative, she is investigating the role scents play in plant/pollinator interactions in Anthurium.

Four ways to curb light pollution, save bugs (Links to an external site)

Writing in the scientific journal Biological Conservation, Brett Seymoure, the Grossman Family Postdoctoral Fellow of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis, and his collaborators reviewed 229 studies to document the myriad ways that light alters the living environment such that insects are unable to carry out crucial biological functions. Seymoure recommends 4 things to address this problem.

Bison overlooked in domestication of grain crops (Links to an external site)

A buffalo stands in a dry grass

A study published July 8 in the journal Nature Plants presents a novel model for how small-seeded plants came to the table — and it relies on help from large, grazing animals, including bison. The new work is a collaboration between Natalie Mueller, assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Robert Spengler, director of the Paleoethnobotany Laboratories at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

Time travel with bat guano (Links to an external site)

To help determine forest restoration goals in Costa Rica, postdoctoral scholar Rachel Reid will travel to Central America this winter to explore a cave long inhabited by bats. The work is supported by WashU’s Living Earth Collaborative.