Plants

A vast meshwork of soil-bound fungi governs life aboveground. In Alaska, and at field sites around the world, researchers are racing to understand exactly how, with essential stores of carbon at stake.

Scientists reconstructed 500 million years of evolutionary history to reveal which came first: colorful signals or the color vision needed to see them.

Rare and powerful compounds, known as keystone molecules, can build a web of invisible interactions among species.

Biologists used artificial intelligence to make discoveries about molecules and the brain, and overturned long-held assumptions about the immune system and RNA.

Invisibly to us, insects and other tiny creatures use static electricity to travel, avoid predators, collect pollen and more. New experiments explore how evolution may have influenced this phenomenon.

European beech trees more than 1,500 kilometers apart all drop their fruit at the same time in a grand synchronization event now linked to the summer solstice.

To calculate the amount of carbon stored inside peatlands, researchers developed a unified theory of “bog physics” applicable around the world.

A mutant seedling revealed how plant tissues scatter incoming light, allowing plants to sense its direction and move toward it.

New modeling work suggests why nature is more diverse than niche-based ecological theory predicts.