Plants

By reconstructing prehistoric food webs and analyzing the diverse interactions of humans with other species, the ecologist Jennifer Dunne is developing a new understanding of sustainability through network science.

How does evolution select the fittest “individuals” when they are ecosystems made up of hosts and their microbiomes? Biologist debate the need to revise theories.

New work at the intersection of atmospheric science and ecology is finding that forests can influence rainfall and climate from across a continent.

Compact genomes and tiny cells gave flowering plants an edge over competing flora. This discovery hints at a broader evolutionary principle.

Studies of the energy-harvesting proteins in primitive cells suggest that key features of photosynthesis might have evolved a billion years earlier than scientists thought.

A definitive explanation for why plants evolved spines remains elusive, and human biases compound the problem.

Striking evidence that plants warn each other of environmental dangers is reviving a once ridiculed field.