A brush with low doses of the herbicide dicamba spurs oxalis, a weed commonly known as wood sorrel, to produce more flowers, University of Michigan researchers have discovered. The finding suggests that farmers and homeowners are inadvertently making weeds growing around the perimeter of their fields or lawns stronger, the researchers say. The study results are published in the journal New Phytologist.

When corals are stressed by pollution, high water temperatures or other environmental changes, they can lose the microscopic algae living inside them and on which they depend for food. As a result, they turn white, a phenomenon known as coral bleaching. They will not die straight away, but it will be game over if the stress continues long enough for them to starve.

The coastline near the southern tip of Africa looked vastly different between about 400,000 years ago and 70,000 years ago, compared with today. At times it lay as much as 100km (62 miles) south of its present location, exposing the vast Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, which contained an extensive habitat for large mammals. At other times the sea level was briefly as much as 13 meters (43 feet) higher than today's mean level.

Somatic mutations, the DNA changes that occur as our bodies grow and age, not only hold an important key to cancer but are emerging as the seeds of a wide range of common, noncancerous diseases. The Somatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues (SMaHT) Network, a National Institutes of Health Common Fund initiative to catalog all the normal processes of somatic mutation, has published its first comprehensive benchmarking study in the journal Cell.

A super El Niño fueling record ocean temperatures poses a "terrifying" threat to the world's fragile coral reefs, the chair of the U.N.'s expert nature panel told AFP.

Chitin, a chain of repeating sugar molecules, is the main building block of fungal cell walls. When fungi grow or are broken down, fragments of chitin chains of different lengths end up in the soil, and plants detect them to monitor the microbes around them.

Salty soil is a growing threat to crops worldwide. Hotter, drier weather has increased evaporation rates, drawing moisture from the soil and leaving behind concentrated mineral salts. At the same time, water shortages are forcing farmers to irrigate using water from lower-quality, saline or recycled sources. Scientists estimate that around half of the world's irrigated farmland is now affected by salinity to some degree.

An international study has overturned a longstanding textbook view of how much energy animals use to travel, revealing that flying can sometimes be cheaper than swimming.

In an effort to conserve the world's plants and animals, governments have pledged to conserve 30% of the planet by 2030. Official figures suggest that attempts to reach this target on land have stalled, but a new study led by the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom shows 27% of land may already be conserved for biodiversity if you also count areas that aren't globally recognized but still support wildlife.

The spectacled cobra (Naja naja) is one of India's "big four" snakes responsible for most serious snakebite cases. It is currently considered one species, which lives across much of South Asia, with regional differences in color, hood markings and venom. However, it's still unclear which regional cobra populations represent separate evolutionary groups. A new study published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution has helped parse out which groups have different lineages, and when and where they may have diverged from their ancestors.

Fireworks are an integral part of many celebrations and cultural events. With their pretty colors, spectacular sights and big bangs, fireworks are a popular attraction for many people.

They can't fly or swim, so why do their closest relatives appear on different continents? Grey Gustafson, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, discovered through DNA sequencing that the ancestors of some of today's tiger beetles existed in South America and Africa before the two continents separated. What's more, North America's largest tiger beetles are related to these ancestral South American giant tiger beetles.

A research team led by Dr. Lorenzo Marchetti of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin described the earliest archosauriform footprints (Pachychirotherium gardenaensis) from the GEOPARC Bletterbach—UNESCO World Heritage Dolomites, Italy.

Researchers from the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory have documented ancient forests that grew on the Mozambican coast thousands of years ago and have been found beneath the sea, where they now serve as hotspots teeming with marine life similar in biodiversity to coral reefs.

Vegan honey alternatives could be engineered to have antimicrobial properties similar to those of prized mānuka honey from New Zealand, according to research at Aston University.

A major international study of the role cortisol plays in reproduction has found it may not be the villain it has been depicted as, and it may actually promote healthy reproduction.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is increasingly being investigated by forensic scientists as a tool to help solve criminal cases that lack biological traces—and attention is also turning to collecting trace airborne eDNA left behind by intruders in residential burglaries.

A University of Queensland study has outlined a practical pathway for accelerating the development of heat-adapted chickpeas using data from new 'omic' technologies. Ph.D. candidate Callum Jamie said the suite of technologies offered tremendous opportunities to understand how a complex trait like heat tolerance works.

Scientists have discovered a potential new weapon against a devastating fungus that threatens rice, wheat, and barley worldwide. By engineering a special type of plant immune receptor, researchers created defenses capable of recognizing multiple fungal threats at once. The breakthrough could eventually lead to crops with powerful, long-lasting disease resistance, helping protect a global food supply increasingly threatened by spreading infections and climate change.

The fight for survival in the forest is fierce: light, water and nutrients are all limited. This is particularly true in "mast years"—times when trees and shrubs produce an unusually large crop of fruits, nuts or seeds. Then the race for growth is on. But can differences in height between trees in their first year of life make a difference to their future, even if these differences are just one or two centimeters (0.4 or 0.8 inches)?

New research has revealed an unexpected new mechanism through which the killer fungus Candida auris is resisting antifungal drug treatment. A team led by the University of Exeter and City St George's, University of London, discovered that the fungus creates multiple versions of its entire genome, including mutating a gene that plays a role in cell wall integrity, called "Crazy-one" (CRZ1).

In the middle of nowhere, a small island emerges in the Atlantic Ocean. This unique territory completely changed in the 19th century thanks to the efforts of two British scientists: Charles Darwin and Joseph Dalton Hooker, researchers who stopped at the British naval base and documented the island during their expeditions.

Consumers may not fully understand precision fermentation yet, but many are curious enough to taste the results. New qualitative research from the EIT Food Consumer Observatory, published ahead of World Food Day on Oct. 16, suggests that this curiosity creates an important opportunity for food innovation, provided companies can answer consumers' questions clearly and deliver on the first bite.

A new report by CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, has found a growing suite of promising options already available to reduce on-farm emissions, as well as further opportunities for practical solutions for Australian producers.

Across the waters of West Africa, commercial fishing vessels vanish along international boundary lines.