How effective and safe are current-generation pesticides?

The Risky Brain: Unraveling the Neural Codes of Lottery Choices

Summary: Researchers pinpointed a key brain region in rats that determines their economic decisions when facing lottery-like uncertainties. The frontal orienting field (FOF) was identified as a major player in…

Microbiome and Diet Could Mitigate PTSD Symptoms

Summary: Researchers explored the potential link between the Mediterranean diet, the gut microbiome, and PTSD symptoms. Their study, involving 191 participants, revealed that those following a Mediterranean diet exhibited fewer…

Romance and Routine: Nurturing Commitment in Couples

Summary: A new study explored how couples maintain and nurture their relationships. The study categorized relationship maintenance behaviors into five areas, analyzing data from 192 heterosexual married couples. While direct…

10 billion snow crabs have disappeared off the Alaskan coast. Here’s why

From 2018 to 2021, an estimated 10 billion snow crabs disappeared from the eastern Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, with the population plummeting to record lows in 2021.…

What are you doing in a place like this? Connecting plants’ climate preferences with functional traits – Functional Ecologists

Camila Medeiros—a post-doc at University of California Los Angeles, USA—presents her work ‘Predicting plant species climate preferences on the basis of mechanistic traits’. She discusses the connection between traits and…

How octopi can edit their own RNA to rapidly respond to environmental changes

Scientists debunked a long-standing cicada myth by analyzing their guts

There are at least three certainties in life: death, taxes and the periodic emergence of millions of cicadas. But one big cicada uncertainty has finally been put to rest —…

Decoding Schizophrenia: Brain Connectivity’s Role

Summary: Researchers have discovered differences in functional brain connectivity in individuals with and without schizophrenia, shedding light on the neural basis of the disorder. The brain’s cortex regulates sensory information,…

Plants and flammability—Deep inside the mechanisms of wild fires – Functional Ecologists

In our newest post, Indra Boving—a PhD candidate at University of California-Santa Barbara, USA—shares her latest work ‘Live fuel moisture and water potential exhibit differing relationships with leaf-level flammability thresholds’.…