L&S News  Tag: Botany

Researchers found that many of the differences between tribal and nontribal forests can be traced back to the lower density of deer on the tribal lands.

A panel of eight experienced artists and scientists judged the scientific, aesthetic and creative qualities of 171 images and videos submitted by UW–Madison faculty, staff and students — a record number of entries for the eighth annual competition.

Twelve faculty members - nine of them from the College of Letters & Science - have been chosen to receive this year’s Distinguished Teaching Awards, an honor given out since 1953 to recognize the university’s finest educators.

Since the 1960s, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been studying how plants will grow in space. WPR talks with Professor of Botany Simon Gilroy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has been leading a research team to study the effects of growing plants in a zero gravity environment.

The latest resupply mission to the International Space Station delivered hundreds of seeds to the spacefaring research lab Sunday, Dec. 17, to test how plants grow in the stressful environment of zero gravity.

For University of Wisconsin-Madison senior Kai Nakano Rasmussen, astrobotany is more than just an academic calling; it is a passion that has led him to create an original rap, website, and clothing line. Rasmussen is an undergrad researcher in Wisconsin’s Gilroy Lab, which studies the effects different environments, including space, have on plant lifecycles.

Beets, it turns out, have evolved a separate way of being red from other members of the plant kingdom. In a paper published in New Phytologist, UW-Madison biologists and colleagues from universities around the world reported that they have discovered a key step in the evolution of this process, which not only helps explain the origins of a brilliant natural color, but could have uses far beyond brightening your dinner table.

Writing this week (Oct. 9, 2017) in the journal New Phytologist, University of Wisconsin–Madison Professor of Botany Hiroshi Maeda and his colleagues describe an ancient loosening up of a key biochemical pathway that set the stage for the ancestors of beets to develop their characteristic red pigment.

A researcher reports that meiosis takes a heavy toll on the viability of offspring — and not just for humans. Many creatures pay a price to undergo sexual reproduction.