It's hard for students to do their own thing on an introductory course, when you have an intake of hundreds. The easy way is to rely on lectures, but at the Université catholique de Louvain, they do things differently.
Category - Featured
Guillaume Lobet
Charlotte Descamps
StomaToy — Learning Plant Defence Through Play
Stomata are necessary for photosynthesis, but they're also access points for pathogens. How do plants defend them?
Rucha Karnik
Rachel Shekar
A fern thought to grow on trees still keeps a root on the ground
The Aspleniaceae is a family of ferns, some of which are terrestrial and some of which are epiphytes. A new study has found a rarity, a hemiepiphyte.
Alun Salt
Belowground biomass reduces erosion rates in sand dunes
New research shows that it's the parts of the plants you don't see that help preserve dunes from erosion.
How fire may burn forests into scrubland
Forests that have coped with fires in the past may struggle to regenerate as climate change increases aridity in the Mediterranean Basin.
Dale Maylea
How do mangrove forests recover from cyclones?
What happens when cyclones hit mangroves? What happens when there are repeated impacts? Ken Krauss and Michael Osland have been looking at the scientific research to find out.
Flowers evolve to balance the risks and rewards of self-pollination
The longer a plant waits to self-pollinate, the longer it has to attract pollen from outside. But waiting too long can have consequences.
What factors make a deadly carrot so dangerous?
The deadly carrot might sound as likely as the killer tomato, but decoding the defences of Thapsia garganica might have a big pay-off in the future.
Trees fight infections by building barricades, but how?
Trees fight infections by trapping pathogens in one part of the tree. Hugh Morris and colleagues have been reviewing how trees use secondary metabolites in order to control the process.
X-ray CT scanning can boost tree-ring research
A new technique to scan tree rings offers to yield precious new data on past climates.
Even a small change in topography can help tides drive an oxygen pump
For pioneer species in the marshes, it's a case of grow fast or die young. But the differences in growth speed can be caused by tiny changes in geography.
Species interactions change the response of saltmarsh plants to flooding
A coastal plant's ability to cope with temporary flooding isn't just due to its own traits. Neighbours can make a flood more, or less, tolerable.
What experience has had the biggest impact on your career? (Part Two)
We asked the members of the in silico Plants editorial board about the experience that has had the biggest impact on their career. This is what they said: In 1977, while doing my undergraduate study at...
