Bees are more than honey-makers. They pollinate crops and hence are key elements in our food production. Honeybees, wild bee species such as bumblebees and solitary bees, butterflies, wasps, and flies, all provide an invaluable work of pollination. In fact, a third of the food... click to read more

The impact of pesticides on pollinators is an important factor for the future of world food security, as well as a hotly debated and controversial topic. Pollinating insects like bees help to increase the yields of many food crops but, in doing so, are inadvertently... click to read more

In the past 20 years, scientists have discovered many planets around other stars than the Sun. Nearly half of these so-called exoplanets orbit extremely close to their star (more than ten times closer than Mercury revolves around the Sun in our Solar System), raising many... click to read more

The Tara Oceans consortium recently published five scientific papers in the journal Science presenting the initial wave of scientific results from the first six years of the project.1-5 The findings show the extraordinary diversity of plankton in the world’s oceans, uncover many of the... click to read more

Forest fires are dramatic ecological events as they can wipe out most of the plants and animals within several kilometers in only a few hours and often also pose a major threat to human settlements. They have a positive ecological impact when occurring naturally because... click to read more