How Many Species Does a Job Take?
Clean water, pollinated crops, carbon stored in the sea: each is work done by living things. A synthesis of 423 studies finds that some jobs improve with every species added, some level off early, and some rest on one or two.
The Number Is A Range
Headlines said Costa Rica may hold more than 40,000 species of fungi. The study behind them gives a range, and 40,000 is its top.
The Poison Factory
Researchers have traced the six-enzyme assembly line wolfsbane and larkspur use to build atisinium, a toxin now being explored for pain, malaria, and cancer, and then run that same line inside tobacco plants. Aconitine, its close relative, was isolated in 1834 and has never been synthesized in a lab; the instructions were in the genome the whole time, waiting for someone to read them in order.
Size First, Then Detail
A new system identifies carbonized seeds at ninety percent accuracy. It got there by being told the one thing every general-purpose classifier throws away: how big the seed actually is.
Sixteen Percent
Ten herbaria hold an estimated 16.5% of the world's plant specimens. Here's where — and why it matters.