2023-09-18
- Dr. Andy Suarez spoke with Book Club Chicago about the recent increased activity of flying ants in the Chicago area. The sudden onslaught of flying ants likely means the tiny winged creatures were having their annual “nuptial flight."
BEVERLY — Morgan Park resident Tim Blackburn was enjoying a lovely picnic with his family last weekend when they were swarmed by hundreds of unexpected...
2023-08-31 - Four SIB professors are participating in the Team Science Leadership Program offered by the IGB this fall. The Team Science Leadership Program is a new program being offered by the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, consisting of a series of workshops that bring together faculty from all over campus. The workshops are tailored to mid-career faculty, and focus on leadership...
2023-08-31 - URBANA, Ill. — Artificial roosts for bats come in many forms — bat boxes, condos, bark mimics, clay roosts, and cinder block structures, to name a few — but a new conservation practice and policy article from researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign suggests the structures haven’t been studied rigorously enough and may harm...
2023-08-31 - The College of LAS has announced 33 faculty promotions to take effect during the fall semester. The promotions include 15 faculty members who were promoted from associate professor to professor; 13 who were promoted from assistant professor to associate professor; and five who received specialized faculty promotions. “We are proud to grant these well-deserved promotions to our faculty members,”...
2023-08-31 - A five-year study at the University of Illinois Energy Farm found applying ground-up silicate rock to Midwestern farm fields can capture significant amounts of carbon dioxide and prevent it from accumulating in the atmosphere. Working with Eion Corp., researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation (LC3M) developed a new method...
2023-08-25 - Paleobotanists at the University of Illinois understand one thing better than perhaps anyone in the world: Studying coal balls is a long-term commitment. The late plant biologist Tom Phillips began hauling the prehistoric objects out of the ground more than a half-century ago and filled a warehouse with tens of thousands of them. He passed away in 2018, but the coal balls have revealed only a...
2023-06-29 - A new report reveals that U.S. beekeepers lost roughly half of the honey bees they managed last year. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign entomology professor Adam Dolezal, who...
2023-06-28 - The University of Illinois hosted the special event “Feeding a Heating Planet” — the third and final edition of the PBS NewsHour series “Tipping Point: Agriculture on the Brink” on May 24, 2023. During the 90-minute livestreamed event, Emmy-award-winning science journalist and...
2023-06-27 - More than four decades ago, field ecologists set out to quantify the diversity of trees on a forested plot on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, one of the most intensively studied tracts of forest on the planet. They began counting every tree with a trunk wider than a centimeter. They identified the species, measured the trunks and calculated the biomass of each individual. They put ladders up...
2023-06-08 - Like many ecological scientists, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign plant biology professor James O’Dwyer has spent much of his career searching for ways to measure and predict how specific plant communities will fare over time. Which species in a diverse population will persist and coexist? Which will decline? What factors...
2023-06-06 - I am walking in a forest and listening to a concert of birdsong at dawn. I pick one song out of the chorus – a fast chatter full of melodious whistles – the sound of the sooty ant tanager. “Today, we will probably get to know this bird up close,” I think. My colleagues and I set up and open our mist nets. Now we are ready to document and study the avian wonders of this corner of the world. We...- 2023-06-03 - Victor E. Shelford has been called “the father of animal ecology” because he was one of the first scientists to study natural environments as communities of complex relationships among animals and plants. His studies led to “law of toleration,” which stated that every species is able to successfully live and reproduce only within a defined range of environmental conditions,...
2023-05-25 - Anyone near campus with a green thumb—or at least an appreciation for it—has likely heard of the Plant Biology Greenhouse, including its popular 2,000 square-foot conservatory. As noteworthy as the local attraction has become in the past 30-plus years, efforts are underway to make the space even more educational and interactive...
2023-04-21 - Nine alumni from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences will receive the college’s 2023 annual alumni awards at a celebration on April 21. They are researchers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and public servants who have had impressive impact on their fields and communities. LAS Alumni Achievement Award ... Lawrence M. Page (MS, '68; PhD, '72, ...
2023-04-17 - Andrew Leakey, professor and head of plant biology, was featured in a weeklong "Science is for Everyone" promotion on social media by The Science Coalition, which kicked off with a short video featuring 17 questions. It covered everything from his daily bike commute to CABBI's interdisciplinary work developing technologies to grow next-generation bioenergy crops to produce clean bioenergy and...