2020-08-19
- Crops grow dense canopies that consist of several layers of leaves—the upper layers with younger sun leaves and the lower layers with older shaded leaves that may have difficulty intercepting sunlight trickling down from the top layers.
In a recent study published in Food and Energy Security...
2020-08-19 - The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for a worldwide competition that brings high school and college students together to tackle big questions in synthetic biology. But it also provided a unique research opportunity for the University of Illinois team competing in this year’s International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition...
2020-08-07 - Join us in celebrating Entomology's Alexandra Harmon-Threatt, elected as a 2020 Early Career Fellow by the Ecological Society of America (ESA) for her critically important research in the ecology and conservation of native bee species: training the...
2020-07-10 - Researchers have developed a simple model to study how ants balance their large heads relative to their body size. Such models may have useful applications in bio-inspired designs. They use a variety of modelling approaches to study form and function. By using a basic biomechanical model for studying body form and center of mass stability in ants, new research identifies the benefits of “simple...
2020-07-07 - Researchers often study the genomes of individual organisms to try to tease out the relationship between genes and behavior. A new study of Africanized honey bees reveals, however, that the genetic inheritance of individual bees has little influence on their propensity for aggression. Instead, the genomic traits of the hive as a whole are strongly associated with how fiercely its soldiers attack...
2020-06-24 - Brown-headed cowbirds show a bias in the sex ratio of their offspring depending on the time of the breeding season, researchers report in a new study. More female than male offspring hatch early in the breeding season in May, and more male hatchlings emerge in July.
2020-06-22 - What do Covid-19, Ebola, Lyme and AIDS have in common? They jumped to humans from animals after we started destroying habitats and ruining ecosystems.
2020-06-19 - Carla Cáceres, a professor of evolution, ecology and behavior and director of the School of Integrative Biology, ...received the Executive Officer Distinguished Leadership Award, which recognizes outstanding academic leadership and vision by an executive officer within a college or campus unit.
2020-06-16 - Renowned scholar, teacher, and administrator begins role July 1 Gene Robinson, a professor of entomology and director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, has been named interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.
2020-06-09 - Deniz Namik is among 14 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students and recent alumni who were offered Fulbright grants to pursue international education, research and teaching experiences across the globe this coming year. She earned a bachelor’s in integrative biology and Spanish in May.
2020-06-09 - For 25 years, Carol Augspurger visited a patch of ancient woods near Urbana to look at the same 25 one-square-meter plots of earth she first demarcated for study in 1993. She surveyed the plots once a week in spring and summer, tracking the major life events of each of the herbaceous plants that grew there. In fall, she visited every other week. In winter, once a...
2020-06-04 - As Brood IX takes flight for the first time in 17 years, cicada lovers have their ears open. Around this time of year, Marianne Alleyne hosts dozens of houseguests in her basement. Far from using camping equipment or cots, they sleep upside-down, clinging to a curtain. The entomologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has collected cicadas, those...
2020-06-03 - Silver bullet or jumping the gun? This summer, for the first time, genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in the U.S. within the states of Florida and Texas. On May 1, 2020, the company Oxitec received an experimental use permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to release...
2020-06-01 - Dear SIB Community, At the end of May, 2020, Chancellor Jones sent out an email with a powerful message of unity for this campus - we must come together and care for one another. He reminds us that the University of Illinois is a "community committed to the scholarship, engagement, equity, inclusion and leadership that dismantles...
2020-05-26 - James O’Dwyer has been named a 2020–2021 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, joining an...