Brendan George Ko/Penguin Random House
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Suzanne Simard is a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia. Her own medical journey inspired her research into, among other things, the way yew trees communicate chemically with neighboring trees for their mutual defense. Brendan George Ko/Penguin Random House
Trees are social creatures that communicate with each other in cooperative ways that hold lessons for humans, too, ecologist Suzanne Simard says.
Simard grew up in Canadian forests as a descendant of loggers before becoming a forestry ecologist. She s now a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia.