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Dr Daniel Montesinos is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Tropical Herbarium, at James Cook University in Cairns. He is studying weeds to better understand (among other things) how they might respond to climate change.
He said most invasive plants are characterised by their rapid pace when it comes to taking up nutrients, growing, and reproducing - and they re even faster in the regions they invade. New experiments comparing populations from distant regions show a clear trend for already-fast invasive plants to rapidly adapt even faster traits in their non-native regions, Dr Montesinos said.
This is further pronounced in the tropics and sub-tropics.
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IMAGE: Zimbabwe smallholder maize-growing households blighted by fall armyworm are 12% more likely to experience hunger. view more
Credit: CABI
CABI has led the first study to explore the income and food security effects of the fall armyworm invasion on a country - revealing that in Zimbabwe smallholder maize-growing households blighted by the pest are 12% more likely to experience hunger.
Dr Justice Tambo, lead researcher of the study published in
Food and Energy Security, sought to investigate the impact of the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) on household income and food security as well as the extent to which a control strategy can help mitigate the negative impacts of the pest.
By analyzing more than a decade s worth of information on 55 crops, all dependent on pollinators, scientists have revealed that developed countries are particularly reliant on imported pollinator-dependent crops, while countries that export the majority of these crop types are major drivers of pollinator declines. Their assessment of the virtual exchange of pollinator
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IMAGE: Robert Anholt and Trudy Mackay in a lab holding a test tube containing Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly. view more
Credit: Clemson University College of Science
Researchers Trudy Mackay and Robert Anholt of the Clemson University Center for Human Genetics have joined forces with an international consortium intended to drive research that will shape regulation and policy on chemical safety without the use of animal testing.
Mackay, an internationally renowned scientist and director of the Center for Human Genetics (CHG), will team with Anholt to explore the genetic underpinnings of susceptibility to environmental toxicants using Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly.
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A major research project to shape regulation and policy on chemical safety without the use of animal testing has been launched with the aid of €19.3M funding from the European Commission.
Led by the University of Birmingham and involving 15 European and US organisations, PrecisionTox aims to protect human health from the toxic effects of chemicals found in people s homes, food and the environment.
The consortium will use genetics, genomics, metabolomics and the study of evolution to investigate the toxicity of hundreds of chemicals and explore how they disrupt the biological processes that are fundamental to health. Combined with law, these approaches will open up a new field of precision toxicology that will transform approaches to chemical safety management in the same way that precision medicine is informing healthcare. In particular, it is expected that precision toxicology will be instrumental in shaping policy and regulation of this field.