Salmonella can lurk anywhere and conceal in a rather boiled chicken, mixed throughout the raw eggs within the biscuit dough and even into the feces of animal turtles.

A team of researchers from the Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences on the University of Florida has created a vaccine that protects salmone stems from non-matters. The vaccine has shown promising in preclinical studies against mice.

Salmonella might be fatal for endangered groups like children under 5 years and older people. According to the US centers for the control and prevention of diseases, 420 people die and 26,5000 are taken to the hospital yearly within the United States for salmonella.

“((Salmonella IS) Bacteria and the infections occur through contaminated food and water. It can also be distributed by faecal pollution or poor hygiene or improper food handling, ”said Mariola Ferraro, an UF -Associate professor who specializes in infectious diseases and is organizing pathogen interactions.

Most infections include diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps. Raw meat, eggs, fruits, Vegetables And animals contaminated with bacteria, especially reptiles, were able to pass on Salmonella. Two active Outbursts of salmonella are currently connected to one another Cucumber And bearded dragons.

“I might not exit and stroke or kiss their backyard chickens because they might be infected with bird flu nowadays or with salmonella,” said Anthony Maurelli, a UF professor for environmental and global health.

The vaccine from UF was tested using Salmonella, which was found from raw water in Gainesville, Florida, in contrast to previous salmonella research that focused on old laboratory trunks. Research continues the legacy of Lisa Emerson, the first author of the study, who died unexpectedly in September 2024 at the age of 29 for natural reasons.

“The query that Lisa asked was how good this vaccine is against tribes that flow into in the true world in Gainesville within the twenty first century?” Said Maurselli. “How well is that this laboratory version of the tribe related to real tribes that flow into on the market and get sick?”

The salmonella used in the vaccine was shed from the feces of infected people, and despite the many microbes existing in the wastewater, Emerson was able to cultivate the trunk. Microbiologists use special paths to grow certain bacteria, a concept that is referred to as selective media. The wastewater was placed in the enrichment broth to grow the salmonella and was transferred to petrios with media, in which foreign bacteria were killed.

The concept of the Salmonella vaccine began in 2015 with research steps in the past five years. Traditional vaccines contain a lively or weakened bacterial base that injects the body with foreign material. However, the salmonella vaccine is cell -free.

“I actually have the sensation that quite a lot of persons are afraid or afraid because, like 'I injee, they’ve a pathogen in my body, which might then mutate and survive.' In our case, there are not any living salmonella bacteria in your body, ”said Saloni Bhimani, a UF -Doctoral student who studies microbiology and cell science. Bhimani is a second creator of the study.

Emerson worked with Andrew Rainey, and the 2 doctoral students were a part of the pre-doctoral student training program for clinical translational science, which brings multidisciplinary laboratory discoveries into real applications. Ferraro was Emerson's mentor.

Emerson, creator of 12 studies, had recently develop into a post-doctoraland scholarship holder of the CDC in Atlanta before she died.

“She has this heritage as a researcher because she really took care of public health. She not only did this to build a career, become famous or something. She actually wanted to make a difference, ”said Ferraro.

Emerson enjoyed volunteering in Animal Shelters and brought her puppy to the Depot Park in Gainesville to support her colleagues once they took part in a weekly 5 km run. A memorial scholarship was created on the UF in her honor.

“She was also very funny and continues to inspire students here. We are still talking a lot about her, ”said Ferraro.

Originally published: February 19, 2025 at 9:33 a.m. PST

Military doctors faced a critical challenge for many years: What is the perfect method to provide patients in distant combat zones, rural hospitals or areas affected by disasters safely and effectively?

Oxygen tanks are heavy in combat zones, expensive and dangerous. A direct hit from a rocket or a ball can turn a life -saving resource right into a fatal danger.

marine Gen. Ernest T. Cook once said“Logistics is the difficult part of the war.” It goes beyond oxygen. For the US troops used, the soldiers who’re wounded within the fight for treatment can mean the difference between life and death.

The Ministry of Defense turned to us, military doctors and academic researchers in military medicine on the Colorado Center for Combat Research on the University of ColoradoTo study whether the military has to bring oxygen to the battlefield for soldiers – and in that case, how much.

This research approach is referred to as a military-civil partnership. These partnerships aim to save lots of lives on the battlefield. But additionally they save lives within the United States by transforming military medical gains into higher health look after everyone.

Innovation and mobility

In the civilian world it takes Average 17 years So that a research discovery changes medical practice. One of essentially the most famous examples of that is using tranexamic acid for trauma patients. Tranexamic acid is injected to stop bleeding During the operation or after the trauma. It was discovered in 1962, but was only approved by the FDA in 1986. was not used for traumatic bleeding Until 2012.

The change in war and threats to US forces require military medicine to drag faster. Injuries and infections within the fight, researchers urge higher opportunities to save lots of lives, often faster than in civilian health care.

Scientists work in the middle Side by side with military medical teams Studying, developing and testing solutions which are tailored to the battlefield.

Whether it’s address oxygen consumptionPresent Traumatic brain injuriesburning treatments or Trauma careThese partnerships enable military and civil researchers to quickly implement discoveries into practice.

Rethink oxygen

The Immediate administration of oxygen For an injured or sick patient, there has long been a cornerstone of trauma and fire care. The logic seemed easy to be: If patients are shocked or serious injuries have severe injuries, their bodies have difficulty getting enough oxygen in order that the doctors made available extra.

Our research and others found that an excessive amount of Oxygen can actually be harmful. Excess oxygen triggers oxidative stress – an overload of unstable molecules which are known as free radicals can damage healthy cells. This can result in more inflammation, slower healing and even organ failure.

In short, although oxygen is important, more just isn’t all the time higher.

We have carried out quite a lot of collaborative legal proceedings entitled “Military Civilian” Strategy to avoid excessive oxygen or save-o2. We discovered that seriously injured patients often need less oxygen believed than previously believed. In fact, little or no additional oxygen is required to securely take care of 95% of those patients.

This statement questions many years of conventional medical wisdom. It will probably be redesigned how medical specialists not only approach critical care in military environments, but additionally in civilian hospitals.

Within a yr of Present our results of medical leadersThese findings have already got Exhibitions and updates for the patient influence Nursing guidelines, Medic training and even decisions concerning the purchases of medical devices.

To construct on our findings, we began a study to look at using Artificial intelligence to automate oxygen delivery. This study, financed by the military, could higher provide wounded soldiers in distant combat zones and injured civilians in ambulances or rural hospitals before reaching major transfers and trauma centers.

In rural or distant areas of the United States, access might be limited to supplementary oxygen as a consequence of challenges of the provision chain, high costs and deficiency. That is Especially in small hospitals And affects first aiders after a natural disaster or an accident. In the intensive care units of those hospitals, using oxygen could receive efficiently restricted oxygen supply for patients who need it.

Longer accident supply: a brand new border

During the research of oxygen needs in combat zones, we were recognized one other urgent problem: the challenges of an extended accident supply. During a conflict, military doctors often should treat critically injured soldiers for hours and even days before the wounded person might be evacuated.

In a future conflict with a “near -peer” epee similar to China or Russia, the United States may not have the flexibility to quickly evacuate wounded troops. Without a reliable helicopter or aircraft transport, many victims may not reach trauma care Within the “golden hour. ““ This is the critical first 60 minutes after a serious injury if a fast treatment is important.

The ongoing war in Ukraine shows the Challenge of an extended accident supply. In hospitals in all Ukraine, doctors have increasingly difficulty treating the injuries of civil and military patients as a consequence of civil and military patients Increasing antibiotic resistance.

Future military conflicts within the Indopazacific regions can be found Similar challenges, including long patient traffic times and concerns regarding wound infections as a consequence of longer accident care.

However, this challenge just isn’t just on the battlefield. An extended accident supply also takes place in civil crises. For example, rescue staff should manage patients without quick access to hospitals during a natural disaster.

As soon as patients are treated on site or in disaster scenarios, providers must often be supplied with limited resources. You should prioritize essential interventions, minimize resource use and stabilize patients for the ultimate transfer to a better level of care.

Innovations in healthcare live from cooperation. Military-civil partnerships are a method to promote medical solutions faster and more effectively. These innovations save life in combat, improve care and enable us to use our application 98% survival rate within the war To our trauma centers, rural hospitals and disaster zones within the USA

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have earned the nickname “forever chemicals” attributable to their extraordinary ability to persist within the environment long after they’re used.

Commonly utilized in consumer products and industrial applications attributable to their water- and grease-resistant properties, these synthetic compounds can now be found virtually in every single place within the environment.

While many chemicals decompose relatively quickly after disposal PFAS can stay for as much as 1,000 years. This durability makes it ideal to be used in firefighting foams, nonstick cookware, waterproof clothing, and even food packaging.

However, due to their resilience, they persist in soil, water and even living organisms. They can accumulate over time and affect the health of ecosystems and other people.

Initial research has shown possible links between PFAS exposure and various health problems – including cancer, immune system suppression and hormonal imbalances. These concerns have led scientists to go looking for it effective ways to collapse these stubborn chemicals.

We are a team of researchers who’ve developed a chemical system that uses light to interrupt bonds between carbon and fluorine atoms. These strong chemical bonds help PFAS resist degradation. We published this work in Nature in November 2024, and we hope that this method may help combat the widespread contamination that these substances cause.

Why PFAS compounds are so difficult to interrupt down

PFAS compounds have carbon-fluorine bonds, one in every of the strongest in chemistry. These bonds make PFAS incredibly stable. They resist the degradation processes that normally break down industrial chemicals – including hydrolysis, oxidation and microbial degradation.

Conventional water treatment methods can remove PFAS from waterbut these processes merely concentrate pollutants slightly than destroying them. The resulting PFAS-laden materials are typically sent to landfills. Even after disposal, they’ll find yourself back within the environment.

The current methods Breaking carbon-fluorine bonds is determined by using metals and really high temperatures. For example, Platinum metal will be used for this. This dependency makes these methods expensive, energy intensive, and difficult to use on a big scale.

How our recent photocatalytic system works

The recent method our team developed uses a purely organic photocatalyst. A photocatalyst is a substance that uses light to speed up a chemical response without being consumed. Our system uses the energy of low-cost blue LEDs to power a series of chemical reactions.

After the absorption of sunshine, the photocatalyst is created transfers electrons to the fluorine-containing molecules, breaking the stable carbon-fluorine bonds.

By directly attacking and degrading the molecular structure of PFAS, photocatalytic systems like ours hold the potential for complete mineralization. Complete mineralization is a process that converts these harmful chemicals into harmless end products equivalent to hydrocarbons and fluoride ions that readily break down within the environment. The broken down products can then be safely reabsorbed by plants.

Possible uses and advantages

One of essentially the most promising features of this recent photocatalytic system is its simplicity. The setup essentially consists of a small vial that’s lit by two LEDs and has two small fans to maintain it cool in the course of the process. It works under mild conditions and doesn’t use metals often dangerous difficult to handle and might sometimes be explosive.

The system's reliance on light – a available and renewable energy source – could make it economically viable and sustainable. As we refine it, we hope that at some point it will probably run with minimal energy input, aside from the energy that powers the sunshine.

This platform may also convert other organic molecules containing carbon-fluorine bonds into beneficial chemicals. For example, 1000’s of Fluoroarenes are commonly available as industrial chemicals and laboratory reagents. These will be converted into constructing blocks for making a wide range of other materials, including medicines and on a regular basis products.

Challenges and future directions

Although this recent system shows potential, challenges remain. We are currently only capable of break down PFAS to a limited extent. Although our experimental setup is effective, significant scale-up is required to deal with the PFAS problem on a bigger scale. Additionally, large molecules with a whole bunch of carbon-fluorine bonds, like Teflon, don’t dissolve within the solvent we use for these reactions, even at high temperatures.

Therefore, the system cannot currently mine these materials and we’d like to do more research.

We also wish to improve the long-term stability of those catalysts. Currently, these organic photocatalysts degrade over time, especially when exposed to constant LED lighting. Therefore, developing catalysts that maintain their efficiency over the long run can be crucial for practical large-scale use. Developing methods to regenerate or recycle these catalysts without sacrificing performance may also be critical to scaling this technology.

With our colleagues on Center for Sustainable Photoredox CatalysisWe plan to proceed working on light-driven catalysis with the goal of discovering additional light-driven reactions solve practical problems. SuPRCat is a National Science Foundation-funded nonprofit Center for Chemical Innovation. The teams there are working to develop reactions for more sustainable chemical manufacturing.

The end goal is to create a system that may remove PFAS contaminants from drinking water at wastewater treatment plants, but that's still a great distance off. We would also wish to at some point use this technology to scrub soil contaminated with PFAS, making it secure for agriculture and restoring its role within the environment.

Bruins

On Saturday, the Boston Bruins entered uncharted territory under Jim Montgomery.

After three disappointing games in a row against Utah, Nashville and Dallas, the Bruins entered their first game of the season against the equally struggling Toronto Maple Leafs with a record of 3-4-1.

The three-game skid dropped the Bruins below the .500 mark for the primary time under Montgomery. In the previous two years, the Bruins used an 8-1-0 begin to the 2022-23 season to propel their record-setting regular season and followed with an 8-0-1 mark to finish a transitional a hundredth anniversary season to start.

This yr, the Bruins didn't have the posh of a productive first month. But between Jeremy Swayman's late arrival, some injuries in training camp and an adjustment period for newcomers like Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov, the B's are more likely to face some transitional difficulties as Montgomery's third term begins.

In fact, the growing pains were manifested by a scarcity of depth on the wings, poorly timed penalties, turnovers, sloppy passing, defensive errors, a stagnant power play, errors in game management and declining goal performance from some core players. Saturday night they were still having a few of those hiccups.

But of their first Original Six match of the yr, the Bruins finally put together a productive performance lasting greater than 60 minutes.

“I don't think we're worried about the goal as much as more [about] The way we wanted to play,” forward David Pastrnak said after Boston’s 4-3 extra time win over the Leafs. “We know why we don't score is because we didn't spend enough time in the offensive zone, and we also know why we didn't. Of course we want to get better at it, but that doesn't happen overnight. So we have to take it day by day, step by step, and today is a great day. A great win to move forward.”

Unlike the primary eight games, the Bruins spent a lot of the game on offense. But they didn't reap the immediate advantages.

Although the Bruins held every 5-on-5 advantage in the primary 20 minutes, they fell just 35 ticks behind within the second minute after Matthew Knies pounced on a loose puck within the slot after Auston Matthews went hard to the highest of the web had shot.

Boston's fast-paced power play responded 2:22 later when Pastrnak scored his sixth goal of the season. But faced with a 1-2 deficit, they stagnated again on the next two attempts and were unable to convert William Nylander's double minor for strongly sticking pastry.

Some nights you could discover a struggling team faltering. Instead, the Bruins responded.

Shortly after Nylander's penalty expired, Justin Brazeau and Marc Kastelic capitalized on their second scoring possibilities from Anthony Stolarz just 36 seconds apart to offer the Bruins their first lead of the night.

“It was great, especially after the last short stretch we had,” Brazeau said after the Bruins overcame two second-period deficits. “It was nice for us to stick with it and not let that stuff get us down, but just go out on the next shift and give it our all.”

In fact, the Bruins stayed focused as they entered shutdown mode over the ultimate 20 games. But their efforts were almost in vain.

Matthews forced extra time after getting past Boston's D to guide Mitch Marner's feed past Jeremy Swayman. His equalizer got here just seconds after Pavel Zacha went offside, canceling out Brad Marchand's attempt at an empty net ball.

Still, the Bruins remained calm. And Marchand had a golden likelihood for redemption after Matthews turned the puck over on Boston's offense.

Amid a 2-on-1 sequence with Pastrnak, the snake-bitten Marchand knocked the puck out of the air on a rebound and got it off the hook at 2:26 of extra time.

“It was nice for the group to be rewarded for playing the right way,” Marchand said. “Sometimes you do it once or twice and it doesn't go the way you want, and then you switch things up and develop bad habits. We didn't do that tonight when they scored late. We just kept playing like that and it paid off.”

“The boys were calm. Trainers were put together. We were confident we could do it…” Brad Marchand on the Ottawa team's confidence after allowing Matthews' equalizer late in regulation time. pic.twitter.com/8a4ik1k4Km

— Bruins Daily (@BruinsDaily) October 27, 2024

The Bruins can breathe a little bit easier now that the proverbial bleeding has been stopped. But they know it should take greater than a win over a heated rival to beat this turnaround early within the season.

The ups and downs will proceed throughout your complete 82-game stretch. This time, they may need to face adversity early of their regular season.

As they proceed to expand their identity – and maybe add needed depth in the center (a minimum of temporarily) while Tyler Johnson waits patiently to sign a short-term deal – the Bruins have a superb plan in place after persevering their solution to victory on Saturday have.

“It's a game, and it's not going to change things completely,” Marchand said. “But it's a great way to realize that we're a good team when we play the right way. That’s a great group over there, a great offense, and it’s a great way to start building our foundation and understanding how we need to play to be successful.”

Psychologists know that childhood trauma or the experience of harmful or unwanted events can have an effect lasting impacts on the health and well-being of individuals into maturity. However, although the implications of early adversity in humans are well understood, humans are usually not the one ones who can experience adversity.

If you’ve got a rescue dog, you’ve got probably witnessed how the abuse or neglect he experienced earlier in life now influences his behavior – These pets are likely to be more skittish or reactive. Wildlife also experiences adversity. Although their negative experiences can easily be dismissed as a part of life within the wild, they still have lifelong effects – identical to traumatic events for people and pets.

As behavioral ecologists, we have an interest how negative experiences at a young age can influence animals' behavior, including the character of their decisions and the way in which they interact with the world around them. In other words, we wish to see how these experiences affect the way in which they behave and survive within the wild.

Many studies in humans and other animals have shown how essential adolescence experiences are for the event of people. However, researchers know less about how multiple, different instances of adversity or stressors can accumulate within the body and the general impact they’ve on an animal's well-being.

Wild populations are exposed to many kinds of stressors. They compete for food, risk being eaten by a predator, suffer from disease, and must address extreme weather conditions. And as if life within the wilderness wasn't hard enough, humans are actually adding much more stress aspects, corresponding to: chemicalLight and noise pollution as well Habitat destruction.

Given the widespread Loss of biodiversityBy understanding how animals reply to and are harmed by these stressors, conservation groups can higher protect them. However, accounting for such quite a lot of stressors will not be a simple task. To address this need and exhibit the cumulative effect of multiple stressors, our research team decided to develop a wildlife index based on them Psychological research on human childhood trauma.

A cumulative adversity index

Developmental psychologists began developing what psychologists now call Assessment of negative childhood experienceswhich describes the extent of adversity an individual experienced as a toddler. In short, this index combines all hostile events—including types of neglect, abuse, or other household dysfunction—that an individual experienced during their childhood right into a single cumulative rating.

This rating can then be used to predict subsequent health risks, corresponding to: chronic health conditions, mental illness or economic status. This approach has revolutionized many human health intervention programs by identifying children and adults in danger, allowing for more targeted interventions and prevention efforts.

So what about wild animals? Can we use the same kind of rating or index to predict hostile survival outcomes and discover individuals and populations in danger?

These are the questions we desired to answer our latest research work. We developed a framework for making a cumulative adversity index – just like the Adverse Childhood Experiences Score, but for wildlife populations. We then used this index to achieve insights into the survival and longevity of yellow-bellied marmots. In other words, we desired to see if we could use this index to estimate how long a groundhog would live.

A marmot case study

Yellow-bellied marmots are large ground squirrels which might be closely related to marmots. Our research group studied these marmots in Colorado Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory since 1962.

Yellow-bellied marmots are a superb study system because they’re diurnalor energetic throughout the day, and so they have an address. They live in burrows scattered across a small, defined geographical area called a colony. The size of the colony and the number of people living in it fluctuate greatly from yr to yr, but that’s the way it is normally composed of matrilinesThis implies that related females are likely to stay inside the natal colony while male relatives move away to begin a brand new colony.

Yellow-bellied marmots hibernate many of the yr but develop into energetic between April and September. During this energetic period, we monitor each colony each day and recurrently capture every individual within the population – that's over 200 unique individuals in 2023 alone. We then mark their back with a singular symbol and supply them with uniquely numbered ear tags in order that they will be identified later.

Although they’ll live as much as 15 years, we’ve got detailed information in regards to the life experiences of individual marmots over almost 30 generations. They were the proper test population for our cumulative adversity index.

Causes of adversity include ecological measures corresponding to late spring, summer drought, and high predator presence. We also included parental measures corresponding to: B. an underweight or stressed mother, late birth or weaning and the lack of the mother. The model also included demographic measures corresponding to being born in a big litter or having many male siblings.

Importantly, we only checked out women as they have an inclination to remain at home. Therefore, among the adversities listed apply only to women. For example, females born in litters with many males be masculinizedprobably on account of high testosterone levels within the mother's uterus. The females behave more like males, but this also reduces their life expectancy and reproductive performance. Therefore, having many male siblings is harmful for ladies, but will not be harmful for men.

Does our index, or the variety of hostile events a groundhog experienced early on, explain the differences in groundhog survival? We have found that that is the case.

Experiencing only one hostile event before the age of two almost halved an adult marmot's probabilities of survival, whatever the kind of hostile event it experienced. This is the primary record of lasting negative effects of mother loss on this species.

So what?

Our study will not be the one one in every of its kind. Some other studies have used an index just like the Adverse Childhood Experiences Score in humans wild primates and hyenaswith largely similar results. We are desirous about expanding this framework in order that other researchers can adopt it for the species they study.

A greater understanding of how animals may or may not address different sources of adversity can inform conservation and management practices. For example, an index like ours could help discover vulnerable populations that require immediate protective measures.

Rather than addressing the one stressor that appears to have the best impact on a species, this approach could help managers take into consideration how best to cut back the entire variety of stressors a species faces.

For example, changing weather patterns Global warming trends may create latest stressors that a wildlife manager cannot manage. But it might be possible to cut back the frequency with which these animals must interact with humans at essential times of yr by closing trails or providing additional food to interchange the food they lose on account of harsh weather.

Although this index continues to be in early development, it could at some point help researchers ask latest questions on how animals within the wild adapt to emphasize.

If you are taking a better have a look at a plant in your park, your garden, and even your kitchen, you'll probably see damage. Whether a caterpillar has gnawed off a part of a leaf or a mealybug is sucking sap, animals feed on plants on a regular basis.

Of course, herbivory, or eating plants, is just not ideal for a plant's survival, so plants have evolved many various defense mechanisms to counteract this threat, including physical and chemical weapons. Cacti, for instance, are equipped with spines that pierce skin. Herbs reminiscent of mint, lavender, and rosemary produce volatile scents that might help deter herbivores.

Other plants bribe their bodyguards by secreting thick, sweet nectar.

Nectar is mostly related to flowers, where it’s used to draw bees, birds or butterflies to move pollen from one flower to a different. But other plants also produce other forms of nectar glands, called extrafloral nectariesPlants produce these glands to bribe ants with a sweet reward; in return, the ants defend the plant from herbivorous insects.

I study Evolutionary biology of plantsand recently worked with Fern biologist Fay-Wei Li At the Boyce Thompson Institute and Cornell University Ant biologist Corrie Moreau to research the evolution of ant defense mechanisms in plants.

We found something amazing: almost 130 million years ago, throughout the Cretaceous period, ferns and flowering plants Ant bribery nectar glands developed independently at concerning the same timeWe found this out by utilizing complex algorithms to estimate the evolutionary origins and history of ferns, flowering plants, and ants.

This cut-off date is sort of interesting since it was very early within the evolutionary history of flowering plants, but quite late in Evolutionary history of the fernOur work has shown that old dogs can learn some recent tricks – and, more importantly, how this happened in ferns.

Meeting above ground

Plants are the first producers of just about all food on Earth, so virtually all living things rely upon them for survival. For this reason, herbivory is a component of life. But it also imposes significant costs on many industries, from houseplants to crops. Major pest infestations may even threaten global food security.

For all these reasons, understanding how plants defend themselves against predators is an important challenge.

The evolution of ant-based defense strategies inextricably linked two lineages in the dominion of life. This meant that ants and plants ultimately evolved together – a process called coevolutionWhen one species changes, the opposite may change in response, and these changes may even be encoded of their genes.

Flowering plants emerged within the Cretaceous period about 150 million years ago, and our analyses showed that they formed close bonds with ants early on. These flowering plants and their ant partners appear to have co-evolved over time.

However, this was not the case with ferns. Although they’d the potential to evolve nectaries concurrently flowering plants, they only began to rapidly evolve nectaries once they learned to live amongst trees.

Ferns were originally land plants, but after flowering plants evolved into large trees, jumped onto their branches as epiphytes – Plants that grow on other plants, often with none connection to the soil.

Ferns may also climb up trees, like ivy, or form their very own trunk, like Tree ferns. This also helped the ferns to succeed in the treetops.

The undeniable fact that ferns didn’t produce nectar for ants until they moved to trees puzzled me as a fern biologist. That was until my co-author Corrie Moreau identified that the majority ants live in treetops.

This was entirely logical. When ferns became cover dwellers, they became closer to ants, which were already related to nectar-bearing trees. By interbreeding with these ants, the ferns eventually took advantage of the established, mutually useful relationship between the ants and flowering plants.

The evolution and ecology of fern-ant relationships

While our study uncovered recent features of ant-mediated plant defense, it left many questions unanswered. For example, are some ants specialized on ferns, or are they generalists that may feed on nectar from a greater diversity of plants? How exactly did plants originally evolve the physical ability to provide extrafloral nectar? Are the genes encoding nectar development the identical in ferns and flowering plants? Is the chemistry of nectar from ferns and flowering plants the identical?

Our study lays the inspiration for further research into the evolution and ecology of those nectaries. This is significant basic research. It can be conceivable that research on this area could contribute to breeding programs that promote nectary-mediated ant defense, thereby reducing the necessity for pesticides to guard plants from predators.