Conventional knowledge suggests gardeners should avoid including cultivated plants, bred for aesthetics, in pollinator gardens. Plant biologists studied how well these cultivated plants attract pollinators, compared to wildtype plants. Native wildtype plants always attracted insect pollinators, but some cultivated varieties performed just as well, showing they have ecological value in gardens. While other cultivated varieties were less attractive to pollinators, gardens with flowering plants that attract pollinators are better than grass lawns.

A new analysis of nearly 40 years of data from three tracts of North American grassland confirms what researchers have long said: that biodiversity can be a natural defense against climate threats. But the study also reveals that coping with climate extremes isn’t just a numbers game where the more species an ecosystem has, the better. Multiple dimensions of biodiversity can help nature survive — and thrive — in harsh conditions, the researchers report.

In tropical cities, afternoon thunderstorms can plunge entire neighborhoods into brief moments of darkness. 

When civil engineer Markus Schläpfer moved to Singapore a decade ago, he recognized these thunderstorms as an emerging engineering challenge. For cities that hope to run on solar energy, these short periods without strong sunlight could destabilize urban power grids and undermine reliability.

In a new paper, published April 7 in Nature Communications,  Schläpfer and collaborators explain how tropical cities, which will soon contain half of the global population, can address this problem without expensive infrastructure build-outs. For Schläpfer, the solution lies in connecting electric vehicles to the grid. 

"If you have a thunderstorm moving over an area with solar energy, you can have your electric cars that are parked serve as the energy source and balance out this lack of energy generation," said Schläpfer, assistant professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics at Columbia Engineering. “When the thunderstorm moves away, the cars are charged again by the photovoltaics.”

Climate change may reduce yields of crops like corn and soybeans, but it can also give some plants an edge. That’s one of the takeaways of a recent study of tall goldenrod, a common wildflower that runs rampant in fields across North America and other parts of the world. New research suggests that climate change can offset some of the harmful effects of tiny insects that use goldenrod as a nursery for their hungry larvae.