It didn’t take long. Just a few thousand years after humans began to domesticate crops, a wide variety of weeds had adapted to exploit the new farmlands – with some species seeming to have evolved, like crops, to be completely dependent on cultivated land. Image: Arthur Chapman
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They’re the world’s smallest documentary makers. E. coli bacteria have had their DNA hacked so they can store memories of their cellular environment. And they do it in much the same way as an analogue tape recorder. Image: dno1967b
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With the exception of wildlife film makers, arboriculturalists and a few scientists, most of us don’t spend much time in the leafy upper reaches of tree canopies. But in the underground forests beneath the savannahs of southern Africa and South America, it’s an experience open to all. Image: Accretion Disc
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It’s the sweetest relief… until it’s not. Scratching an itch only gives temporary respite before making it worse – we now know why. Image: Carlospics
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It was, Charles Darwin wrote in 1879, “an abominable mystery”. Twenty years after the publication of his seminal work The Origin of Species, there were still aspects of evolution that bothered the father of evolutionary biology. Chief among these was the flower problem. Image: Moyan_Brenn
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