For more than two hundred years, Denmark has had no wolves. The year 1772 saw the last one killed. Loss of livestock and primal fear have made the wolf an unpopular animal in Europe. So imagine the interest when a wolf-like creature was spotted in western Jutland this fall, walking through a landscape not unlike…

Snow has been falling all week long in Copenhagen – winter has come properly. From a comfortable office an ecologist can easily contemplate the effect of the seasons on the natural world – then also easily spend the later part of that afternoon drinking gløgg while the storm continues outside! I’ve been thinking about what…

Imagine an experiment. Take an iceberg lettuce, Lactuca sativa, and leave it in a warm oven for a few days. What will happen? The outcome is not surprising. It shrinks by a very large amount. Who cares? I’ve been thinking about this ‘shrinkage effect’ for some time now, and it turns out that it matters…

How many species are living around you right now? The answer may be larger than you think. Last week I was in the mountains of Greece with a group of biologists, and we challenged ourselves to answer this question. In two hours of walking around the forest, how many species could we find and positively…