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…

The fall crocus (Colchicum autumnale) is visible all over Denmark now, making a strange sight – a plant with large flowers and no leaves, blooming just a few days before the first frost is likely to occur. The timing of flowering in plants is very important to their evolutionary fitness – the wrong choice can…

Some invitations are sufficiently singular to merit an initial look of disbelief. Such was the one I recently received from the Zoologisk Museum (part of the Københavns Universitet). It was an invitation for a zebra barbecue. Let me say, simply, that it was the first party I have ever attended in a dissection room.