Science Focus Book Club: Further reading on plants, deep time and the world beneath our feet

How do trees communicate in a forest? How has evolution shaped the Earth? Here's some more for you to read while taking part in September's Science Focus Book Club.

Published: September 9, 2020 at 4:04 pm

Science Focus

Can the wood-wide web really help trees talk to each other?

5/15/2020
There’s evidence that trees communicate via a vast, underground network of fungal connections – we dive in to the murky world of mycorrhizal networks.
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magazine
nature
planet-earth
plants
trees

Science Focus

Gaia Vince: What part does culture play in our evolution?

12/7/2019
Journalist and broadcaster Gaia Vince tells us how culture evolution played a big part in Homo sapiens dominance over the other hominins.
more
books
the-human-body
evolution
human-geography
science-focus-podcast

Science Focus

Meet the scientists going to extreme lengths to study climate change

8/19/2020
Scientists around the world are studying everything from glaciers to deserts to find out how climate change is affecting our planet.
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instagram
nature
planet-earth
climate-change

Science Focus

Mammal evolution: How ancient fossils are revealing the secrets of our earliest ancestors

6/21/2020
Before Tyrannosaurus rex and Diplodocus roamed the planet, a group of small animals were eking out a successful existence and would one day come to dominate - here’s how a bounty of new fossils is telling us their story.
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magazine
nature
evolution
mammals
prehistoric-animals

Science Focus

Humans grew plants in 'forest islands' of the Amazon 10,000 years ago

4/9/2020
Scientists believe south-western Amazonia to be the fifth area of the world where the earliest domestication of plants began.
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news
archaeology
human-evolution
plants

Science Focus

Evolution is most certainly a theory, but certainly not “just” a theory

8/10/2020
Considerable confusion exists over some very fundamental aspects of evolution, compounded by the language we use to describe it.
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books
comment
nature
evolution
language

Science Focus

Earth’s ancient geography 'directed the course of human evolution'

11/20/2019
In his book, Origins, astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell shows us how the Earth’s ancient geography has influenced the development of human civilisations, and how it still affects our behaviour today.
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books
planet-earth
geology
human-geography
interviews
politics

Science Focus

Neil Shubin: How do big changes in evolution happen?

6/4/2020
Evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin explains how life made the jump from land to water and how dinosaurs took to the air.
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books
nature
evolution
science-focus-podcast

Science Focus

Life finds a way: when nature reclaims abandoned places

7/20/2020
What happens to a human environment when all the people leave? Nature takes it back.
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instagram
magazine
nature
animals
fish
photography
plants

Science Focus

Can planting billions of trees help tackle climate change?

9/13/2019
We speak to Bob Ward, the policy and communications director for the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
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magazine
planet-earth
climate-change
interviews
trees