Nature reports

The Dutch landscape is losing plant species that rely on pollination by insects, while plants pollinated by wind are proportionally increasing. Leiden environmental scientist Kaixuan Pan demonstrates this after analysing 87 years..

Biology students from Leiden University have discovered two tree frog species in the Dutch coastal dunes that do not occur there naturally. A special DNA-technique revealed these potentially harmful tree frogs. Remarkable, but..

Why do some plants grow into large woody shrubs or colossal trees, while others remain small and never produce wood in their stems? It’s an evolutionary puzzle that already baffled Charles Darwin more than 160 year ago. Now,..

The face masks and gloves designed to protect us are, in fact, dangerous for the animals around us. Scientists from Leiden warn that throughout the world, on land and in the water, animals are ingesting corona waste, or getting..

Natural selection usually purges lethal, genetic mutations within the DNA as much as possible. However, occasionally an error occurs in nature that can cause species to become stuck with deadly mutations. Newts belonging to the..

Due to overharvesting, all ebony wood from Madagascar has been legally protected since 2013. Black ebony is a highly valuable source of wood that is often used in parts of acoustic string instruments. Wood anatomy - the study of..

The type of question that museums ask about objects in their collection influences conversations between parents and children. Researchers from Leiden University and Naturalis Biodiversity Center studied how questions influence..