An internal circadian clock controls the distinctive concentric rings of flowering in sunflowers, maximizing visits from pollinators, a new study from plant biologists at the University of California, Davis, shows. The work was published Jan. 13 in eLife.

A sunflower head is made up of hundreds of tiny florets. Because of the way sunflowers grow, the youngest florets are in the center of the flower face and the most mature at the edges, forming a distinctive spiral pattern from the center to the edge.

From Chilean tidepools to the High Sierra, 12 UC Davis graduate students traveled the world this summer in search of answers to ecology’s most pressing questions.

In the blazing 100-degree Texas sun, Jon Aguiñaga waded through polluted waters on the side of freeways to capture tiny fish, which he then ran experiments on in the garage of an Airbnb. Marissa Sandoval flew to Florida to extract sexual-selection perfumes from the green inflorescent legs of orchid bees. MJ Farruggia trekked more than 1,000 miles in the Sierra backcountry for 240 days and is “still not tired of it.”

An international team has succeeded in propagating a commercial hybrid rice strain as a clone through seeds with 95% efficiency. This could lower the cost of hybrid rice seed, making high-yielding, disease resistant rice strains available to low-income farmers worldwide. The work was published Dec. 27 in Nature Communications.

Back-to-back papers in the Dec. 29 issue of Nature Plants report the first complete protein structures for plant respiratory supercomplex I+III₂. Obtaining these structures helps researchers understand basic plant biology, as well as stress responses and how biofuel crops might grow more rapidly.

My final note of last year also started with the weather, but what astonishing weather we’ve had here in Northern California.

He quipped that he was "going to cover 40 years of science in 40 minutes."

And UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Harris Lewin, renowned for his research in comparative mammalian genomics and immunogenetics, did just that when he delivered the inaugural UC Davis New Emeriti Distinguished Lecture on “From Chickens to Cows to Everything: Perspectives from 40 Years in Science."

Despite their small size, dragonflies are arguably one of the most impressive predators in the animal kingdom. According to Rachel Crane, a biologist at the University of California Davis, dragonflies often catch up to 95% of the prey they go after, a rate she described as “wildly high compared to where most predators are.” 

More incredible still, this prey capture all happens in midair.

“Dragonflies are doing these really, really fast, high-speed aerial captures,” said Crane. 

Female infants are born with several million immature egg cells, or oocytes. Over the course of the reproductive years, a few hundred of them will develop into mature eggs for potential fertilization. Because of this extended maturation process, the oocytes of humans and other mammals are vulnerable to both developmental exposures and the aging process.

Chemical engineer and microbiologist Priya Shah is unraveling the essential aspects of arboviruses - viruses transmitted by mosquitoes, ticks, or other arthropods - aiming to thwart this major source of emerging diseases by identifying novel therapeutic targets.

For her innovative research, she has been awarded $40,000 from a UC Davis endowment set up by anonymous donors. The awards, given annually since 2016, are designated for non-tenured ladder-track faculty.

Winter doesn’t begin officially until later this month, but there was ice on the cars (and roofs!) this morning. Being from Philadelphia, ice in December isn’t something all that unusual to me, but here in our region of California it’s always a bit of a surprise. With finals behind us, and the end of the year just around the corner, things are slowing down on campus.