The city has a direct influence on evolution
A global biological study has provided the most direct evidence to date that humans, and specifically cities, are the drivers of evolutionary change on Earth. Leiden University, the municipality of Leiden and Naturalis contributed substantively and…
Two million euros for researching underground fungal networks
Plants live of solar energy, but some species can exchange food through underground fungal networks. Possibly, way more species are doing this than biologists thought. Naturalis researcher Vincent Merckx wants to determine which plants are sharing their…
The impossible fishing cat
The skull and skin of a Fishing Cat has been in the collections of Naturalis for 200 years, but only recently did it receive attention. What researchers found can inform us about the history of Singapore – natural and cultural. And it shows just how…
Fungal pandemic threatens Vietnamese banana production
Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense (FOC) is a fungus found across the world, and various of its races are hitting the banana industry hard. This has major consequences in Vietnam, in particular, where the new FOC-TR4 race is taking a devastating hold…
Sixteenth-century tomatoes entered Europe in a wide range of colors and shapes
The discovery of a sixteenth-century tomato in the top collection of Naturalis elicited many different questions. Was this really the oldest preserved specimen of a tomato? Where did it come from? Could the DNA of this ‘wild ancestral tomato’ tell us…
Ocean sunfish found on Ameland safe in the freezer
The ocean sunfish that washed up on the beach in Ameland last Monday is now in a cold storage. Naturalis employees have taken some samples for research. The animal will be stuffed, and museum visitors will be able to see that process live.
Student discovers new shrimp species by chance
When biology student Mike Groenhof was making a phylogenetic tree of fifty shrimp species for his internship, one specimen turned out to be an undescribed species. The new species was discovered by chance during one of the DNA analyses: the genetic code of…
National Bee Census wins NWO Communication Initiative Award 2021
The Dutch National Bee Census was named the winner of the NWO Communication Initiative Award 2021. The jury praised the initiative for the innovative way it reaches a wider audience, calling the project 'a prime example of citizen science'. The National…
The day of the PhD defence: Aleksandre Gogaladze
Tuesday 30 November at 10:00, Aleksandre Gogaladze will enter the Academy Building to defend his thesis entitled Towards effective conservation and governance of Pontocaspian biodiversity in the Black Sea region . For his PhD research at Naturalis and…