Twenty graduate students make up this year’s cohort of Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Awardees.

When it comes to biodiversity, researchers and the public tend to focus on large-scale patterns. This overlooks a hidden but precious diversity: small, inconspicuous wasps, midges, flies, beetles and other insects that live in plants. These tiny creatures are actually very common, as shown by a team of researchers at the University of Göttingen and the Hungarian HUN-REN Centre for Ecological Research. The researchers measured, dissected and searched for insects in over 23,000 shoots of grass. They found 255 species of insects in ten perennial grass species, which last year-round, but not a single one in five annual, short-lived grass species. The longer the shoots of the perennial grass species, the higher the diversity of insects found in them. Around a third of the insect species feed directly on the grass. The remaining species, mostly wasps, live parasitically on the insects that feed on plants. Almost two-thirds of insects specialize in grasses, half of them even in specific grass species. The conclusion is that areas in grassland should not be mown for several years: stable insect populations need undisturbed refuges with intact shoots of grass. The results were published in Basic and Applied Ecology.

BUFFALO, NY – February 16, 2026 – A new commentary was published in Volume 17 of Oncotarget on February 6, 2026, titled “Censorship in science: How publishing decisions could have shaped the perceived “general consensus” on COVID-19 vaccine safety and efficacy.”

First large-scale experiment shows fire whirls burn oil spills faster and cleaner than fire pools, proving their game-changing potential for ocean cleanups.