On the Radar

A round-up of today’s other stories in brief

Oyster clue is in the glue

Oysters use a cement-like glue to stick together, according to a researcher who has been unsticking details of the common Eastern oyster.

“The adhesives produced by mussels and barnacles are mostly made of proteins, but oyster adhesive is about 90 per cent calcium carbonate, or chalk,” says Purdue University researcher Jonathan Wilker, whose findings are published in print this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Plant list on the way

A working list of the world's known plant species is soon to be published. The Plant List, a project between Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Missouri Botanical Garden, does not currently include ferns or algae but will be an important database for plant conservation.

“It’s been a rollercoaster of a project, and the result will be far from perfect, but it will be the most comprehensive list to date, will include almost all scientific names at species level that have been published for plants,” said Eimear Nic Lughadha from Kew.

Dr Peter Wyse Jackson (pictured) moved from the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin to become president of Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis earlier this month.

This is such a significant discovery for tiger survival. The tigers’ behaviour suggests they are breeding and I am convinced that there must now be cubs somewhere on this mountain Wildlife cameraman

Gordon Buchanan, who captured footage of tigers at altitudes of more than 4,000 metres in the Himalayas, while working on the BBC film Lost Land Of The Tiger