Researcher Leslie McGinnis peers through a “forest” of chili plants being grown in the UW Botany Greenhouse. (Haley Morris)
In a study just released (December 21) in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers from CoEnv Professor Josh Tewksbury’s lab find that chili peppers are hotter when they grow in wetter conditions, because they need those extra capsaicinoids to ward off a fungus that attacks their seeds. Moreover, there is a trade-off in the ability to generate seeds with water use efficiency in relation to this physiological defense. UW News covers this paper here; Discovery blogs also covers it, as well as Science (here) and Scientific American (here).
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