Keyword: Faculty of Science

The University of Turku is in charge of organising a high-level event on climate change in the European Parliament today on Monday, 19 November. The event includes speeches by Finnish universities’ top researchers from different disciplines.

In a new study, researchers at the University of Turku and the University of Helsinki identified the diet of the most common Finnish bat species. The diet of the bats included a considerable amount of various invertebrates, including ground dwelling beetles, gnats, mosquitoes, and a wealth of moths. The researchers were able to determine a total of over 500 different prey species from the approximately 1,200 bat droppings collected for the study.

Nature is becoming less diverse all across the globe, which is also threatening the future of humankind. Researchers emphasise the fact that there is still hope, but now is the time to act.

​Professors Kari Saikkonen and Ilari E. Sääksjärvi emphasise the need for protecting natural forests that are home to diverse species. In Finland, forests cover over 70% of the country’s surface area, but especially in the south most of it is commercial forest.

Finnish-American research group has studied whether parents’ gender preferences and investment in offspring are affected by their status, wealth, education or childhood environment. Instead, parental preferences were best predicted by their sex. These results help to make sense of the often contradictory findings on offspring sex preferences.