EUREKA!

EUREKA!

NEW FINDINGS AND RESEARCH

Garden Variety

Rare flora draws rare crowd.

Urban gardeners who wish to attract uncommon birds and bees merely need to plant uncommon plants in their gardens. Environmental studies assistant professor Theresa Ong led a study—conducted in northern California and published in Ecological Applications—that reveals “a cascading effect” of biodiversity in which rarity begets rarity. For example, researchers observed how such gardens attracted the American kestrel, a small falcon uncommon to urban areas—and a predator of mice, voles, and other garden pests. Demographics play a significant role in urban garden biodiversity: The study found that women and older people are most frequently the gardeners who plant unusual specimens.

The Covid Effect

Remote learning gets an F.

Students in third to eighth grade across the country lost as much as 20 weeks of academic progresshalf the school year—in 2020-21, according to economics prof Doug Staiger, coauthor of a new study of remote and hybrid instruction. Researchers investigated data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools and found remote learning was a primary cause of widening achievement gaps. They also noted that students at high-poverty schools typically spent a greater number of weeks in remote instruction than others—and were the most severely impacted. “This is a really big challenge,” says Staiger.

Nancy Schoeffler