Dr. Andrea Clavijo McCormick of Massey University in Palmerston North recently secured $300,000 in funding from the Royal Society Te Aparangi annual Marsden Fund to study how plants communicate. And the kind of communication she is interested in isn't just the language of chemicals and colours they use to attract pollinators. Her research also looks at how different plants can communicate with each other. She's finding that invasive plants like heather and Scotch Broom can suppress communication by local plants.