Page ranking system inspires algorithm for predicting food webs’ vulnerability. (p. 10)

A food fad among introduced rats has apparently crashed a once-thriving population of Hawaii’s famed endemic tree snails.

Nanostructures on a preserved feather offer the first fossil evidence of bird colors not from pigments, a new study says.

A New Zealand tree’s peculiar leaves may have served as defenses against long-gone giant birds. (p. 10)

Logging during the last century might have driven birds in mature boreal forests toward pointier wings while reforestation in New England led to rounder wings. (p. 7)

Emergency ant workers bite at snares, dig and tug to free trapped sisters

The first known spider with a predominantly meatless diet nibbles trees.

Infection may be driving ants to set their jaws in low-hanging leaves before they die. (p. 12)

Karen Warkentin speaks admiringly of the eggs of red-eyed tree frogs because, for one thing, they know what’s shaking. Masses of these glistening eggs hang on leaves that dangle over tropical ponds, and the eggs stay put even when branches thrash in storms. A hungry snake biting into one end of an egg mass can make the embryos’ home dip and dance too. But at this jouncing, older embryos flee. They can’t run, but they can hatch. A sudden burst of emergency hatching sends a rain of new tadpoles into the water, often saving some 80 percent of a clutch. Pretty sophisticated for a glob... (p. 26)

Violent pollen delivery in Catasetum flowers gets its power from temporarily deformed inner strip (p. 13)

Nevada find contradicts long-held view of Europe and Asia as the native land of all honeybees. (p. 13)

Bird’s supersized bill can switch personal air conditioning on and off, new research suggests. (p. 13)