All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Oops! Grab That Trunk: High-diving ants swing back toward their tree
Certain tree-dwelling ants can direct their descent well enough to veer toward tree trunks and climb back home.
- Animals
Bad Breath: Insects zip air holes to cut oxygen risks
The need to avoid overdosing on oxygen may drive certain insects to shut down their breathing holes periodically.
- Ecosystems
Bivalve Takeover: Once-benign clams boom after crab influx
European green crabs invading a California bay have triggered a population explosion of a previously marginal clam.
- Animals
Crow Tools: Hatched to putter
The New Caledonian crow is the first vertebrate to be shown definitively to have an innate tendency to make and use tools, according to researchers who doubled as bird nannies.
- Animals
Sparrows learn song from pieces
Young white-crowned sparrows don't have to hear a song straight through in order to learn it; playing the song in mixed-up paired phrases will do.
- Animals
Mixing Genes: Bird immigrants make unexpected differences
A pair of decades-long studies of birds moving into other birds' neighborhoods show that immigration can have a quirkier effect than predicted by the usual textbook view.
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Plants: Importance of being economic
The pulse of the real estate market in a given area turns out to be a powerful indicator of how many exotic plant species have invaded the neighborhood.
- Ecosystems
Fallout Feast: Vent crabs survive on victims of plume
Researchers in Taiwan propose an explanation for how so many crabs can survive at shallow-water hydrothermal vents.
- Animals
Paper wasps object to dishonest face spots
Female wasps with dishonest faces, created by researchers who altered the wasps' natural status spots, have to cope with extra aggression.
- Animals
Song Fights
Birds settle many of their disputes by some rough-and-tough singing bouts, and recording equipment now lets researchers pick a song fight, too.
- Animals
Grow-Slow Potion: Pheromone keeps bee youngsters youthful
Researchers have identified a compound made by the senior workers in a honeybee colony that prolongs the time that teenage bees stay home babysitting.
- Animals
Color at Night: Geckos can distinguish hues by dim moonlight
The first vertebrate to ace tests of color vision at low light levels—tests that people flunk—is an African gecko.
