All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Policing egg laying in insect colonies
Kinship by itself can't explain the vigilante justice of some ant, bee, and wasp workers.
- Animals
How dingoes got down under
DNA analysis suggests that Australia got its famous dingoes from a very few dogs brought along with people fanning out from East Asia some 5,000 years ago.
- Plants
Smokey the Gardener
Wildfire smoke by itself, without help from heat, can trigger germination in certain seeds, but just what the vital compound in that smoke might be has kept biologists busy for years.
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Glowing Trio under the Sea: Nitrogen fixer joins algae inside coral
A coral that fluoresces orange appears to be the first ever found to contain a symbiotic microbe that converts nitrogen into a biologically useful form.
- Plants
Lowering lilies on the tree of life
Water lilies may belong on the lowest branch of the family tree of flowering plants, along with a shrub called Amborella.
- Animals
Really big guys restrain youth violence
Importing six full-grown bull elephants into a park of youngsters stopped killing sprees by young males.
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Mechanism suggested for Guam illness
A research team has invoked protein chemistry to propose a solution to a long-standing neuroscience mystery in Guam.
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Worm to elephant: New genome targets
The National Human Genome Research Institute has released a list of 18 wildly different creatures as targets for genome sequencing.
- Animals
Anybody know this fish?
A 2-month marine-biodiversity survey of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge concluded this week, bringing home much data and some novel specimens.
- Ecosystems
Corals without Boarders
The last decade has been a great era for discovering corals in the deep ocean, but a United Nations report warns that these cold, dark reefs urgently need protection.
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Gutless Wonder: New symbiosis lets worm feed on whale bones
A newly discovered genus of marine worm can take nourishment from sunken whale skeletons, thanks to a previously unknown form of symbiosis.
- Animals
Trail Mix: Espionage among the bees
Tests with two kinds of stingless bees suggest that the more aggressive species uses scent-based espionage to target raids on the milder species' food.
