All Stories by Susan Milius
- Ecosystems
New Farmers: Salt marsh snails plow leaves, fertilize fungus
A salt marsh snail works the leaves of a plant in what researchers say looks like a simple form of farming.
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Plants, bats magnify neurotoxin in Guam
Researchers have found that the natural neurotoxin BMAA gets magnified as it rises through a food chain on Guam, a finding that strengthens a recent hypothesis that attempts to explain a spike in neurological disease on that island.
- Ecosystems
UK halts badger kill after study of TB
Partial results from a new study have pushed the United Kingdom to stop its controversial, decades-old policy of killing local badgers if cattle catch TB.
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Whales of Distinction: Old specimens now declared a new species
Japanese researchers have named a new category of living baleen whales to explain puzzling specimens dating back to the 1970s.
- Ecosystems
Will Climate Change Depose Monarchs? Model predicts too-wet winter refuges
A computer analysis suggests that eastern monarch butterflies may not be able to tolerate the increasingly moist climate in Mexico, their current wintering site.
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Chronicling a war of beetle vs. leaf
A meshing of family trees provides a rare example of an arms race between toxic Bursera plants and the beetles that manage to eat them anyway.
- Earth
Bioengineered crops have mixed eco effects
An unusually large test of the ecological impact of genetically modified crops finds mixed results, depending on the crop.
- Animals
Not-So-Great Hunter: Said the spider to the fly—Eek! I’m outta here
The poisonous brown recluse spider may turn out not to be a fearsome hunter so much as a scavenger.
- Animals
First Impressions: Early view biases spider’s mate choice
In a new wrinkle on how females develop their tastes in males, a test has found that young female wolf spiders that see a male's courtship display grow up with a preference for that look in mates.
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Beast Buddies
As researchers muse about the evolutionary origins of friendship, even the social interactions of giraffes are getting a second look.
- Animals
Your Spiral or Mine? Snail gene reverses coil, makes new species
A snail with a shell spiraling to the right can't mate readily with a lefty, so changes in the single gene that controls shell direction have created new snail species.
- Animals
Bad Bubbles: Could sonar give whales the bends?
Odd bubbles of fat and gas have turned up in the bodies of marine mammals, raising the question of whether something about human activity in the oceans could give these deep divers decompression sickness.
