All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Ant Traffic Flow: Raiding swarms with few rules avoid gridlock
The 200,000 virtually blind army ants using a single trail to swarm out to a raid and return home with the booty naturally develop three traffic lanes, and a study now shows that simple individual behavior makes the pattern.
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Biodiversity may lessen Lyme disease
A survey of Lyme disease rates suggests that a greater diversity of small mammals and lizards may help keep the rates down.
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Old lemming puzzle gets new answer
A novel analysis suggests food supply variations as the answer to the decades-old puzzle of what makes lemming populations boom and bust.
- Ecosystems
Trust That Bird? A bit of future-think lets jays cooperate
A blue jay will cooperate with a buddy for mutual gain in food despite opportunities to betray the partnership.
- Animals
Frogs Play Tree: Male tunes his call to specific tree hole
Borneo's tree-hole frog may come as close to playing a musical instrument as any wild animal does. [With audio file.]
- Agriculture
Bt corn variety OK for black swallowtails
The first published field study of butterflies and genetically altered corn finds no harm to black swallowtail caterpillars from a common corn variety.
- Animals
Hawkmoths can still see colors at night
For the first time, scientists have found detailed evidence than an animal—a hawkmoth—can see color by starlight.
- Animals
Mad Deer Disease?
Chronic wasting disease, once just an obscure brain ailment of deer and elk in a small patch of the West, is turning up in new places and raising troubling questions about risks.
- Ecosystems
Worm Attacks: Invading earthworms threaten rare U.S. fern
An unusual study of the effects of invading earthworms on North American plants finds that the exotics might be on the way to killing off a rare fern.
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Three Dog Eves: Canine diaspora from East Asia to Americas
Genetic studies have moved the origins of dog domestication from the Middle East to East Asia and suggest that the first people to venture into the Americas brought their dogs with them.
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Spider real estate wars: Wake up early
Big spiders in a colony get prime real estate day after day by spinning webs early.
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Dolphins bray when chasing down a fish
The first high-resolution analysis of which dolphin is making which sound suggests that hunters blurt out a low-frequency, donkeylike sound that may startle prey into freezing for an instant or attract other dolphins.
