All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Hormone still rules no-tadpole frogs
Coqui frogs may skip the tadpole stage, but within the egg, they undergo a metamorphosis ruled by thyroid hormone.
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Corn Defenses: Bitten plants deploy gut-rotting enzyme
Some corn varieties that arose on the Caribbean island of Antigua defend themselves with chemical attacks that leave insect gut linings in tatters.
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Save Our Sounds
Some 14 libraries around the world have built up substantial collections of natural sounds, from bird songs to fish hums.
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Is that salamander virus flying?
Scientists searching for the carrier of the iridovirus causing a salamander disease have dismissed frogs and fish, but not birds.
- Animals
Singing frog in China evokes whales, primates
A frog in China warbles and flutes with such versatility that its high-pitched calls sound like those of birds or whales.
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Bt broccoli test: Refuges cut pest resistance
The first field test of a strategy for controlling insect resistance in a crop engineered to carry genes from the pesticide-producing bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis confirms the value of refuges in which some insects live without pesticide exposure.
- Animals
Ant Enforcers: To call in punishment, top ant smears rival
In Brazilian ant colonies where a female has to fight her way to the top, she stays in power through some judicious gang violence.
- Animals
Blame winter for the vanishing sparrows
Changes in winter farming practices may help explain a puzzling drop in number of rural house sparrows in southern England.
- Plants
Time Capsules: Seeds sprout 120 years after going underground
An experiment designed by a botany professor to last longer than his own life has demonstrated that seeds of two common flowers still sprout and blossom despite more than a century in a bottle.
- Animals
New frog-killing disease may not be so new
The skin disease that savaged amphibians in remote wildernesses in the 1990s has been linked to outbreaks in the 1970s.
- Ecosystems
Plants hitch rides with box turtles
In the pine rocklands of southern Florida, at least nine plant species find new homes by traveling through a turtle's gut.
- Plants
Sunflower genes don’t fit pattern
Comparison between crop and wild sunflower genes suggests that the plant followed an easy route to domestication.
