Life sciences writer Susan Milius has been writing about botany, zoology and ecology for Science News since the last millennium. She worked at diverse publications before breaking into science writing and editing. After stints on the staffs of The Scientist, Science, International Wildlife and United Press International, she joined Science News. Three of Susan's articles have been selected to appear in editions of The Best American Science Writing.

All Stories by Susan Milius

  1. Ecosystems

    Ocean plankton held hostage by pirate viruses

    The most abundant photosynthesizers on Earth stop storing carbon when they catch a virus.

  2. Life

    By leaking light, squid hides in plain sight

    Glass squid camouflage their eyes with wonderfully inefficient bioluminescence.

  3. Life

    Fruit fly’s giant sperm is quite an exaggeration

    Giant sperm, about 20 times a male fruit fly’s body length, could make the insects the champs of supersized sexual ornaments.

  4. Animals

    Some animals ‘see’ the world through oddball eyes

    Purple urchins, aka crawling eyeballs, are just one of several bizarre visual systems broadening scientists’ view of what makes an eye.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Scientists wrestle with possibility of second Zika-spreading mosquito

    It’s hard to say yet whether Asian tiger mosquitoes will worsen the ongoing Zika outbreak in the Americas.

  6. Life

    Gut microbe may challenge textbook on complex cells

    Science may finally have found a complex eukaryote cell that has lost all of its mitochondria.

  7. Plants

    Here’s what a leaf looks like during a fatal attack of bubbles

    Office equipment beats synchrotrons in showing how drought lets air bubbles kill the water-carrier network of veins in plant leaves.

  8. Animals

    Male giant water bugs win females by babysitting

    Female giant water bugs prefer males already caring for eggs, an evolutionary force for maintaining parental care.

  9. Animals

    Male giant water bugs win females by babysitting

    Female giant water bugs prefer males already caring for eggs, an evolutionary force for maintaining parental care.

  10. Plants

    Plants might remember with prions

    A plant protein has passed lab tests for prionlike powers as molecular memory.

  11. Plants

    Prions may help plants remember

    A plant protein has passed lab tests for prionlike powers as molecular memory.

  12. Animals

    Cave-dwelling salamander comes pigmented and pale

    Something’s funny in the family tree of pale, slinky cave salamanders.