All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
‘Murder hornets’ have a new common name: Northern giant hornet
Anti-Asian hate crimes helped push U.S. entomologists to give a colorful insect initially dubbed the Asian giant hornet a less inflammatory name.
- Animals
These huntsman spiders do something weird: live together as a big, happy family
Five unusual species of spider moms let youngsters live at home way past the cute waddling baby phase.
- Animals
An ‘acoustic camera’ shows joining the right boy band boosts a frog’s sex appeal
Serenading with like voices may help male wood frogs woo females into their pools, analysis of individual voices in a frog choir shows.
- Plants
These flowers lure pollinators to their deaths. There’s a new twist on how
Some jack-in-the-pulpit plants may use sex to lure pollinators. That's confusing for male fungus gnats — and deadly.
- Animals
Invasive jorō spiders get huge and flashy — if they’re female
Taking the pulse (literally) of female jorō spiders hints that the arachnid might push farther north than a relative that has stayed put in the South.
- Animals
Genetically modified mosquitoes could be tested in California soon
The EPA also OK’d more trials in Key West, Fla. Both states now get their say in whether to release free-flying Aedes aegypti to sabotage their own kind.
- Animals
Mirror beetles’ shiny bodies may not act as camouflage after all
Hundreds of handmade clay nubbins test the notion that a beetle’s metallic high gloss could confound predators. Birds pecked the lovely idea to death.
- Animals
Cicada science heats up when Brood X emerges. 2021 was no exception
Mating mobs of big, hapless, 17-year-old cicadas made for a memorable spring in the Eastern United States
- Climate
The first step in using trees to slow climate change: Protect the trees we have
In all the fuss over planting trillions of trees, we need to protect the forests that already exist.
- Animals
Focusing on Asian giant hornets distorts the view of invasive species
2021’s first “murder hornet” is yet another arrival. This is the not-so-new normal.
- Animals
The U.S.’s first open-air genetically modified mosquitoes have taken flight
After a decade of argument, Oxitec pits genetically modified mosquitoes against Florida’s spreaders of dengue and Zika.
- Animals
Tiny crystals give a plain fish twinkling, colorful dots under light
Fishes’ flashing photonic crystals may provide inspiration for ultra-miniaturized sensors that work in a living body.
