All Stories by Susan Milius
- Plants
Single-sex flowers release his, hers fragrances
Growing on the same tree, male blooms smell different from female blooms in certain tropical plant species.
- Animals
The colorful lives of squid
Your calamari, it turns out, may have come from a temporary transvestite with rainbows in its armpits.
- Animals
Amphibian killer forces immune-cell suicides
Fungal menace to frogs and their kin shuts down key parts of the animals’ defenses.
- Animals
Lurking males lead to hard-to-fertilize mouse eggs
Mixed-sex society raises resistance to sperm in what may be a long-running arms race between the sexes over fertilization.
- Animals
Hibernating turtles don’t slip into a coma
Winterized red-eared sliders shut down their lungs but spring into action when they see light.
- Plants
Tiny fossils set record for oldest flowerlike pollen
Oldest flowerlike pollen might have come from an ancient relative of today’s flowering plants.
- Plants
Hard-shelled seaweed survives by its loose knees
Stringy joints between calcified algae’s segments don’t break easily under repeated stresses.
- Animals
Vampire reality check
A vampire bat drinks one meal a night, and missing just three nights in a row would probably kill the animal.
- Ecosystems
Feces in termites’ nests block biological pest control
Built-in poop nourishes bacteria that protect notorious Formosan species.
- Animals
Young insect legs have real meshing gears
Tiny teeth on hiplike structures keep legs in sync, allowing juvenile planthoppers to jump.
- Microbes
Horsetail spores don’t need legs to jump
Forget legs. A plant uses curly, humidity-controlled ribbons to make epic leaps.
- Animals
Avoiding feces may be ‘luxury’ wild mice can’t afford
For a mouse in the woods, finding any food at all may trump poopy locations.
