All Stories by Susan Milius
- 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.
- Animals
Collision Course
The tales of two ornithologists trying to prevent birds colliding with windows highlight the obstacles facing applied biology.
- Animals
New fungus species found killing salamanders
First there was amphibian killer fungus Bd. Now there's Bs.
- Animals
Traveling with elders helps whooping cranes fly straight
Rare data show birds get more efficient the more they migrate along route between Wisconsin and Florida.
- Microbes
Let the bedbugs bite
Harold Harlan has been feeding bedbugs, intentionally, on his own blood since 1973. He keeps pint or quart jars in his home containing at least 4,000 bugs.
- Animals
Birds know road speed limits
Crows, house sparrows and other species judge when to flee the asphalt by average traffic rates rather than an oncoming car's speed.
