All Stories by Susan Milius
- Life
Fecal architecture is beetle armor
Predators have a hard time getting through the layers of excrement some beetle moms give their young.
- Agriculture
Nation by nation, evidence thin that boosting crop yields conserves land
Intensifying agriculture may not necessarily return farmland to nature without policy help.
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Botanical Whales
Adventures in the Tortugas reveal that seagrass fields need saving too.
- Animals
Classic view of leaf-cutter ants overlooked nitrogen-fixing partner
A fresh look at a fungus-insect partnership that biologists have studied for more than a century uncovers a role for bacteria.
- Life
Killer bees aren’t so smart
Brains are probably not what powers the invasive bee’s takeover from European honeybees
- Ecosystems
Impatiens plants are more patient with siblings
Streamside wildflower holds back on leaf competition when roots meet close kin
- Animals
Textbook case of color-changing spider reopened
Female crab spiders switch colors to match flowers but may not fool their prey
- Animals
Scent of alarm identifies male bed bugs
When mistaken for females, the guys release an alarming pheromone.
- Life
Spiders love sweet smell of blood perfume
For on spider species, feeding on blood-gorged mosquitoes adds charm to a mate
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A partnership apart
DNA in hand, scientists dissect and redefine the iconic lichen mutualism.
- Life
Humpback whale alters song if another one sings along
Acoustical study of male songs shows first evidence of the whales responding musically to each other.
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Manatee and whale woes with boat speed limits
This isn’t a cop convention. These are marine mammal biologists, but they do care about speed limits. At the 18th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, Science News reporter Susan Milius blogs about manatee researcher Edmund Gerstein's work on boat speeds and gory collisions with manatees. Gerstein is the guy at this meeting who has been arguing what sounds just backward at first. In circumstances such as murky water, he says, slow boats are more likely to hit manatees than are fast boats: Slow boats don’t make as much noise within the manatee hearing range, he says. So when manatees have to rely on sound to detect boats, the animals don’t pick up the warning until too late. There's also news on how well -- or not well -- speed limits set for boats that frequent the same waters as right whales are being followed.
