All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Ants in the pants drive away birds
Yellow crazy ants can get so annoying that birds don’t eat their normal fruits, a new study finds.
- Agriculture
Potato famine pathogen packs unusual, sneaky genome
DNA of infamous Phytophthora microbe reveals big, quick-changing zones, possibly the key to the pathogen’s vexing adaptability
- Ecosystems
Google works on a different web
Page ranking system inspires algorithm for predicting food webs’ vulnerability.
- Earth
Oh, rats — there go the snails
A food fad among introduced rats has apparently crashed a once-thriving population of Hawaii’s famed endemic tree snails.
- Animals
Oops, missed that fossil iridescence
Nanostructures on a preserved feather offer the first fossil evidence of bird colors not from pigments, a new study says.
- Animals
Fruity whiff may inspire new mosquito repellents
Odors from ripening bananas can jam fruit flies’ and mosquitoes’ power to detect carbon dioxide, a new study finds.
- Animals
Back off, extinct moa
A New Zealand tree’s peculiar leaves may have served as defenses against long-gone giant birds.
- Animals
Vocal abilities lost, found and drowned out
Reports from the meeting of the American Ornithologists' Union
- Earth
Rapid evolution may be reshaping forest birds’ wings
Logging during the last century might have driven birds in mature boreal forests toward pointier wings while reforestation in New England led to rounder wings.
- Animals
SOS: Call the ants
Emergency ant workers bite at snares, dig and tug to free trapped sisters
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- Life
Death-grip fungus made me do it
Infection may be driving ants to set their jaws in low-hanging leaves before they die.
