All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Female antelopes take the lead in courtship
Topi antelopes, with their hesitant males, reverse the usual sex roles in mammal courtship.
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Chimp Champ: Ape aces memory test, outscores people
A young chimp outperforms college students on a test of recalling numbers glimpsed for less than a quarter of a second. With video.
- Plants
Botanists refine family tree for flowering plants
Two research teams have used the biggest array of flowering-plant genes yet to try to reconstruct the elusive evolutionary history of today's flowers.
- Plants
So Sproutish: Anti-aging gene for plants gives drought protection
A gene that can hold off the decrepitude of old age in plants offers an unusual approach to protecting crops from drought.
- Earth
Hey, What about Us?
The plight of polar bears may get most of the attention as climate change disrupts the Arctic ice, but plenty of other species, from walrus and seals to one-celled specks, are also going to see their world change radically.
- Plants
It Takes a Village: Tweaking neighbors reroutes evolution
The other residents of a plant's neighborhood can make a big difference in whether evolutionary forces favor or punish a plant's trait.
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Eastern farms have native-bee insurance
If honeybees somehow vanished, the pockets of wild land in the Delaware Valley still harbor enough native bees to fill in and do the tough job of pollinating watermelon farms.
- Plants
Tough Frills: Ferns’ wimp stage aces survival test
A supposedly fragile stage in the life of ferns shows surprising toughness.
- Agriculture
Insects laughing at Bt toxin? Try this
A new countermeasure restores the toxicity of Bt pesticides to insects that have evolved resistance.
- Animals
Mr. Not Wrong: Not my species? Not a problem
Female toads that accept mates of another species in tough times may be looking after their own interest.
- Animals
Cousin Who? Gliding mammals may be primates’ nearest kin
Two species of small, little-known rain forest mammals may be primates' closest living relatives.
- Animals
Smells Funny: Fish schools break up over body odor
Just an hour's swim in slightly contaminated water can give a fish such bad body odor that its schoolmates shun it.
