Ecosystems
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- Life
Morel mushroom may grow crop of its own
A fungus could be a farmer itself, sowing, cultivating and harvesting bacteria.
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- Ecosystems
Feces in termites’ nests block biological pest control
Built-in poop nourishes bacteria that protect notorious Formosan species.
- Ecosystems
Aging European forests full to the brim with carbon
Trees' capacity to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is dwindling.
- Paleontology
Dinosaur had impressive schnoz
Fossils found in Utah reveal geographic segregation of horned species.
- Plants
Mosses frozen in time come back to life
Buried under a glacier for hundreds of years, plants regrow in the lab.
- Life
Microbes flourish at deepest ocean site
At the bottom of the Mariana Trench, eleven kilometers down, bacteria prosper despite crushing pressure and isolation.
- Animals
Native pollinators boost crop yields worldwide
Farms with crops from coffee to mangoes don’t get the best yields if they rely solely on honeybees.
- Humans
U.S. team breaks through subglacial lake
Testing should continue for a day or more, probing for life in the Antarctic depths.
- Life
Victorian zoological map redrawn
Species distribution patterns that inspired Darwin and Wallace get an update.
- Tech
Antarctic test of novel ice drill poised to begin
Any day now, a team of 40 scientists and support personnel expects to begin using a warm, high pressure jet of water to bore a 30 centimeter hole through 83 meters of ice. Once it breaks through to the sea below, they’ll have a few days to quickly sample life from water before the hole begins freezing up again. It's just a test. But if all goes well, in a few weeks the team will move 700 miles and bore an even deeper hole to sample for freshwater life that may have been living for eons outside even indirect contact with Earth’s atmosphere.
