Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Plants
How a tomato plant foils a dreaded vampire vine
Tomatoes can foil a dodder plant attack by getting scared and scabbing over.
- Animals
Ways to beat heat have hidden costs for birds
Birds that look as if they’re coping with heat waves and climate change may actually be on a downward slide, with underappreciated disadvantages of panting and seeking shade.
- Animals
The weird mating habits of daddy longlegs
Scientists studying the sex lives of daddy longlegs are finding there’s a lot of diversity among this group of arachnids.
- Oceans
Lack of nutrients stalled rebound of marine life post-Permian extinction
Warm sea surface temperatures slowed the nitrogen cycle in Earth’s oceans and delayed the recovery of life following the Permian extinction, researchers propose.
- Genetics
Darwin’s Dogs wants your dog’s DNA
The Darwin’s Dogs citizen science project is collecting canine DNA to better understand dog genetics and behavior.
- Animals
Bird nest riddle: Which shape came first?
Today’s simple cup-shaped songbird nests look as if they just had to have evolved before roofed nests. But that could be backward.
- Neuroscience
Fentanyl’s death toll is rising
The ability of fentanyl, an opioid, to freeze chest muscles within minutes may be to blame for some overdoses, a new autopsy study shows.
- Animals
Hoverflies (probably) can’t sense gravity
Acrobatic insects called hoverflies may simply use visual and airflow cues and not gravity to orient their bodies midair.
- Neuroscience
Eating shuts down nerve cells that counter obesity
A group of nerve cells shut down when food hits the lips, a study of mice finds.
- Health & Medicine
Zika kills brain cells in adult mice
Zika virus may harm more than babies: The virus can infect and kill brain cells in adult mice, too.
- Archaeology
How to get Ötzi’s look
DNA from Ötzi the Iceman’s clothes and quiver traced to both domesticated and wild animals.
- Animals
Evidence piles up for popular pesticides’ link to pollinator problems
Neonicotinoid pesticides linked to population declines in California butterflies and wild bee extinctions in Great Britain.
