Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Plants
Stalking the Green Meat Eaters
Pitcher plants in a New England bog hold little ecosystems in their leaves, and also act as indicators of the bog's ecological health.
- Animals
Not Your Ordinary Amphibians
They resemble mondo worms or perhaps eels and snakes. But caecilians (seh sil yenz) are actually legless amphibians, and along with deep sea fishes are among the least well known vertebrates on the planet. Some run to a meter or more in length. Although information on these elusive animals and photos of them are hard […]
- Paleontology
Unexpected Archive: Mammoth hair yields ancient DNA
Hair from ancient mammoths contains enough genetic material to permit reconstruction of parts of the animal's genome.
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- Animals
Honeybee mobs smother big hornets
Honeybees gang up on an attacking hornet, killing it by blocking its breathing.
- Paleontology
Bumpy Bones: Fossil hints that dinosaur had feathery forearms
A series of knobs on the forearm bone of a 1.5-meter-long velociraptor provides the first direct evidence of substantial feathers on a dinosaur of that size.
- Animals
Hybrid Power: Salamander invader ups survival of rare cousin
Mixed offspring of the endangered California tiger salamander and an invasive cousin survive better than either pure-bred species, raising tricky questions for conservationists.
- Animals
Fish Switch: Salmon make baby trout after species, sex swap
Salmon implanted with trout reproductive tissue bred to produce a generation of normal rainbow trout.
- Animals
Hive Scourge? Virus linked to recent honeybee die-off
A poorly understood virus seems to have a connection to the recent widespread demise of honeybees.
- Animals
Cicada Serenades
One sound that characterizes American summers is the cicada chorus. The insects’ long, drawn out serenades can be loud and ethereal, reminiscent of some cross between the sounds of rustling and scraping. Half a world away, Borneo’s cicadas belt out very different melodies. Although some sound fairly familiar, one available at this German site is […]
- Plants
Cretaceous Corsages? Fossil in amber suggests antiquity of orchids
Orchids appeared on the scene about 80 million years ago, according to evidence from a bee that collected orchid pollen and got trapped in amber.
- Animals
Bats hum for sugar too
Some nectar-feeding bats metabolize sugars as rapidly as hummingbirds do.
