Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Profiles in Courtship: Flirting male fish show their best sides
Courting male guppies that sport a tad more orange on one side of their bodies than on the other tend to flash that brighter side at females.
- Paleontology
Jurassic CSI: Fossils indicate central nervous system damage
Fossils found in the head-thrown-back position, the so-called "dead bird" pose, probably died from central nervous system damage.
- Paleontology
Winged dragon
A quarry on the Virginia–North Carolina border has yielded fossils of an unusual gliding reptile that lived in the region about 220 million years ago.
- Animals
Clownfish noisemaker is new to science
Clownfish make "pop-pop-pop" noises at each other by clacking their teeth together in a novel way.
- Animals
Moths mimic ‘Don’t eat me’ sounds
Moths that make clicking noises at predatory bats are mimicking a defensive signal made by other moths that click and also taste bad.
- Plants
Easy There, Bro: A plant can spot and favor close kin
A little beach plant can recognize its siblings as long as their roots grow in nearby soil.
- Paleontology
Big and Birdlike: Chinese dinosaur was 3.5 meters tall
Paleontologists have unearthed the remains of a gigantic birdlike dinosaur, 3.5 meters tall, that lived 70 million years ago in what is now China.
- Animals
Scary Singing: Precise birds signal, ‘Don’t mess with us’
A pair of magpie-larks can advertise their toughness by the precision of the duets they sing.
- Animals
Pothole Pals: Ants pave roads for fellow raiders
By throwing their bodies into tiny potholes on rough trails, army ants enable their comrade to race over them, improving the colony's overall foraging success.
- Ecosystems
Slime Dwellers
The health of corals, and their adaptability in the face of adversity, may rest largely on the microbes they recruit into a slime that coats their surfaces.
- Animals
Virgin Birth: Shark has daughter without a dad
DNA testing of two sharks confirms an instance of reproduction without mating, adding a fifth major vertebrate lineage to those known for occasional virgin births.
- Animals
Low Life: Cold, polar ocean looks surprisingly rich
The first survey of life in deep waters around Antarctica has turned up hundreds of new species and a lot more variety than explorers had expected.
