Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Hummingbirds can clock flower refills
Hummingbirds can keep track of when a particular flower has replenished its nectar and is worth visiting again.
- Plants
They’re All Part Fungus
Hidden deep in their tissues, all plants probably have fungi that don't make them sick but still may have a big influence.
- Animals
Sharpshooter threatens Tahiti by inedibility
A North American insect is menacing Tahitian ecosystems by getting itself killed and proving surprisingly toxic to its predators.
- Animals
Wary male spiders woo lifelessly
When trying to court a cannibalistic female spider, males of a certain species play dead.
- Animals
Hairy crab lounges deep in the Pacific
A newly discovered deep-sea creature has the body of a crab, but with long, fluffy, blonde hair covering its legs.
- Plants
Reality Botany: Data ease doubts about plant species
Despite the doubts of some botanists, plant species aren't just some arbitrary human classification scheme, says a team of evolutionary biologists.
- Animals
That’s One Weird Tooth
The narwhal's distinctive spiral tusk has structures that could make it phenomenally sensitive, raising new questions about its functions.
- Animals
Woodpecker video is challenged and defended
The video released last spring as evidence that the ivory-billed woodpecker exists may show a common pileated woodpecker, some critics say.
- Animals
Can You Hear Me Now? Frogs in roaring streams use ultrasonic calls
A small frog living beside Chinese hot springs may be the first amphibian known to use ultrasound in its calls.
- Plants
Small difference factored big in rice domestication
A change in a single letter of a rice plant's genetic code gave it the ability to hold onto grains until harvest.
- Paleontology
Out of the Shadows
An ongoing flurry of fossil finds is triggering a reevaluation of how early mammals and their close kin eked out an existence during the Age of Dinosaurs.
- Ecosystems
Light All Night
New digital images demonstrate that artificial light from urban areas penetrates deep into some of America's most remote wild places, where it may disrupt ecosystems that have evolved with a nightly quota of darkness.
