Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Paleontology
Some trilobites grew their own eyeshades
The 380-million-year-old fossil of a trilobite strongly suggests that members of at least some trilobite species were active during the daytime, a lifestyle that scientists previously had only suspected.
- Plants
Bean plants punish microbial partners
In a novel test of how partnerships between species can last in nature, researchers have found that soybeans punish cheaters.
- Ecosystems
Killer Consequences: Has whaling driven orcas to a diet of sea lions?
Killer whales may have been responsible for steep declines in seal, sea lion, and otter populations after whaling wiped out the great whales that killer whales had been eating.
- Animals
Leashing the Rattlesnake
Even in the 21st century, there's still room for old-fashioned, do-it-yourself ingenuity in experimental design for studying animal behavior.
- Paleontology
Ratzilla: Extinct rodent was big, really big
Scientists who've analyzed the fossilized remains of an extinct South American rodent say that the creatures grew to weigh a whopping 700 kilograms.
- Animals
Risk of egg diseases may rush incubation
Bird eggs can catch infections through their shells, and that risk may be an overlooked factor in the puzzlingly early start of incubation.
- Plants
Glitch splits hermaphrodite flowers
In a newly proposed scenario, polyploidy may trigger perfectly good hermaphrodite plants to evolve gender forms.
- Paleontology
Fossils’ ear design hints at aquatic lifestyle
New studies of distinctive skull structures in fossils of one of Earth's earliest-known four-limbed creatures suggest the animal could hear best when it was underwater.
- Animals
Skin Chemistry: Poison frogs upgrade toxins from prey
For the first time, scientists have found a poisonous frog that takes up a toxin from its prey and then tweaks the chemical to make it a more deadly weapon.
- Animals
To Bee He or She: Honeybees use novel sex-setting switch
After more than a decade of work, an international team has found the main gene that separates the girls from the boys among honeybees.
- Animals
Snapping shrimp whip up a riot of bubbles
High-speed video and fancy math demonstrate that snapping shrimp make so much noise by popping bubbles.
- Paleontology
Oh, what a sticky web they wove
A look inside a piece of 130-million-year-old amber has revealed a thin filament of spider silk with sticky droplets that look just like those produced by modern spiders.
