Bethany Brookshire

Staff Writer, Science News for Students, 2013–2021

Bethany Brookshire was the staff writer at Science News for Students from 2013 to 2021. She has a B.S. in biology and a B.A. in philosophy from The College of William and Mary, and a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She is also a host on the podcast Science for the People, and a 2019-2020 MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow.

All Stories by Bethany Brookshire

  1. Ecosystems

    How an invasive ant changed a lion’s dinner menu

    An invasive ant is killing off ants that defend trees from elephants. With less cover, it’s harder for lions to hunt zebras, so they hunt buffalo instead.

  2. Animals

    The right bacterial mix could help frogs take the heat

    Wood frog tadpoles that receive a transplant of green frog bacteria can swim in warm waters, revealing another role for microbiomes: heat tolerance.

  3. Plants

    The fastest-evolving moss in the world may not adapt to climate change

    The genus Takakia has the largest number of fast-evolving genes of any moss, a study finds. But it’s losing ground in the warming Himalayas.

  4. Animals

    Camouflaging wheat with a wheat smell could be a new approach to pest control

    Wheat fields coated in wheat germ oil confuse the noses of mice, reducing seed loss by more than 60 percent, a new study finds.

  5. Animals

    Freshwater leeches’ taste for snails could help control snail-borne diseases

    A freshwater leech species will eat snails, raising the possibility that leeches could be used to control snail-borne diseases that infect humans and livestock.

  6. Health & Medicine

    A new battery starves cancer cells of oxygen in mice

    When a self-charging battery is placed on a mouse’s tumor and combined with anticancer drugs, it reduced tumor size by 90 percent.

  7. Neuroscience

    In mice, anxiety isn’t all in the head. It can start in the heart

    Scientists used optogenetics to raise the heartbeat of a mouse, making it anxious. The finding could offer a new angle for studying anxiety disorders.

  8. Animals

    A natural gene drive could steer invasive rodents on islands to extinction

    A few genetic tweaks to a readily passed-on chunk of DNA could sterilize a mouse population, eliminating them in as little as 25 years.

  9. Animals

    Deer-vehicle collisions spike when daylight saving time ends

    In the week after much of the United States turns the clock back, scientists found a 16 percent increase in crashes between vehicles and deer.

  10. Animals

    Mountain lions pushed out by wildfires take more risks

    A study tracking mountain lions showed that after an intense burn, the big cats crossed roads more often, raising the risk of becoming roadkill.

  11. Climate

    Gas flares are leaking five times as much methane than previously thought

    The flares burn off methane at 91 percent efficiency. Achieving 98 percent efficiency would be like taking nearly 3 million cars off the road.

  12. Animals

    Mary Roach’s new book ‘Fuzz’ explores the ‘criminal’ lives of animals

    In “Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law,” author Mary Roach profiles mugging monkeys, thieving bears and other animal outlaws.