Jonathan Lambert

Staff Writer, Biological Sciences, 2019-2021

Jonathan Lambert was a staff writer covering biological sciences at Science News from 2019 to 2021. He earned a master’s degree from Cornell University studying how a bizarre day-long mating ritual helped accelerate speciation in a group of Hawaiian crickets. A summer at the Dallas Morning News as a AAAS Mass Media fellow sparked a pivot from biologist to science journalist. He previously wrote for Quanta Magazine, NPR, and Nature News.

All Stories by Jonathan Lambert

  1. Animals

    Why some whales are giants and others are just big

    Being big helps whales access more food. But how big a whale can get is influenced by whether it hunts for individual prey or filter-feeds.

  2. Life

    A single-celled protist reacts to threats in surprisingly complex ways

    New research validates a century-old experiment that shows single-celled organisms are capable of complex “decision making.”

  3. Earth

    Plastics outnumber baby fish 7-to-1 in some coastal nurseries

    Ocean slicks serve as calm, food-rich nurseries for larval fish. A new study shows that slicks also accumulate plastics, which get eaten by baby fish.

  4. Animals

    Silver-backed chevrotains have been ‘rediscovered’ by science after 29 years

    With help from Vietnamese villagers, researchers captured photos of a species of deerlike ungulate thought lost to science nearly three decades ago.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Running just once a week may help you outpace an early death

    Any amount of running can lower a person’s risk of early death, an analysis of multiple studies finds.

  6. Animals

    Apple TV+’s ‘The Elephant Queen’ shies away from hard truths

    The Elephant Queen offers an intimate look into the lives of elephants, but the documentary largely avoids threats the animals face.

  7. Life

    Vampire bat friendships endure from captivity to the wild

    Vampire bats can form social bonds that persist from a lab setting to the outdoors, suggesting the cooperative relationships are like friendships.

  8. Life

    Bird eggs laid in cold climates are darker, which may keep eggs warm

    A global survey of bird egg color reveals a simple trend: the colder the climate, the darker the egg.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Prozac proves no better than a placebo in treating kids with autism

    In a small clinical trial, drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors didn’t ease obsessive-compulsive symptoms in children with autism.

  10. Life

    A peek inside a turtle embryo wins the Nikon Small World photography contest

    The annual competition highlights the wonders to be found when scientists and photographers zoom in on the world around us.

  11. Life

    Acrobatic choanoflagellates could help explain how multicellularity evolved

    A newfound single-celled microbe species forms groups of multiple individual organisms that change shape in response to light.

  12. Life

    Extreme snowfall kept most plants and animals in one Arctic ecosystem from reproducing

    A very snowy winter in 2018 left parts of Greenland covered well into the summer, causing an ecosystem-wide reproductive collapse in one area.