Kathleen O'Neil

All Stories by Kathleen O'Neil

  1. Life

    How a newly identified bacterium saps corals of their energy

    A parasitic bacterium that preys on corals quickly reproduces when it senses more nutrients in its host.

  2. Life

    Spraying bats with ‘good’ bacteria may combat deadly white nose syndrome

    Nearly half of bats infected with white nose syndrome survived through winter after being spritzed with antifungal bacteria, a small study finds.

  3. Earth

    A belly full of wriggling worms makes wood beetles better recyclers

    Common beetles that eat rotten logs chew up more wood when filled with a roundworm larvae, releasing nutrients more quickly back to the forest floor.

  4. Animals

    Chytrid’s frog-killing toll has been tallied — and it’s bad

    Losses due to the amphibian-killing chytrid fungus are “the greatest documented loss of biodiversity attributable to a pathogen,” researchers find.