All Stories by Susan Milius
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How butterflies can eat cyanide
Some newly recognized chemical wizardry lets some Heliconius caterpillars thrive on leaves that defend themselves with cyanide.
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Excuse me, dear, which octopus are you?
Male blue-ringed octopuses get pretty far along in their courtship before they determine whether their partner is a female.
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Wasps: Mom doesn’t like you best
Female wasps that found a colony together show no favoritism toward their own offspring when the adults feed larvae.
- Ecosystems
Lab ecosystems show signs of evolving
An ambitious test of group selection considers whether natural selection can act on whole ecosystems as evolutionary units.
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Why did the turtle cross the road?
A survey of painted turtles that perished while trying to cross a highway suggests that the freshwater species need more dry land than expected.
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Predators shape river world top-down
Hunting and no-hunting zones allow a rare test of the much-debated proposal that big carnivores shape their ecosystems from the top down.
- Animals
He and she cooperate on anti-aphrodisiacs
Scientists have for the first time identified a chemical that serves as a butterfly anti-aphrodisiac.
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Why is that wasp helping?
Researchers have found nests of a social insect with helpers that are neither close kin nor slaves.
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Weevils pick on someone their own size
A horned weevil can't pick a real fight with a male too big for him because the bigger one can't get a good grip.
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Trilobites might have invented farming
A close look at fossils raises the possibility that a type of trilobite farmed bacteria.
- Agriculture
Carnivorous fish nibble at farming gain
Fish farming may ease pressure on wild stocks overall, but for certain species, farms mean a net loss of fish.
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