All Stories by Susan Milius
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Buddy power warms tent caterpillars
Tent caterpillars get more heat and insulation than scientists had expected.
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Invaders can conquer Africanized bees
Bees that can take over even an Africanized-bee colony start by conning their nursemaids into giving them royal treatment.
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Ah, my pretty, you’re…#&! a beetle pile!
Hundreds of tiny, young blister beetles cluster into lumps resembling female bees and hitchhike on the male bees that they seduce.
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Do oxpeckers help or mostly just freeload?
A textbook example of mutualism—birds that ride around picking ticks off big African mammals—may not be mutually beneficial at all.
- Animals
The truth is, frogs bluff and crabs cheat
Two research teams say they've caught wild animals bluffing, only the second and third examples (outside of primate antics) ever recorded.
- Animals
Music without Borders
When birds trill and whales woo-oo, we call it singing. Are we serious?
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Colossal study shows amphibian woes
The largest amphibian data set ever crunched—936 populations in 37 countries—confirms global declines.
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How whales, dolphins, seals dive so deep
The blue whale, bottlenose dolphin, Weddell seal, and elephant seal cut diving energy costs 10 to 50 percent by simply gliding downward.
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Good guys and bad guys share tactics
A microbial odd couple—the brucellosis pathogen and a nitrogen-fixer for plants—need the same gene to settle into their hosts long-term.
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One-gene change makes mice neurotic
Researchers have engineered a strain of stressed-out mice by knocking out one gene.
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Lady-killing genes offer pest control
Two new fruit fly lines—with females that die on cue—could lead to changes in pest control.
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Hey, we’re richer than we thought!
The latest inventory of life in the United States has turned up an extra 100,000 species of plants, animals, and fungi.
