Susan Milius

Susan Milius

Life Sciences Writer

Life sciences writer Susan Milius has been writing about botany, zoology and ecology for Science News since the last millennium. She worked at diverse publications before breaking into science writing and editing. After stints on the staffs of The Scientist, Science, International Wildlife and United Press International, she joined Science News. Three of Susan's articles have been selected to appear in editions of The Best American Science Writing.

All Stories by Susan Milius

  1. Fading to black doesn’t empower fish

    Field studies of three-spined stickleback fish dash a textbook example of the theory of how one species can take on a competitor's characteristics.

  2. Hungry spiders tune up web jiggliness

    Octonoba spiders tune the sensitivity of their webs according to how hungry they are.

  3. Tree pollination needs male-only rot

    A fungus that attacks only the male flowers on the chempedak fruit tree seems to be the edible reward for pollinators—the first fungus discovered to play such a role in pollination.

  4. What’s learning to a grasshopper?

    Learning the taste of nutritious food pays off in a boost to fitness, even for a grasshopper.

  5. Bacteria make locust-swarm signal

    A pheromone that helps drive locusts into a swarm comes from bacteria in their gut.

  6. Over there! Eat them instead!

    An ant will ignore a single golden egg bug and attack a mating pair, a choice that may explain why singles hang around pairs.

  7. Animals

    Pregnant—and Still Macho

    Some of the basic theories of sexual behavior and sexual selection are getting attention thanks to a burst of new studies in the topsy-turvy social world of the seahorse, where the males get pregnant.

  8. Animals

    Hormone still rules no-tadpole frogs

    Coqui frogs may skip the tadpole stage, but within the egg, they undergo a metamorphosis ruled by thyroid hormone.

  9. Bt broccoli test: Refuges cut pest resistance

    The first field test of a strategy for controlling insect resistance in a crop engineered to carry genes from the pesticide-producing bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis confirms the value of refuges in which some insects live without pesticide exposure.

  10. Is that salamander virus flying?

    Scientists searching for the carrier of the iridovirus causing a salamander disease have dismissed frogs and fish, but not birds.

  11. Animals

    New frog-killing disease may not be so new

    The skin disease that savaged amphibians in remote wildernesses in the 1990s has been linked to outbreaks in the 1970s.

  12. Migration may reawaken Lyme disease

    Lyme disease can hide in healthy-looking birds until the stress of migration drives it into a potentially infectious state.