All Stories by Susan Milius
- Genetics
Selfish genes hide for decades in plain sight of worm geneticists
Crossing wild Hawaiian C. elegans with the familiar lab strain reveals genes that benefit themselves by making mother worms poison offspring who haven’t inherited the right stuff.
- Animals
In Florida, they’re fighting mosquitoes by meddling with their sex lives
As an alternative to genetically modified mosquitoes, Florida skeeter police are testing one of two strategies that use bacteria to meddle with insect sex lives.
- Animals
Sea creatures’ sticky ‘mucus houses’ catch ocean carbon really fast
A new deepwater laser tool measures the carbon-filtering power of snot nets created by little-known sea animals called giant larvaceans.
- Climate
Ocean acidification may hamper food web’s nitrogen-fixing heroes
A new look at marine Trichodesmium microbes suggests trouble for nitrogen fixation in an acidifying ocean.
- Life
How a mushroom gets its glow
For the first time, biologists have pinpointed the compound that lights up in fungal bioluminescence.
- Life
How a mushroom gets its glow
For the first time, biologists have pinpointed the compound that lights up in fungal bioluminescence.
- Animals
First fluorescent frogs might see each others’ glow
A polka dot frog, the first known fluorescent amphibian, may get a visibility boost in twilight and moonlight.
- Animals
For glass frogs, moms matter after all
Brief but important maternal care may have evolved before the elaborate egg-tending of glass frog dads.
- Animals
Female guppies with bigger brains pick more attractive guys
A larger-brained female guppy may pick primo males, but all that mental machinery costs her in other ways.
- Animals
How one enslaving wasp eats through another
A wasp that forces oaks to grow a gall gets tricked into digging an escape tunnel for its killers.
- Climate
Changing climate could worsen foods’ nutrition
Climate change could aggravate hidden hunger by sapping micronutrients from soils and plants, reducing nutrition in wheat, rice and other crops.
- Neuroscience
Scratching is catching in mice
Contagious itching spreads by sight mouse-to-mouse, and scientists have identified brain structures behind the phenomenon.
