Ecosystems
- Life
Microbes may sky jump to new hosts
The role of microbes in cloud formation and precipitation may not be an accident of chemistry so much as an evolutionary adaptation by certain bacteria and other nonsentient beings, a scientist posited at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
- Humans
Geographic profiling fights disease
Widely used to snare serial criminals, a forensic method finds application in epidemiology.
- Earth
Warming dents corn and wheat yields
Rising temperatures have decreased global grain production and may be partly responsible for food price increases.
- Chemistry
Plants and predators pick same poison
Zygaena caterpillars and their herbaceous hosts independently evolved an identical recipe for cyanide.
- Paleontology
Supersized superbunny
Fossils reveal a non-hopping giant rabbit that lived on the island of Minorca 5 million years ago.
- Life
Songbird’s testosterone surges at sight of thistle blooms
Seeing the right flowers in summer temperatures triggers male goldfinches’ reproductive readiness.
- Science & Society
Methane from BP spill goes missing
Latest sampling suggests either that microbes have already devoured the most abundant hydrocarbon produced by the leak — or that researchers have simply lost track of it.
- Life
Genes separate Africa’s elephant herds
Genetic work reveals forest and savanna pachyderms as distinct species.
- Earth
Bugged forests bad for climate
Trees savaged by pine beetles are slow to recover their ecological function as greenhouse gas sponges.
- Earth
Climate action could save polar bears
Cutting fossil fuel emissions soon would retain enough sea ice habitat for threatened species, scientists say.
- Ecosystems
Climate’s link to plague
Scientists have correlated changes in long-term Pacific Ocean temperature patterns with the incidence of a deadly bacterial pestilence, one spread by fleas living on and around mice and other rodents.
- Ecosystems
No ‘dead zone’ from BP oil
As aquatic microbes dine, they consume oxygen. When too many congregate at some temporary smorgasbord of goodies, they can use up so much oxygen that a so-called dead zone develops — water with too little oxygen to sustain fish, mammals or shellfish. On Sept. 7, federal scientists reported that despite the massive release of oil from the damaged BP well in the Gulf of Mexico, no such dead zone developed.
