Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Paleontology
Major eruption cooled the climate but went unnoticed
Ice-core records suggest that a major 1809 eruption cooled Earth even before the Tambora eruption and ‘the year without a summer’.
- Ecosystems
Dining: Bugged on Thanksgiving
Earlier this week, I met with Zack Lemann at the Insectarium, a roughly 18-month-old Audubon museum. He gave me a behind-the-scenes tour of its dozens of living exhibits hosting insects and more -- including tarantulas and, arriving that day for their Tuesday debut, white (non-albino) alligators. But the purpose of my noon-hour visit was to sample the local cuisine and learn details of preparations for a holiday menu that would be offered through tomorrow at the facility’s experiential cafe: Bug Appetit. There’s Thanksgiving turkey with a cornbread and wax worm stuffing, cranberry sauce with meal worms, and Cricket Pumpkin Pie. It’s cuisine most Americans would never pay for. But at the Insectarium, they don’t have to. It’s offered free as part of an educational adventure.
- Animals
Little push turns snail lefties to righties
Bumping an early embryo’s cells can switch the direction of its spiral.
- Life
Bone regulators moonlight in the brain as fever inducers
Study in mice suggests proteins could be source of post-menopausal hot flashes.
- Life
Fecal architecture is beetle armor
Predators have a hard time getting through the layers of excrement some beetle moms give their young.
- Agriculture
Nation by nation, evidence thin that boosting crop yields conserves land
Intensifying agriculture may not necessarily return farmland to nature without policy help.
- Earth
Where humans go, pepper virus follows
Plant pathogen could help track waters polluted with human waste.
- Animals
Classic view of leaf-cutter ants overlooked nitrogen-fixing partner
A fresh look at a fungus-insect partnership that biologists have studied for more than a century uncovers a role for bacteria.
- Life
Corn genome a maze of unusual diversity
Multiple teams announce complete draft of the maize genome, with a full plate of surprises that include hints about hybrid vigor.
- Life
Climate not really what doomed large North American mammals
Prevalence of a dung fungus over time suggests megafauna extinctions at end of last ice age started before vegetation changed.
- Life
Killer bees aren’t so smart
Brains are probably not what powers the invasive bee’s takeover from European honeybees
- Life
Penguin DNA evolving faster than thought
Comparing the DNA in modern birds to that in ancient generations shows molecular evolution happens at varying rates, and that each species has its own rate of evolution.
