Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Earth
Green-ish pesticides bee-devil honey makers
Pesticides are agents designed to rid targeted portions of the human environment of undesirable critters – such as boll weevils, roaches or carpenter ants. They’re not supposed to harm beneficials. Like bees. Yet a new study from China finds that two widely used pyrethroid pesticides – chemicals that are rather “green” as bug killers go – can significantly impair the pollinators’ reproduction.
- Earth
Country ants make it big in the city
Odorous house ants act like invading aliens when they discover urban living.
- Life
Mature females key to beluga sturgeon survival
Hatchery fish are unlikely to restore caviar-producing fish populations, a new assessment finds.
- Earth
Fowl surprise! Methylmercury improves hatching rate
A pinch of methylmercury is just ducky for mallard reproduction, according to a new federal study. The findings are counterintuitive, since methylmercury is ordinarily a potent neurotoxic pollutant.
- Life
Researchers distinguish two different types of blood stem cells
Working in mice, scientists find that red and white blood cells arise from different progenitors.
- Life
Rise of female weaponry driven by poop fights
Motherly fights for excrement in one species of dung beetle have favored the evolution of a special female horn.
- Paleontology
Ancient DNA suggests polar bears evolved recently
A study of a rare Norwegian fossil narrows down when polar bears evolved and finds they are closely related to modern-day brown bears in Alaska.
- Life
Hydrothermal vents sometimes colonized from afar
Deep-sea currents can waft larvae hundreds of kilometers.
- Plants
Losing life’s variety
2010 is the deadline set for reversing declines in biodiversity, but little has been accomplished.
- Ecosystems
Sea of plastics
Oceanographers are finding more patches of floating polymers, some up to 20 meters deep.
- Life
Ultraviolet freckles start fish fights
Two damselfish species use short wavelengths to recognize rivals’ spots.
- Animals
Whale hunts: Discussions on lifting the ‘ban’
The International Whaling Commission will formally address its future, next week, at a meeting in St. Petersburg, Fla. Once comprised of whaling nations, the IWC now includes member states just as likely to condemn any hunting of cetaceans. That internal tension is guiding the meeting’s agenda. On it’s plate: whether to overturn the organization’s long-standing moratorium on commercial whaling.
