Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Plants
Easy There, Bro: A plant can spot and favor close kin
A little beach plant can recognize its siblings as long as their roots grow in nearby soil.
- Paleontology
Big and Birdlike: Chinese dinosaur was 3.5 meters tall
Paleontologists have unearthed the remains of a gigantic birdlike dinosaur, 3.5 meters tall, that lived 70 million years ago in what is now China.
- Animals
Scary Singing: Precise birds signal, ‘Don’t mess with us’
A pair of magpie-larks can advertise their toughness by the precision of the duets they sing.
- Animals
Pothole Pals: Ants pave roads for fellow raiders
By throwing their bodies into tiny potholes on rough trails, army ants enable their comrade to race over them, improving the colony's overall foraging success.
- Ecosystems
Slime Dwellers
The health of corals, and their adaptability in the face of adversity, may rest largely on the microbes they recruit into a slime that coats their surfaces.
- Animals
Virgin Birth: Shark has daughter without a dad
DNA testing of two sharks confirms an instance of reproduction without mating, adding a fifth major vertebrate lineage to those known for occasional virgin births.
- Animals
Low Life: Cold, polar ocean looks surprisingly rich
The first survey of life in deep waters around Antarctica has turned up hundreds of new species and a lot more variety than explorers had expected.
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- Plants
Tiny pool protects flower buds
A rare structure on flowers, tiny cups that keep buds underwater until they bloom, can protect the buds from marauding moths.
- Animals
Sex—perhaps a good idea after all
A family of mites may be the first animal lineage shown to have abandoned sexual reproduction and then reevolved it millions of years later.
- Animals
Egg Shell Game
Birds apparently cheat chance when it comes to laying eggs that contain sons or daughters.
- Animals
Spider blood fluoresces
Among spiders, fluorescence under ultraviolet light seems to be a widespread trait.
