Life

  1. Animals

    Retaking Flight: Some insects that didn’t use it didn’t lose it

    Stick insects may have done what biologists once thought was impossible: lose something as complicated as a wing in the course of evolution but recover it millions of years later.

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  2. Ecosystems

    Why didn’t the beetle cross the road?

    Beetle populations confined to specific forest areas by roads seem to have lost some of their genetic diversity.

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  3. Animals

    Cicada Subtleties

    What part of 10,000 cicadas screeching don't you understand?

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  4. Paleontology

    Overlooked fossil spread first feathers

    A new look at a fossil that had been lying in a drawer in Moscow for nearly 30 years has uncovered the oldest known feathered animal.

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  5. Animals

    Stalking Larvae: How an ancient sea creature grows up

    Scientists have finally observed living larvae of a sea lily, an ancient marine invertebrate related to starfish.

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  6. Animals

    Camelid Comeback

    The future of vicuñas in South America and wild camels in Asia hinges on decisions being made now about their management.

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  7. Animals

    Homing Lobsters: Fancy navigation, for an invertebrate

    Spiny lobsters are the first animals without backbones to pass tests for the orienteering power called true navigation.

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  8. Animals

    Ant Traffic Flow: Raiding swarms with few rules avoid gridlock

    The 200,000 virtually blind army ants using a single trail to swarm out to a raid and return home with the booty naturally develop three traffic lanes, and a study now shows that simple individual behavior makes the pattern.

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  9. Animals

    Ant Traffic Flow: Raiding swarms with few rules avoid gridlock

    The 200,000 virtually blind army ants using a single trail to swarm out to a raid and return home with the booty naturally develop three traffic lanes, and a study now shows that simple individual behavior makes the pattern.

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  10. Paleontology

    New fossil weighs in on primate origins

    A 55-million-year-old primate skeleton found in Wyoming indicates that the common ancestor of modern monkeys, apes, and people was built primarily for hanging tightly onto tree branches.

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  11. Paleontology

    New fossil weighs in on primate origins

    A 55-million-year-old primate skeleton found in Wyoming indicates that the common ancestor of modern monkeys, apes, and people was built primarily for hanging tightly onto tree branches.

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  12. Animals

    Single singing male toad seeks same

    Male spadefoot toads of the Spea multiplicata species evaluate male competitors by the same criterion females use.

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