Life
- Neuroscience
Restoring Recall: Memories may form and reform, with sleep
Two new studies indicate that memories, at least for skills learned in a laboratory, undergo a process of storage and restorage that depends critically on sleep.
By Bruce Bower - Animals
Bad Bubbles: Could sonar give whales the bends?
Odd bubbles of fat and gas have turned up in the bodies of marine mammals, raising the question of whether something about human activity in the oceans could give these deep divers decompression sickness.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Carnivores in Captivity: Size of range in wild may predict risk in zoo
A survey of zoo reports of troubled animals suggests that the minimum size of a species' range predicts how well it will adapt to captivity.
By Susan Milius - Paleontology
Some trilobites grew their own eyeshades
The 380-million-year-old fossil of a trilobite strongly suggests that members of at least some trilobite species were active during the daytime, a lifestyle that scientists previously had only suspected.
By Sid Perkins - Plants
Bean plants punish microbial partners
In a novel test of how partnerships between species can last in nature, researchers have found that soybeans punish cheaters.
By Susan Milius - Ecosystems
Killer Consequences: Has whaling driven orcas to a diet of sea lions?
Killer whales may have been responsible for steep declines in seal, sea lion, and otter populations after whaling wiped out the great whales that killer whales had been eating.
- Animals
Leashing the Rattlesnake
Even in the 21st century, there's still room for old-fashioned, do-it-yourself ingenuity in experimental design for studying animal behavior.
By Susan Milius - Paleontology
Ratzilla: Extinct rodent was big, really big
Scientists who've analyzed the fossilized remains of an extinct South American rodent say that the creatures grew to weigh a whopping 700 kilograms.
By Sid Perkins - Animals
Risk of egg diseases may rush incubation
Bird eggs can catch infections through their shells, and that risk may be an overlooked factor in the puzzlingly early start of incubation.
By Susan Milius - Plants
Glitch splits hermaphrodite flowers
In a newly proposed scenario, polyploidy may trigger perfectly good hermaphrodite plants to evolve gender forms.
By Susan Milius - Paleontology
Fossils’ ear design hints at aquatic lifestyle
New studies of distinctive skull structures in fossils of one of Earth's earliest-known four-limbed creatures suggest the animal could hear best when it was underwater.
By Sid Perkins - Animals
Skin Chemistry: Poison frogs upgrade toxins from prey
For the first time, scientists have found a poisonous frog that takes up a toxin from its prey and then tweaks the chemical to make it a more deadly weapon.
By Susan Milius