Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Ecosystems
No Way to Make Soup—Thirty-two tons of contraband shark fins seized on the high seas
Something looked suspicious. This former swordfishing vessel, out of Honolulu, was clearly heavy with cargo when discovered by U.S. law-enforcement officials 350 miles off of Acapulco, on Aug. 13. A boarding team found no fishing–just shark fins. However, under a new federal law, transporting fins collected by another fishing vessel constitutes illegal “fishing.” US Coast […]
- Animals
Ant Enforcers: To call in punishment, top ant smears rival
In Brazilian ant colonies where a female has to fight her way to the top, she stays in power through some judicious gang violence.
- Animals
Blame winter for the vanishing sparrows
Changes in winter farming practices may help explain a puzzling drop in number of rural house sparrows in southern England.
- Animals
Getting a Grip: How gecko toes stick
Scientists have pinned down the molecular basis of the gecko's astonishing ability to scamper up polished walls and hang from ceilings, paving the way for a new type of synthetic dry adhesive.
- Plants
Time Capsules: Seeds sprout 120 years after going underground
An experiment designed by a botany professor to last longer than his own life has demonstrated that seeds of two common flowers still sprout and blossom despite more than a century in a bottle.
- Animals
New frog-killing disease may not be so new
The skin disease that savaged amphibians in remote wildernesses in the 1990s has been linked to outbreaks in the 1970s.
- Animals
What’s the Mane Point? Foes and females both have role
The condition of a lion's mane apparently advertises high-quality mates to picky females and wards off male adversaries.
- Ecosystems
Plants hitch rides with box turtles
In the pine rocklands of southern Florida, at least nine plant species find new homes by traveling through a turtle's gut.
- Plants
Sunflower genes don’t fit pattern
Comparison between crop and wild sunflower genes suggests that the plant followed an easy route to domestication.
- Animals
Male butterflies are driven to drink
Monarch butterflies that winter in California, especially males that had a demanding day, search out dewdrops as a water source.
- Paleontology
Sea Dragons
About 235 million years ago, as the earliest dinosaurs stomped about on land, some of their reptilian relatives slipped back into the surf, took on an aquatic lifestyle, and became ichthyosaurs—Greek for fish lizards.
- Ecosystems
Tougher Weeds? Borrowed gene helps wild sunflower
Feeding concerns about developing superweeds, a test of sunflowers shows for the first time that a biologically engineered gene moving from a crop can give an advantage to wild relatives under naturalistic conditions.
