Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Plants
Crop genes diffuse in seedy ways
A study of sugar beets in France suggests that genes may escape to wild relatives through seeds accidentally transported by humans rather than through drifting pollen.
- Animals
Flight burns less fuel than stopovers
The first measurements of energy use in migrating songbirds confirms that birds burn more energy during stopovers along the way than during their total flying time.
- Life
All the World’s a Phage
There are an amazing number of bacteriophages—viruses that kill bacteria—in the world.
- Animals
Sumo wrestling keeps big ants in line
In a Malaysian ant species, the large workers establish a hierarchy by engaging in spectacular shaking contests.
- Animals
Moonlighting: Beetles navigate by lunar polarity
A south African dung beetle is the first animal found to align its path by detecting the polarization of moonlight.
- Animals
Strange Y chromosome makes supermom mice
An otherwise rare system of sex determination has evolved independently at least six times in one genus of South American mice.
- Paleontology
Teeth tell tale of warm-blooded dinosaurs
Evidence locked within the fossil teeth of some dinosaurs may help bolster the view that some of the animals were, at least to some degree, warm-blooded.
- Animals
African cicadas warm up before singing
The first tests of temperature control in African cicadas have found species with a strategy that hogs energy but reduces the risk of predators.
- Paleontology
Alaska in the ice age: Was it bluegrass country?
At the height of the last ice age, northern portions of Alaska and the Yukon Territory were covered with an arid yet productive grassland that supported an abundance of large grazing mammals, fossils suggest.
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- Animals
Snake Pits: Viper heat sensors locate cool spots
Scientists who glued aluminum foil and plastic balls to live rattlesnakes say that snakes use their heat-sensing organs for more than hunting prey.
- Plants
Sun-tracking dads make better pollen
In one of the first tests of paternal behavior in plants, snow buttercups that were allowed to follow their natural tendency to track sun movement made more-viable pollen than did tethered blooms.
