Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- Animals
Flight puts the fight back into crickets
Researchers are just discovering what gamblers in China have known for centuries—flying can make a losing cricket fight again.
- Ecosystems
Males live longer with all-year mating
Male butterflies live longer in Madeira, where females are available year-round, than in Sweden, where females mature in one burst.
- Plants
Why tulips can’t dance
An elliptical stem gives daffodils an unusual liveliness in the wind compared with tulips.
- Animals
When Ants Squeak
In the past 20 years, researchers studying sound communication in ants have discovered a sort of ant-ernet, zinging with messages about lost relatives, great food, free rides for hitchhikers, caterpillars in search of ant partners, and impending doom.
- Animals
Bees log flight distances, train with maps
After decades of work, scientists crack two problems of how bees navigate: reading bee odometers and mapping training flights.
- Animals
Slithering on Air: Flying snakes glide through the treetops
The paradise tree snake flies by flattening its body and slithering through the air.
- Animals
Strong Medicine: Over-the-counter remedy snags snakes
Acetaminophen—the active ingredient in Tylenol—vanquishes brown tree snakes, the bane of Guam.
- Ecosystems
Pfiesteria’s Bite: Microbe may kill fish by skinning, not poisoning
At least one kind of Pfiesteria—accused of killing fish and threatening human health—does not produce a toxin but kills by eating holes in fish's skin, some researchers say.
- Plants
Recent tree scourge poses garden threat
Lab tests suggest that a lethal disease of oak trees in California and Oregon could strike some popular garden shrubs in the rhododendron family.
- Plants
Disease outpacing control in largest chestnut patch left
An unusual test of a biological control for the blight that's killing American chestnuts doesn't look good in the largest remaining patch.
