Microbes

Animals

Getting creative to cut methane from cows

Changing feed, giving vaccines and selective breeding may enable scientists to help beef and dairy cattle shake their title as one of society's worst methane producers.

Climate

Kangaroo farts may not be so eco-friendly after all

Kangaroos fart methane, but not much thanks to the metabolism of gut microbes

Animals

Diagram captures microbes’ influence across animal kingdom

A network diagram of animal species shows that many microbes living in humans also make themselves at home in dogs, pigs and cattle.

Paleontology

Vampire microbes sucked some ancient life dry

Hole-ridden fossils suggest that vampirelike microbes were among the first predators that targeted eukaryotes.

Animals

Don’t judge a whale’s gut microbiome by diet alone

Evolutionary history and diet may both determine the microbes that live in a baleen whale's stomach, researchers report.

Animals

Invading Argentine ants carry virus that attacks bees

The first survey of viruses in the globally invasive Argentine ant brings both potentially bad and good news.

Animals

Invading Argentine ant hordes carry a virus that attacks bees

Invasive Argentine ants may be reservoirs for a virus menacing honeybees — and for previously unknown virus.

Genetics

DNA architecture, novel forensics offer new clues

Going from theory to practice is always rife with problems, be it shifting from the sequence of DNA’s letters to observing its dynamic machinations or from an identity marker in the lab to a piece of courtroom evidence.

Life

Extinction in lab bottle was a fluke, experiment finds

Extinction in a bottle was a random catastrophe, not survival of the fittest.

Microbes

Bacteria in flowers may boost honeybees’ healthy gut microbes

Honeybees may deliver doses of probiotics to the hive to help feed baby bees’ microbiome.

Neuroscience

Shifting views of brain cells, and other fresh perspectives

The details emerging from the latest work on glial cells are sure to yield more insights as scientists continue their struggle to understand the mind.

Life

The tree of life gets a makeover

Biology’s tree of life has morphed from the familiar classroom version emphasizing kingdoms into a complex depiction of supergroups, in which animals are aligned with a slew of single-celled cousins.