Big brains or big guts: Choose one
Big brains can help an animal mount quick, flexible behavioral responses to frequent or unexpected environmental changes. But some birds just don’t need ’em. A … Read more
Life & Non-humans
Scurrying Roaches Help Researchers Steady Staggering Robots
Ew, a cockroach! But it zips off before the swatter appears. Now, researchers have leveraged the bug’s superb scurrying skills to create a cleverly simple … Read more
Experiments illuminate key component of plants’ immune systems
Plants, like humans and animals, have over millions of years evolved complex immune systems that fend off invading pathogens. But unlike many animals, plants lack … Read more
Scorpion Toxin That Targets ‘Wasabi Receptor’ May Help Solve Mystery of Chronic Pain
Researchers at UC San Francisco and the University of Queensland have discovered a scorpion toxin that targets the “wasabi receptor,” a chemical-sensing protein found in … Read more
Genetic redundancy aids competition among symbiotic bacteria in squid
The molecular mechanism used by many bacteria to kill neighboring cells has redundancy built into its genetic makeup, which could allow for the mechanism to … Read more
What’s killing sea otters? Scientists pinpoint parasite strain
Many wild southern sea otters in California are infected with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, yet the infection is fatal for only a fraction of sea … Read more
How red-eared invaders are hurting California’s native turtles
In the summer of 2011, visitors to the University of California, Davis, Arboretum may have witnessed an unusual site: small teams of students wielding large … Read more
Study reveals changing patterns in globally important algae
Globally important ocean algae called coccolithophores are mysteriously scarce in one of the most productive regions of the Atlantic Ocean, according to a new paper in Deep Sea … Read more
The Paleozoic Diet: Why Animals Eat What They Eat
What an animal eats is a fundamental aspect of its biology, but surprisingly, the evolution of diet had not been studied across the animal kingdom … Read more
How plants know the difference between night and day
Plants are extremely sensitive to lengths of nights and days and use the information to keep track of seasons, information crucial to their life cycles. … Read more
Mosquitoes push northern limits with time-capsule eggs to survive winters
When the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) arrived in the United States in the 1980s, it took the invasive blood-sucker only one year to spread … Read more
