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Biology

The tiny little parasitic wasp Tamarixia radiata.

New Research

Scientists Think These Creepy Wasps Are Going to Save Oranges

Biological control—importing predators to fight an invasive species—has a nasty track record

Carl Linnaeus, 1707 to 1778. Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist. From Crabb's Historical Dictionary published 1825.

New Research

Who Does Wikipedia Think Is Bigger Than Jesus?

Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus is Wikipedia’s most influential person, according to one measurement

New Research

Female Pigs Respond Differently to Batches of Sperm Carrying Mostly X Or Mostly Y Chromosomes

In an experiment, mother pigs’ gene expression changed depending on the sperm type they were fertilized wtih

A drawing of the West Indian or Caribbean monk seal based on a specimen collected in Matanzas, Cuba.

New Research

For the First Time in More Than 100 Years, Scientists Discover New Seal Genus

The now extinct Caribbean monk seal shares an evolutionary connection with the endangered Hawaiian monk seal—one more reason to save the species

An overly alluring research subject.

New Research

Biologists Are Biased Toward Penises

Researchers interested in the evolution of animal genitalia tend to focus on the male side of that equation, often unjustifiably ignoring the female

At the Mpala research facility in Kenya, scientists can use fences to exclude large animals, such as zebras, from ecosystems to study the effect of their absence.

New Research

How Will Wildlife Loss Affect Diseases That Jump From Animals to Humans?

In an east African case study, scientists found that taking large wildlife out of an ecosystem increases the number of disease-infested rodents

Cool Finds

The Grasshopper Mouse Hunts Scorpions, Turns Scorpion Venom into Painkiller

Evolutionary adaptations let this little mouse hunt scorpions

A cluster of variola viruses viewed under an electron microscope. Strains of the variola virus cause smallpox disease.

Should We Destroy Our Last Living Samples of the Virus That Causes Smallpox?

Later this month, the World Health Organization will decide whether or not to get rid of two live virus repositories in the United States and Russia

Cool Finds

This Seal Tried to Steal Another Seal’s Baby Before It Was Fully Born

Nature is not a nice place

Anthropocene

Pavement Cracks And Chain-Link Fences Are the New Ecosystems of the Anthropocene

The “natural” world is gone, and it’s not coming back

Female on top: A female Neotrogla insect mates with a male in a cave in eastern Brazil.

In This Community of Brazilian Cave Insects, Females Wear the Penises, Literally

A genus of insect that inhabits caves in eastern Brazil has reversed sex organs, say scientists

A FedEx truck carrying the Wankel T. rex skeleton departed Bozeman, Montana, on Friday for the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. A bronze cast of the 65-million-year-old skeleton outside the Museum of the Rockies looks on in the foreground.

Five Things We Don’t Know About Tyrannosaurus Rex

As the Smithsonian welcomes the arrival of its fossil rex, scientists reveal all that we have yet to learn about this magnificent creature

Ultra thin patches will be able to keep track of what's happening inside your body.

Tech Watch

Forget Wristbands, Health Trackers of the Future Will Be Skin Patches

Thin as a human hair and applied like temporary tattoos, they’ll be able to monitor everything from heartbeats to brain activity to muscle tremors

A coqui frog perches on a branch in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico

Chirps of Coqui Frogs May Be Getting Shorter and Higher Pitched As Climate Warms

The shift in duration and pitch could impede females’ ability to pick up on mating signals, researchers say

The Midwest aglow with a visualization of photosynthetic fluorescence.

New Research

Under the Summer Sun, the Corn Belt Is the Most Biologically Productive Place on Earth

During the peak growing season, the corn belt outproduces the Amazon

Could it be true vole love, or just a casual encounter? Depends on whether booze is involved.

New Research

Drunken Prairie Voles Help Explain Alcohol’s Demons

Why do some people become more prone to attachment and sentimentality when drunk, while others tend to stray?

New Research

Dingoes Aren’t Just Wild Dogs

Rather than being the descendants of feral mutts, dingoes are actually in their own unique taxonomical corner

New Research

Oxytocin Encourages People to Think More About the Group, Less About Themselves

It’s not that oxytocin makes people act in a good or bad way, just in a way that best serves the interests of their people

Colorful archaea grow in in ponds.

New Research

How a Single Act of Evolution Nearly Wiped Out All Life on Earth

A single gene transfer event may have caused the Great Dying

Scientists made synthetic version of a chromosome found in brewer's yeast, pictured above, a fungus commonly used to make beer.

New Research

Scientists Build a Yeast Chromosome From Scratch. Next Up? Designer Genomes

Creating synthetic organisms with specially-tailored genomes is a long way off, but the first synthetic eukaryotic chromosome is a big step forward

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