Ecology & Zoology

Mosquitoes: Females Need Blood, Males Need Nectar, Both Need Keen Noses

Mosquitoes rely on sense of smell to get what they need to survive. Females need blood to produce their eggs, so they find a host to bite and spots to lay eggs, while both males and females feed on nectar. Their dominant source of food is nectar from flow ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 13 2020 - 10:00am

How Bird Flocks With Multiple Species Behave Like BTS And Other K-Pop Groups

Despite what you've heard, birds of a feather often don't flock together. In the real world, multiple bird species are often flying and feeding together. In the Amazon, 50 species may travel as a unit. But are birds in these mixed flocks cooperat ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 15 2020 - 8:00am

What Endangered Means To Scientists And What It Means To Environmental Lawyers Are Much Different Things

You might know blue whales are an endangered species while pandas are not. Yet there are 25,000 blue whales and only 2,000 pandas.  There are 100,000 sea otters yet they are still classified as endangered. Who drew that line between endangered and not enda ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Feb 19 2020 - 3:07pm

Not Bamboo, But Knotweed

I garden for a living, besides writing. My last blog referred to bamboo growing in a rock garden outside my back door. But my urban gardening mentor has informed me this plant is not bamboo.  It's Japanese  knotweed. Many consider knotweed an invasive ...

Blog Post - Anonymous - Feb 25 2020 - 1:38pm

Discovered: Henneguya Salminicola, The Only Animal On Earth That Doesn't Breathe

Scientists have discovered a non-oxygen breathing animal, a tiny, less than 10-celled parasite named Henneguya salminicola which lives in salmon muscle. As it evolved, the animal, a myxozoan relative of jellyfish and corals, gave up breathing and consuming ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 27 2020 - 12:12pm

Social Bonding, Vampire Bat Style: They Groom And Share Blood

Social bonding in vampire bats is no surprise, they have roommates. What is uncommon is that they demonstrate behavior some might call friendship; unrelated vampire bats engage in social grooming and food sharing to form life-saving bonds that can last a l ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 19 2020 - 12:06pm

All Hail Cthulhu- And Its 45 Tentacles

There is one Cthulhu it's safe to invoke; Sollasina cthulhu, obviously named after H.P. Lovecraft's tentacled monster, a 430 million-year-old fossil that has been identified as a new species related to living sea cucumbers. The new cthulhu, Solla ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 8 2020 - 11:11pm

Ophraella Communa: Leaf Beetle Significantly Reduces Pollen And That's Great For Allergies

The leaf beetle  Ophraella communa can significantly reduce pollen and that may mean a more cost-effective way to reduce allergies and their health care costs using science, while still appealing to activists that otherwise would oppose it. Ambrosia artemi ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 21 2020 - 12:09pm

Hipposideridae: Four New Species Of Bats Revealed, Cousins Of The Horseshoe Bats Behind SARS-CoV-2

COVID-19 resulted from a coronavirus that originated in a horseshoe bat in China but with at least two dozen species of horseshoe bats in China (no one knows how many there really are), no one can determine which species  was involved. Bats carry diseases, ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 22 2020 - 11:20am

Google Lab-Bred Mosquitoes May Stop Diseases Without Pesticides

A new series of experiments by an Alphabet (the parent company Google created) group shows lab-bred mosquitoes that cannot successfully reproduce might be able to stop malaria and other mosquito-spread diseases in countries where those are still endemic- t ...

Article - Hank Campbell - May 4 2020 - 11:31am