Ecology & Zoology

The biggest cause of bee die-offs is just random luck. For as long as bee numbers have been reported there have been reports of sudden, large-scale die-offs. Nature is out to kill them like it is all of us. Yet more recently, it has been found that we can ...

Article - News Staff - May 15 2020 - 1:10pm

The Ins And Outs Of Nutrition In Sex Change

There is a rare condition in humans and other vertebrates where they genetically belong to one sex but also have characteristics of the other. Decades ago, scientists found that Oryzias latipes (Japanese rice fish, also called medaka) often undergo sex rev ...

Article - News Staff - May 21 2020 - 2:44pm

Does Your Dog Really Want To Rescue You? Yes

We know dogs will try to rescue humans, those Lassie stories were based on events that have happened for as long as humans and dogs have co-existed, but simply observing dogs rescuing someone doesn't tell you much about dogs' actual interest in r ...

Article - News Staff - May 29 2020 - 4:45pm

How Science Stopped Murder Hornets In Their Tracks

Panic-stricken headlines about “murder hornets” are thankfully mostly behind us. The nickname may have staying power, but it is certainly unearned. First spotted in British Columbia in August 2019, the Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia) poses little th ...

Article - The Conversation - Jul 7 2020 - 1:55pm

Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals And The Secret Sex Lives Of Leeches

Leeches are found on every continent in freshwater habitats where there is little flow. They are popular bait for fishing, and doctors continue to use them in medical treatments. Environmentalists have even been using them to advance their beliefs that tra ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 21 2020 - 4:29pm

Bat1K Consortium Genomes Show How Bats Survive The Deadly Viruses They Spread

We're going to learn a lot more about how bats do all of the things they do, in part due to the work of the Bat1K consortium to sequence the genome of six widely divergent living bat species. ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 23 2020 - 12:50pm

Parasites Are What Kill Bees, So More Beekeepers Won't Stop Colony Collapse Disorder- But This Mitigation Might

Bees face a variety of challenges in the modern world. Changes to land use and evolving parasites have always been significant issues. For as long as beekeeping records have been kept, 1,100 years, there have been accounts of colony collapse disorder. Just ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 23 2020 - 1:58pm

28 Million Years: Hengduan Mountains Flora Has Existed Longer Than Any Other Alpine Flora On Earth

The world's most species-rich temperate alpine biota occurs in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Himalaya, and the Hengduan Mountains. It has continuously existed far longer than any other alpine flora on Earth, which can infer how modern biotas have been sh ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 3 2020 - 1:53pm

Dogs May Be Man's Best Friend Against Coronavirus Too

What does a pandemic smell like? If dogs could talk, they might be able to tell us. We’re part of an international research team, led by Dominique Grandjean at France’s National Veterinary School of Alfort, that has been training detector dogs to sniff ou ...

Article - The Conversation - Aug 5 2020 - 5:31am

The Insect Apocalypse That Never Was

In recent years, the notion of an insect apocalypse has become a hot topic in the conservation science community and has captured the public’s attention. Scientists who warn that this catastrophe is unfolding assert that arthropods – a large category of i ...

Article - The Conversation - Aug 12 2020 - 6:01am