This is a story about camouflage, but forget mud-blob brown, mealy beige and somber green. Here scientists study mirror glitz and the paradoxical notion that there’s a shiny side to…
Category: Life
Scientists are arguing over the identity of a fossilized 10-armed creature
An ancient cephalopod fossil may be about to rewrite octopus history, but it depends on who you ask. At the very least, it’s offering up a lesson in how hard…
Culturally prized mountain goats may be vanishing from Indigenous land in Canada
For thousands of years, members of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais First Nation in Canada have prized the mountain goats that roam the craggy peaks of British Columbia’s central coast. The animals have…
Invasive grasses are taking over the American West’s sea of sagebrush
No one likes a cheater, especially one that prospers as easily as the grass Bromus tectorum does in the American West. This invasive species is called cheatgrass because it dries…
Rice feeds half the world. Climate change’s droughts and floods put it at risk
Under a midday summer sun in California’s Sacramento Valley, rice farmer Peter Rystrom walks across a dusty, barren plot of land, parched soil crunching beneath each step. In a typical…
Here’s the chemistry behind marijuana’s skunky scent
Scientists have finally sniffed out the molecules behind marijuana’s skunky aroma. The heady bouquet that wafts off of fresh weed is actually a cocktail of hundreds of fragrant compounds. The…
A well-known wildflower turns out to be a secret carnivore
Gleaming, gluey, deathtrap hairs have betrayed the secret identity of a well-known wildflower: It’s a carnivore. A species of false asphodel (Triantha occidentalis) uses enzyme-secreting hairs on its flowering stem…
Probiotics help lab corals survive deadly heat stress
Warming seas threaten to turn coral reefs from kaleidoscopes of color into bleached fields of rubble. To stop this degradation, some scientists are exploring a surprising salve: probiotics. Dosing corals…
Viruses can kill wasp larvae that grow inside infected caterpillars
When parasitic wasps come calling, some caterpillars have a surprising ally: a viral infection. Insects called parasitoid wasps lay their eggs inside young moth larvae, turning the caterpillars into unwitting,…
Missing Antarctic microbes raise thorny questions about the search for aliens
Even in the harshest environments, microbes always seem to get by. They thrive everywhere from boiling-hot seafloor hydrothermal vents to high on Mt. Everest. Clumps of microbial cells have even…
