Plant and Animal Science

An epidemic that started a year ago called Sea Star Wasting Disease (SSWD) has killed thousands of Northeast Pacific Coast sea stars. Read on to find out the causative factor behind this. 

Do adult ferns get to decide the sex of the younger ferns? Makoto Matsuoka, a molecular biologist at Nagoya University in Japan, led a study of Japanese climbing ferns and found out that these ferns communicate across generations and select the gender of the younger ferns. Read on to find out more. 

A zoologist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, Jean Just, discovered sea creatures in the Tasman Sea that cannot be classified into any known major phyla. These invertebrate creatures—now classified as Dendrogramma—are mushroom-shaped, multicellular, asymmetrical, and have a gelatinous layer between the inner and the outer body. Read on to find out more. 

Scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) and their colleagues combined analytical chemistry and behavioral assessment to study the relation between malaria-infected mammals and mosquitoes. Read on to find out more. 

It is believed that bees, like birds and butterflies, use the sun as a compass for navigation, unlike mammals who use a mental map. However, Randolf Menzel, a neurobiologist at the Free University of Berlin, and his team suggest that bees do not rely only upon on the sun. Read on to find out more. 

Neuroscientist Alipasha Vaziri of the University of Vienna and his colleagues have for the first time imaged all of the neurons firing in a living organism, the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Read on for more details. 

Guy Levy, a neuroscientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his team studied how an octopus avoids latching onto itself. They cut off an octopus’s arm and subjected it to a series of tests, and found that octopus arms have a built-in mechanism that prevents the suckers from grabbing octopus skin. Read on for more details. 

The discovery of a fossilized juvenile skeleton of Eocasea martini has helped researchers understand how carnivores transitioned into herbivores for the first time on land. Read on for more details on this. 

It is widely believed that domestication influenced the abilities of dogs to form close relationships with humans. Although wolves and dogs are closely related, scientists suggest that wolves observe one another more closely than dogs do and are better at learning from one another. Read on to find out more.

The discovery of pelves and a partial pelvic fin from Tiktaalik roseae, a 375 million-year-old transitional species between fish and the first legged animals, reveals that hind legs actually evolved from enhanced hind fins. Read on to know more.