Plant and Animal Science

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. 

Validating the recent finding that females in the animal kingdom are polyandrous, researchers have found that female fire salamanders mate with several males. Read on to know more. 

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. 

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.

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. 

Dogs have always showered humans with unconditional love. Research finally tells us why dogs are so friendly-man’s best friend is apparently genetically predisposed to be good natured and a great companion.  

In a drought-like situation, plants naturally secrete abscisic acid (ABA), inhibiting plant growth and reducing water consumption. While crops can be sprayed with ABA to help them survive droughts, producing ABA is expensive. A team of scientists, led by Sean Cutler at the University of California, Riverside, developed a new method of assisting draught-inflicted plants using synthetic biology. 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. 

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. 

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.