Plant and Animal Science

Humans are intelligent creatures and use medicines to treat themselves. However, do ants know how to treat their ailments? Researchers from the University of Helsinki, Finland, discovered that ants are capable of recognizing that they are sick and can self-medicate. Read more about their research here.

Birds living in urban areas are smarter than those living in the rural areas, according to a team of researchers from McGill University. In this first-ever study to find cognitive differences in birds from city and country, the researchers tested two groups of bullfinches on associative learning tasks and innovative problem-solving tasks. Read more about their research here.

To understand behavioral responses of animals to fast and slow rise in temperature, researchers at the University of California - Santa Barbara conducted a study on fruit fly larvae. They found that a quick rise in temperature to 25 degrees stimulated a writhing response in the larvae. On the contrary, upon a gradual increase to the same temperature fewer larvae exhibited responses and the average threshold for bearing higher temperature was high. Read more about their research here.

Toxoplasma gondii – an intracellular, parasitic protozoan that causes the disease toxoplasmosis – has reportedly infected many humans. The parasite makes significant alteration in astrocytes, which seemingly causes subtle behavioral changes in humans. Read on to learn more about this.

To study the effect of exotic plants on the ecosystem, a group of researchers led by PD Dr Christopher Kaiser-Bunbury, member of the Ecological Networks Study Group of the TU Darmstadt Biology Department, conducted a large field study in Seychelles. They selected eight inselbergs on Mahé which is Seychelles' largest island and from four of these inselbergs, the team removed all exotic plants such as cinnamon and eucalyptus, while leaving the native plants undisturbed. Read more about their research here.

Jeffrey Marlow and his team at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, discovered microbes below the seabed around methane seeps near Oregon that are unlike most microbes found on earth. Read on to learn more about this.

Researchers from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, have developed a computer-based model using large data sets to accurately predict outbreaks of zoonotic diseases spread by rodents. Read on to learn more about this.

It is known that plastic waste has an adverse impact on marine life. But for the first time, researchers from Uppsala University have shown that microplastic particles i.e. plastic particles that are less than 5 mm in size change the behavior and development of larval fish. The researchers exposed larval perch to microplastic particles and discovered that their growth got stunted. Read more about their research here.

Researchers from Arizona State University, University of Helsinki, University of Jyväskylä, and Norwegian University of Life Sciences have discovered that queen bees have a unique way of immunizing their babies against external pathogens found in the environment. Read on to learn more about this.

An international team of researchers belonging to Japan and the US studying American alligators found the presence of TRPV4, a thermosensitive protein, in alligator embryos. Found in the gonads of the embryos, this protein plays a crucial role in influencing the sex of the growing alligators. Read more about their research here.