In the fifties, geneticists were faced with a mystery: when two strains of the same fruit fly species (Drosophila) crossed, they only produced female flies instead of the expected 50:50 sex ratio. At first, scientists thought that what lay...
Corn seedlings that grow close together give off underground signals that impact the growth of nearby plants, reports a study published May 2, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Velemir Ninkovic from the Swedish University of Agricultural...
Male brown widow spiders seek to mate with older, less-fertile females that are 50 percent more likely to eat them after sex, according to Israeli researchers in a study published in the journal Animal Behaviour.
Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of...
Predatory, bird-like theropod dinosaurs from the Upper Cretaceous (100.5-66 million years ago) of Spain and Canada all relied on a puncture-and-pull bite strategy to kill and consume their prey. But close examination of patterns of wear and modeling of...
Australian researchers have discovered what is thought to be the world's oldest recorded spider, unlocking key information about the mysterious eight-legged creature.
The research, published in Pacific Conservation Biology, suggests the 43-year-old Giaus Villosus trapdoor matriarch, who recently died during...
Desert ants (Cataglyphis) spend the first weeks of their lives exclusively in the nest. For around four weeks, they nurse the queen and the brood, dig tunnels, build chambers or tidy up. At some point, they leave the nest...
A study by the Universities of Sussex and Portsmouth reveals that horses can read and then remember people's emotional expressions, enabling them to use this information to identify people who could pose a potential threat.
Published today, Thursday 26 April...
Most of us know that our biological sex is decided by the pairing of X and Y chromosomes during conception.
However, for many wildlife species, sex of offspring is determined after fertilization and often influenced by environmental factors, such as...
A sea turtle discovered in Alabama is a new species from the Late Cretaceous epoch, according to a study published April 18, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Drew Gentry from the University of Alabama at Birmingham,...
Amongst the countless fascinating plants and animals inhabiting the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia, there are the spectacular "exploding ants", a group of arboreal, canopy dwelling ants nicknamed for their unique defensive behaviour.
When threatened by other insects, minor workers...
Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and other recent human relatives may have begun hunting large mammal species down to size -- by way of extinction -- at least 90,000 years earlier than previously thought, says a new study published in the...
