Feeding Bluebirds in Your Backyard Helps Fend Off Parasites
If you feed the birds in your backyard, you may be doing more than just making sure they have a source of food: you may…
Biology News
Lights Out? Fireflies Face Multiple Serious Extinction Threats
Habitat loss, pesticide use and, surprisingly, artificial light are the three most serious threats endangering fireflies across the globe, raising the specter of extinction for…
“Profound” Evolution: Wasps Learn to Recognize Individual Faces
One wasp species has evolved the ability to recognize individual faces among their peers — something that most other insects cannot do — signaling an…
Complexity of Squid Brains Approach That of Dogs
University of Queensland researchers completed the first MRI-based mapping of the squid brain in 50 years to develop an atlas of neural connections. We are…
German Biologists Make Living Sperm Glow – Here’s What They Learned
How do female insects manage to keep the sperm fresh for months after mating? This is a central question of the sperm biologists of the…
New Parasitoid Wasp Species Discovered That Can Manipulate Spider’s Behavior
A research group from the Biodiversity Unit of the University of Turku studies the diversity of parasitoid insects around the world. Parasitoid wasps (Hymenoptera) are…
Got Slime? Regenerative Biology Used to Restore Mucus Production
Lance Davidson of the University of Pittsburgh published an article in Nature Communications detailing that tissue mechanics can drive the regeneration of goblet cells on…
Tracking Dangerous Bat Coronaviruses With Next-Generation DNA Sequencing
A targeted NGS approach may help track the viruses behind dangerous outbreaks. On January 21, 2020, the first case of the Wuhan coronavirus, named 2019-nCoV,…
Link Between Autism and Cognitive Impairment Identified – May Lead to New Treatments
Mouse study identifies a brain mechanism underlying social deficits and mental disability in a finding that could lead to new treatments. Autism can bestow brilliance…
New Technique to Efficiently Cryopreserve Human Cells for Long Periods of Time
Scientists at NYU Abu Dhabi have developed a new technique that allows a type of filter paper (comparable to coffee filter paper) to store cells…
Surprisingly, Plants Are Better Pollinated in Cities Than in the Countryside
Plants Benefit From More Bees, Especially Bumble Bees Flowering plants are better pollinated in urban than in rural areas. This has now been demonstrated experimentally…
Hundreds of In Vitro Brains Were Grown in a Lab in Italy – Here’s Why
Organoids (In Vitro Brains) to Study Pediatric Brain Tumors A large-scale production of in vitro tumors could make it possible to perform large drug screenings…
Bumble Bees’ Favorite Flowers Identified to Aid Bee Restoration
Research in the Sierra Nevada region of California illustrates the varying flower choices of bumble bees. Many species of North American bumble bees have seen…
Nanostructures and Living Cells in Butterfly Wings Could Inspire Radiative-Cooling Materials & Advanced Flying Machines
Researchers discover that butterflies have specialized behaviors and wing scales to protect the living parts of their wings; nanostructures found in the wing scales could…
Humans Not Always to Blame for Genetic Diversity Loss in Wildlife, New Conservation Research Reveals
Conservationists should be wary of assuming that genetic diversity loss in wildlife is always caused by humans, as new research published today by international conservation…
New Look at Mysterious Large Holes in Cells Involved in Taste, Alzheimer’s, Asthma
Many cells are covered with mysterious large holes, pores that have been associated with the sense of taste as well as Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and…
Pac-Man-Like Protists Thrive on the Skin of the Earth
Pac-Man, the open-mouthed face of the most successful arcade game ever, is much more well-known than any of the one-celled organisms called protists, at least…
Astronaut Says Alien Lifeforms That Are Impossible to Spot May Be Living Among Us
Life is pretty easy to recognize. It moves, it grows, it eats, it excretes, it reproduces. Simple. In biology, researchers often use the acronym “MRSGREN”…