Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
- Animals
This snake rips open a living toad to feast on its organs
A particularly gruesome way to kill may help small-banded kukri snakes avoid a deadly poison secreted from the neck and backs of some toads.
- Animals
Analyze This: Ropes restore a gibbon highway through a rainforest
When endangered Hainan gibbons started making risky leaps across an area mowed down by a landslide, researchers provided them a rope bridge.
- Health & Medicine
New Pfizer vaccine appears 90 percent effective against COVID-19
Preliminary finds show one of the new coronavirus vaccines appears 90 percent effective at reducing symptomatic COVID-19 infections.
- Animals
Attack of the inner-cannibal mega-shark
The outsized megalodon was a fierce terror that chewed its way across the oceans. It learned to kill even before it was born.
- Animals
Jumping ‘snake worms’ are invading U.S. forests
These bad-news invaders are spreading across the United States. As they turn forest debris into bare ground, soils and ecosystems are changing.
- Animals
When physicians and veterinarians team up, all species benefit
When doctors for people and those for animals share their expertise, they can discover new ways to take better medical care of all species.
- Animals
A whale’s nearly four-hour-long dive sets a new record
Cuvier’s beaked whales may rely on large stores of oxygen, a slow metabolism and the ability to tolerate lactic acid to go for hours without surfacing for air.
- Animals
Polluting microplastics harm both animals and ecosystems
Researchers are beginning to uncover the real-world impacts of polluting microplastic bits on animals and the ecosystems they inhabit.
- Agriculture
Learning what stresses queen bees could save their hives
Beehives often die off after the queen gets too stressed to make enough babies. New tests could identify what stressed her — and point to solutions.
- Animals
Here’s what bats ‘see’ when they explore the world with sound
High-speed cameras, fancy microphones and slick software are helping scientists get the best look yet at what bats perceive through echolocation.
- Climate
The faster trees grow, the younger they die
As climate change spurs forest tree growth, it also shortens trees’ lives. That results in a quicker release of climate-warming carbon back into the atmosphere.
- Genetics
Some Neandertal genes may up the risk of severe COVID-19
Most of the affected people descend from communities in South Asia or live in Europe today.
