Biology News

Study: Bumblebees Recognize Objects through Sight and Touch

Solvi et al demonstrated that bumblebees possess the ability to integrate sensory information in a way that requires modality-independent internal representations. Image credit: Lars Chittka.
Feb 24, 2020 by News Staff

In a study published this month in the journal Science, a team of researchers from Queen Mary University of London and Macquarie University found that bumblebees could identify objects by shape in the dark if they had seen, but not touched, them in the light, and vice versa, demonstrating a clear ability to transmit recognition across different senses. Solvi et al demonstrated that bumblebees possess the ability to integrate sensory information in...

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An individual of Craspedotropis gretathunbergae. Image credit: Pierre Escoubas.

Scientists Identify New Snail Species, Name It after Greta Thunberg

Feb 21, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of professional and citizen scientists has discovered a new species of caenogastropod snail living in tropical lowland rainforests of Borneo and...

Cassiopea xamachana medusae (5-12 cm in diameter) resting on umbrella apex with oral arms facing up, observed by authors in the natural mangrove habitat in Key Largo, Florida, the United States. Scale bar - 5 cm. Image credit: A. Morandini.

Biologists Solve Mystery of ‘Stinging Water’

Feb 14, 2020 by News Staff

Snorkelers in mangrove forest waters inhabited by the upside-down jellyfish Cassiopea xamachana report discomfort due to a sensation known as ‘stinging...

Depiction of huge bacteriophages (red, left) and normal phages infecting a bacterial cell. The huge phage injects its DNA into the host cell, where Cas proteins -- part of the CRISPR immune system typically found only in bacteria and archaea -- manipulate the host cell’s response to other viruses. The authors have not yet photographed any huge phages, so all are depicted resembling the most common type of phage, T4. Image credit: Jill Banfield Lab / University of California, Berkeley.

Giant Bacteriophages Bridge Gap between Living Microbes and Viral Machines

Feb 13, 2020 by News Staff

Bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacteria — are considered distinct from cellular life owing to their inability to carry out most biological...

In this screenshot from the camera trap, an opossum visits the inflorescence of Scybalium fungiforme and peels back bracts to get to the nectar. Image credit: Felipe Amorim.

Opossums are Main Pollinators for Strange Fungus-Like Plant

Feb 12, 2020 by News Staff

Scybalium fungiforme is a little-known fungus-like plant species of the family Balanophoraceae. It has bunches of tiny pale flowers that are surrounded...

Burrunan dolphins (Tursiops australis). Image credit: Fernando Diaz-Aguirre.

Female Burrunan Dolphins Form Social Clusters: Study

Feb 11, 2020 by News Staff

Like giraffes, lions, hyenas and grey kangaroos, female Burrunan dolphins (Tursiops australis), a species of bottlenose dolphin endemic to southern Australian...

Epifluorescence imagery of a tiny grain within methane hydrate showing internal presence of microbial DNA. Image credit: Snyder et al, doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-58723-y.

Strange Grains in ‘Flammable Ice’ Contain Microbes

Feb 10, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has found bacterial communities within microscopic spheroidal aggregates of dolomite, oil and water found in sheets...

A female glow-worm (Lampyris noctiluca) will shine for hours to attract her mate, yet brightening skies will dim her prospects. Image credit: Jason Steel, www.jason-steel.co.uk.

Fireflies under Threat of Extinction because of Habitat Loss, Pesticides, Artificial Light, Report Says

Feb 7, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of entomologists has conducted a survey of experts from diverse geographic regions to identify the most prominent perceived threats...

Gray seals use their short paw-like forelimbs to make loud clapping sounds underwater. Image credit: Ben Burville / David Hocking.

Wild Gray Seals Filmed Clapping Underwater

Feb 4, 2020 by News Staff

A video recorded underwater by marine biologists shows a gray seal (Halichoerus grypus) clapping in the wild, producing a gunshot-like ‘crack.’ “The...

Ohio State University researchers cut an ice core retrieved from the Guliya ice cap in the Kunlun Mountains in Tibet in 2015. Image credit: Giuliano Bertagna, Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, Ohio State University.

15,000-Year-Old Viruses and Bacteria Found in Glacier Ice from Tibet

Jan 31, 2020 by Natali Anderson

A team of U.S. researchers has found ancient viruses and bacteria in ice from two cores drilled on the summit and plateau of the Guliya ice cap in northwestern...

Drosophila melanogaster. Image credit: Botaurus.

Fruit Flies Spontaneously Form Orderly Groups

Jan 30, 2020 by News Staff

According to new research, opposing desires to congregate and maintain some personal space drive fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) to form orderly...

Bombus vosnesenskii flies in a field of lupine flowers. Image credit: Spencer Hardy, the Institute for Bird Populations.

Biologists Identify Favorite Flowers of North American Bumblebees

Jan 29, 2020 by News Staff

Bumblebee declines have been attributed to a handful of factors, including lack of flowers. Not all flowers are used equally by bumblebees, and determining...

The northern paper wasp (Polistes fuscatus). Image credit: Judy Gallagher / CC BY 2.0.

Scientists Trace Evolution of Visual Individual Recognition in Paper Wasps

Jan 28, 2020 by News Staff

A team of researchers has sequenced and analyzed the genomes of Polistes fuscatus, a species of paper wasp that has uniquely evolved visual individual...

Fluorescence microscopy image of cell-free mitochondria in the plasma of a healthy individual. Image credit: Dache et al, doi: 10.1096/fj.201901917RR.

Scientists Find Cell-Free Mitochondria in Human Blood

Jan 24, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Mitochondria are considered as the power-generating units of the cell due to their key role in energy metabolism and intercellular communication. However,...

Bamboo shark Hemiscyllium halmahera (© Mark Erdmann).

Marine Biologists Solve Mystery of How ‘Walking’ Sharks Split

Jan 23, 2020 by Natali Anderson

An international team of marine biologists has found that members of the genus Hemiscyllium are the ‘youngest’ — as in, the most recently evolved...

African gray parrots (Psittacus erithacus). Image credit: Andrew Bernard / CC BY 2.0.

African Gray Parrots Help Partners Obtain Food Rewards

Jan 22, 2020 by News Staff

African gray parrots (Psittacus erithacus) voluntarily and spontaneously help familiar parrots to achieve a goal, without obvious immediate benefit to...

Alucita udovichenkoi, an adult male. Image credit: Kovtunovich et al.

Entomologists Discover New Species of Many-Plumed Moth

Jan 21, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

A species of many-plumed moth believed to be new to science has been discovered in South Africa. Alucita udovichenkoi, an adult male. Image credit: Kovtunovich...

This scanning electron microscope image shows a tardigrade. Image credit: Diane Nelson, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

Could Invisible Extraterrestrial Life Forms Really Exist Among Us?

Jan 21, 2020 by The Conversation

Life is pretty easy to recognize. It moves, it grows, it eats, it excretes, it reproduces. Simple. In biology, researchers often use the acronym ‘MRS-GREN’...

A Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) on a bluff on Isla de los Estados, Argentina. Image credit: Ulises Balza / Wildlife Conservation Society.

Researchers Discover New Colony of Magellanic Penguins

Jan 21, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WSC), the CADIC-CONICET and Argentina’s National Parks Administration has discovered a new...

Hansen Wheat & Temrin provide the first empirical evidence that wolves, and not only dogs, express interspecific play with a human based on social-communicative cues. This image shows a wolf puppy named Flea, who comes from a non-fetching litter born in 2015. Image credit: Christina Hansen Wheat.

Wolf Puppies Play Fetch Too, Researchers Find

Jan 20, 2020 by News Staff

In a series of experiments, a duo of researchers from the Department of Zoology at Stockholm University has observed eight-week-old wolf puppies spontaneously...

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