Citrus thorny problem solved, according to ScienceDaily 18 June 2020, and Current Biology 18 June 2020; doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.05.068. Thorns on citrus trees are well known to form when branches start to develop, but stop growing and become hard and dry, leaving a sharp spike. Scientists at Yale University have now tracked down the genetic control […]
Baby bats prepared for landing according to articles in Inside JEB 16 October 2019 and Journal of Experimental Biology 15 October 2019 doi:10.1242/jeb.209163. Echolocating bats use their sonar to help them land, as well as to navigate when our foraging for food. When bats are coming in to land they emit a rapid burst of […]
How dragonfly wings get their patterns according to ScienceDaily and PhysOrg 17 September 2018 and PNAS published online 17 September 2018 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1721248115. Insect wings get their structural support from struts called veins, with large primary veins and smaller, narrower secondary veins which branch off the primary veins and intersect, forming a pattern of geometrical […]
Upright plants explained in reports in ScienceDaily 2 May 2018, and PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1801895115, published online 30 April 2018. Plants are exquisitely sensitive to being tilted, and will change their growth direction to keep growing upwards if knocked off the vertical by only a few degrees. It has long been known that plants sense the […]
Neanderthals grew like us, according to articles in Science (AAAS) News and ScienceDaily 21 September 2017, and Science vol. 357, pp. 1282-1287 doi: 10.1126/science.aan6463, 22 September 2017. A team of scientists led by A. Rosas at Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN)-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Madrid, Spain, have studied the partial skeleton […]
Baby dragon found, according to reports in Science (AAAS) News 9 May 2017and BBC News 10 May 2017, and Nature Communications doi:10.1038/ncomms14952 Published online: 09 May 2017. A team of scientists in China have studied a dinosaur hatchling whose fossil was found along with dinosaur eggs called Macroelongatoolithus (large long egg-shaped stones), dated as 90 […]
New Zealand fossil giants and present day Aussie pygmies are related according to research reported in BBC News 4 January 2005. Scientists from Oxford (UK) and Canterbury (NZ) Universities have extracted DNA from an extinct giant eagle, known as Haast’s eagle that once dominated the skies of New Zealand and compared with DNA of living […]
Cucumber coils revealed, according to reports in ScienceNOW, ScienceDaily 30 August 2012 and Science vol. 337, p1087 DOI: 10.1126/science.1223304 31 August 2012. In 1865 Darwin published a book entitled On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants in which he describes how cucumber tendrils attach to a support and then form two helical coils, each […]