Fungi underpin life on Earth, but are far less well catalogued and understood than animals and plants. Three scientists call for including fungi in conservation strategies and environmental laws.
Bumblebees at work, dotted with pollen.
Crabchick/Flickr
Religious beliefs and modern biology sometimes seem to collide. But exploring those ideas with compassion and an open mind can lead to deeper learning across cultures.
Changes in vegetation and temperature affect wildlife and humans, as well as the climate.
Lisa Hupp/USFWS
These coordinated movements of a flock of starlings follow no plan or leader. Scientists used to think the animals must communicate via ESP to create these fast-moving blobs.
The Australian Jack Jumper ant transporting its brood.
Ajay Narendra
Insects such as ants and beetles use ingenious processes in their brains to work out how far they’ve travelled and in what direction - we’ve now discovered how they remember their way home.
Russell Wait in his Eremophila garden.
Rachael Fowler
As people age, the chemical signaling pathways in muscles become less potent, and it gets harder to build muscle and maintain strength. But the health benefits of strength training only increase with age.
When not hibernating, ground squirrels need to feast to store energy.
Robert Streiffer
Months not eating or moving don’t result in muscle wasting and loss of function for animals that hibernate. New research found gut microbes help their hosts hold onto and use nitrogen to build proteins.
African Penguins are among the species affected by noises made by seismic underwater exploration.
Sergey Uryadnikov/Shutterstock
Frowin Becker, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
There is plenty of work to do to ensure that other species, geographical areas and ecosystems across Africa are better understood through bioacoustics.
Nucleic acid vaccines use mRNA to give cells instructions on how to produce a desired protein.
Libre de Droit/iStock via Getty Images
DNA and mRNA vaccines produce a different kind of immune response than traditional vaccines, allowing researchers to tackle some previously unsolvable problems in medicine.
Edward O. Wilson in his office in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, in 2014.
Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
E.O. Wilson was one of the world’s leading experts on ants, but his other passion was convincing humans to see themselves as part of the natural world.
Masks definitely catch some of the virus laden aerosols and droplets - and that will reduce transmission between people and the number of cases of COVID-19.
Alexandra Schnell, University of Cambridge; Andrew Crump, London School of Economics and Political Science, and Jonathan Birch, London School of Economics and Political Science
Octopus, crabs, prawns demonstrate clear signs of emotion, such as pain and ‘anxiety-like’ behaviour.
We studied 8,000 primate teeth and finally confirmed that humans are not the only living primate to suffer from cavities. But there are interesting differences.
Two-thirds of autism research funding in New Zealand is directed at biology and genetics. The autism community says improving support services and quality of life should be the priorities.
Sea otters are born with a supercharged metabolism.
Adria Photography/Moment via Getty Images