Ecology & Zoology

Male black widow spiders on the prowl to mate (and sometimes be victims of black widow cannibalism by females, thus the name Latrodectus mactans) shake their abdomens to produce carefully pitched…

A new slave-making ant species from the eastern USA quite literally means 'to pillage'. The listing in Zookeys tell us of the new ant Temnothorax pilagens – pilere is plunder in Latin. Temnothorax…

The desert locust (a type of grasshopper), much like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, goes from being an innocuous solitary-living individual to become a voracious gregarious animal that destroys everything on…

The clymene dolphin is a small and sleek marine mammal living in the Atlantic Ocean. A new study has found this dolphin is a rarity in mammals - a genetic hybrid that is closely related to spinner…

Fish that glow and various other creatures that are given that ability due to genetic modifications often make the news for shock value.  Huffington Post got an opportunity to 'shock' and 'amaze…

The cockroach in the genus Ectobius is an invasive organism and the most common cockroach inhabiting a large region from northernmost Europe to southernmost Africa.  The fossil history of…

What does science discover when 70 dogs are allowed to relieve themselves in the open country without being on a leash? That they have something in common; dogs prefer to do their business while in a…

The oldest evidence of sexual reproduction in a flowering plant – a cluster of 18 tiny flowers from the Cretaceous Period, with one of them in the process of making some new seeds for the next…

Hunters are often regarded as the enemy by animal activists but in reality the opposite is true; legal hunting helps sustain populations, even trophy hunting.   Trophy hunting occurs in 9 of the…

The black Périgord truffle is a fungus that grows underground around the roots of oak and hazelnut trees in winter. It has become a staple during holidays in France, where cooks slip bits of it under…