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When children lose their baby teeth, there is an adult set already growing beneath the gums, ready to emerge. But if we lose our permanent teeth, there aren't any more waiting in the wings. Right now, the options for replacing these lost teeth are either…

April 25 is International DNA Day, and it marks the completion of a decade-long project to sequence the DNA of Hong Kong's floral emblem, the Hong Kong Orchid Tree Bauhinia x blakeana Dunn.

Have you ever wondered if there is a way to heal bones without having to take bone from another part of the body? A new doctoral thesis from the University of Borås, Sweden, now presents exciting advancements in this area. It involves using bacteria to…

If an experiment is repeated under similar conditions, the results should be the same. In reality, the situation is often different—scientists speak of a "reproducibility crisis," which affects different disciplines.

Monkeypox, caused by the monkeypox virus—a close cousin of smallpox—has spread rapidly worldwide. From 2022 to 2025, more than 133,000 cases were reported across 131 countries. In August 2024, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global…

An avalanche is caused by a chain reaction of events. A vibration or a change in terrain can have a cascading and devastating impact.

Understanding how cells differentiate during early embryonic development is crucial for advancing regenerative medicine and developmental biology. Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) have been invaluable tools in this field, as they can transform into various cell…

Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) is an indigenous and staple crop in sub-Saharan Africa, but it has an enemy: an insect called the legume pod borer (Maruca vitrata). This pest can cause yield losses of more than 80%. The pod borer, originally from south-east Asia,…

A study published in the journal PLOS One reveals that combining bird observation data with land cover information provides more accurate predictions of numbers of wild bee species—a metric called richness—than using either dataset alone.

Energy scarcity is a central driver of animal behavior and evolution. The amazing diversity of life on this planet is a testament to the plethora of novel biological solutions to the problem of securing and maintaining energy. However, despite being so central…

Sea creatures keep showing up dead in California waters, and researchers may have an answer as to why.

In a comprehensive study conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, researchers tracked 244 wild-derived male house mice—yes, the kind you'd find in barns or basements—over their entire lives, up to 11 months, in real-world-style…

Psychologists from Durham University, UK, have observed the behavior of 90 sanctuary-living apes to establish whether bonobos were more likely than chimpanzees to comfort others in distress.

In a new study, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have successfully created stem cells that are better at developing into other cell types, like a younger, fitter version of themselves—by changing their diet. These stem cells are better than…

Sharks are often perceived as the ultimate beasts, an image largely imposed on them by the media. Yet, shark bites are rare—only around 100 or so happen every year, and just around 10% are fatal.

A group of Brazilian researchers has, for the first time in the entire Atlantic Rainforest, estimated the population density of the five deer species of the biome. This allowed them to measure the main factors that influence the number of deer per square…

Charcoal rot, caused by the soilborne fungus Macrophomina phaseolina (Mp), poses a serious threat to soybean health and harvests on a global scale. The disease thrives in dry, hot conditions and can quietly devastate crops before symptoms even appear. Now,…

A new carnivorous caterpillar that wears the remains of its prey has been dubbed the "bone collector."

Populations of animals and plants separated by even thousands of miles can rise and fall together driven by ecological factors, a phenomenon scientists call "spatial synchrony."

Salty soils are causing reduced crop density, lower yields and barren lands unable to sustain crop growth. Sea level rise, intense storm surges and the overextraction of groundwater are driving this increasing salinity in coastal farmlands throughout the…

They say beauty is everywhere if we have eyes to see. A team of scientists looked at a tiny, 3-mm snail and saw art.

Plant-based seafood alternatives should have similar flavors, textures and nutritional content to the foods they mimic. And recreating the properties of fried calamari rings, which have a neutral flavor and a firm, chewy texture after being cooked, has been a…

New research from South Dakota State University's Department of Natural Resource Management examines how different states are stopping the spread of invasive carp.

McGill University researchers, in collaboration with Mexican scientists, have discovered two previously unknown species of crocodiles, one living on the island of Cozumel and the other on the atoll of Banco Chinchorro, both off the Yucatán Peninsula.

Advances in high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) platforms together with genotyping technologies have revolutionized breeding of varieties with desired traits relying on genomic prediction. Yet, we lack an understanding of the expression of multiple traits at…

Certain DNA sequences can form structures other than the canonical double helix. These alternative DNA conformations—referred to as non-B DNA—have been implicated as regulators of cellular processes and of genome evolution, but their DNA tends to be…

Switchgrass has gripped Midwestern soils for millions of years, but soon, the earthbound prairie grass could fly. New studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign identify economic and environmental considerations that make switchgrass a candidate…

In a residential backyard in Maine, Project ITCH researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst stumbled upon a surprise finding: rabbit ticks harboring a new type of bacteria related to a group of pathogens that can cause sometimes life-threatening…

A 113-million-year-old hell ant that once lived in northeastern Brazil is now the oldest ant specimen known to science, finds a report published in Current Biology. The hell ant, which was preserved in limestone, is a member of Haidomyrmecinae—an extinct…

Biologically speaking, female and male bonobos have a weird relationship. First, there's the sex. It's the females who decide when and with whom they mate. They easily parry unwanted sexual advances—and the males know better than to force the issue.