Biology
Tube Worm Larvae Use Prickly Bacterial Flowers to Choose Home
Like a steaming pile of lava or the soggy soil below a melting glacier, the freshly scrubbed hull of a ship is a magnet for new life.
Stories by Jennifer Frazer
Technology
Discover the Puerto Rico Trench with America’s Ocean Exploration Team
Every two years people around the world suddenly obsessively watch odd niche sports like ice dancing, biathalon, and rhythmic gymnastics. So I wish similar enthusiasm could be summoned for the exploration dives of the Deep Discoverer, NOAA’s ROV aboard the research vessel Okeanos Explorer and vehicles like it, which are streamed live on the internet...
Evolution
Glass Anchors on Sheath Overload Strengthen Sponges and Enlighten Engineers
It must be the Year of the Sponge here at The Artful Amoeba, because I can’t seem to write enough posts about sponges and their amazing micro-scale architecture.
Evolution
Wonderful Things: The Amazing Mimicry of the Mummy Berry Fungus
Author's note: This is the latest post in the Wonderful Things series. You can read more about this series here. There is a fungus on our planet which is capable of not one, but two audacious and duplicitous acts: it pretends, on separate occasions, to be both to be a flower and a pollen grain, [...]..
Evolution
Ferns Get It On After 60 Million Years Apart
An unassuming little fern has left scientists scratching their heads at the feat of reproductive hijinks it apparently represents. The fern, xCystocarpium roskamianum(the prefix ‘x’ indicates it is a hybrid), collected in the French Pyrenees, appeared to be a blend of two ferns they know well...
Evolution
Ahoy! Thar Be a New Seadragon in the Briny Deep
As fabulous, fantastical gems of evolution go, seadragons are hard to beat. The weedy seadgragon: “Weedy seadragon-Phyllopteryx taeniolatus” by Sylke Rohrlach – http://www.flickr.com/photos/87895263@N06/11259275943/sizes/l/in/photostream/...
The Sciences
The Amazing Art of Biologist Ernst Haeckel
If you’re like me, you’ve always wanted Ernst Haeckel in your house. Well, not literally Ernst Haeckel, the great 19th century biologist (although that would be cool, in alive form)...
Evolution
Tiny Cell Grows Giant Death Spike and Lives to Grow Another
Let’s say you’re a small cell engaged in heavy manufacturing. Like most animal cells, you are coated only in a thin membrane made a double layer of fluid fat-like molecules.
What on Earth Made These Perfect Fossil Rings?
See these annular structures? They are 492 million years old and come from Wisconsin. Here are some more. Was there a severe shortage of beer coasters in Cambrian Wisconsin?
Evolution
Lowly Sponges Conceal Astounding Architecture
To look at a rock sponge, which usually has all the visual appeal of a potato, you would never guess that inside lies the Notre Dame of animal skeletons.
Evolution
For These Plants, No Victim is Too Small
The tropical plant Genlisea is a tiny, homely rosette of simple green leaves. If you dig up its roots, you will find what look like an unremarkable bunch long, pale underground roots.
Evolution
Two-Billion-Year-Old Fossils Reveal Strange and Puzzling Forms
To a human, two billion years is an unfathomable interval. But that, a team of European, Gabonese, and American scientists now say, is how long ago a recently discovered hoard of fossils suggests Earth’s first big life evolved — large enough to see with the naked eye, and in a spectrum of forms that tease [...]..
Evolution
Ocean Giants (Actual Size)
Just how big is a giant squid? Not quite as big, perhaps, as you might think. This fabulous new graphic from the Deep Sea News crew and several other scientists represents *a lot* of research to find out the true largest sizes of 25 ocean creatures of giant repute...
Evolution
Deepest Fish Features Angel Wings, Tentacles and Amazing Ability to Perform Under Pressure
There comes a depth at which even fish struggle to survive the titanic pressure. But that depth is only found at the few places on Earth that lie below 27,600 feet of water, where the weight of the water warps piscine proteins and crushes cells...
Evolution
Wonderful Things: Ferns Eject Their Spores with Medieval-Style Catapults
Author's note: This is the latest post in the Wonderful Things series. You can read more about this series here. One of the more under-appreciated and ingenious machines evolved by plants is the cavitation catapult of leptosporangiate ferns...
A Sweet Seahorse Tale From Fantastic New Web Series “Deep Look”
Today I have a small biology present for you courtesy of a new series of short videos produced by PBS Digital Studios and KQED San Francisco.
Evolution
Bacterial Motors Come in a Dizzying Array of Models
Bacteria propel themselves with corkscrew tails anchored in rotary motors. That may seem surprisingly mechanical for a microbe, but it is a system that has been wildly popular and conserved across billions of years of evolution...
Parasitic Trypanosomes Contain Nature’s Only Chain Mail DNA
The organisms that cause us untold suffering can also be astounding works of art, sculpted by evolution into elegant, deadly packages. Such is the case for the trypanosomes, the protists I discussed last time as the source of Chagas Disease, but which also cause sleeping sickness in Africa...
Americans May Be More at Risk from Deadly Heart Parasite Than Realized
The kissing bug may have the most misleadingly cute name in entomology. It bites, rather than smooches, its victims around the mouth or face.
Health
Bed Bugs, Kissing Bugs Linked to Deadly Chagas Disease in U.S.
Risk may still be low, but findings lead scientists to call for better studies
