Animals
Surprise! Sixteen tiny wasp species found masquerading as one
Scientists used new and old tools to overturn 160-year-old ideas about this wasp. They show you can’t tell a wasp by its looks.
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Use mathematical representations to support explanations of how natural selection may lead to increases and decreases of specific traits in populations over time.
More Stories in MS-LS4-6
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AnimalsA new drug mix helps frogs regrow amputated legs
The treatment helped frogs grow working limbs useful for swimming, standing and kicking. It’ll be a while before people can do that.
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AnimalsSee the world through a jumping spider’s eyes — and other senses
Scientists are teasing out the many ways the spiders’ vision, listening and taste senses differ from ours
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AnimalsMysterious kunga is the oldest known human-bred hybrid animal
People bred these animals — part donkey, part wild ass — some 4,500 years ago, probably for use in fighting wars.
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LifeScientists Say: Adaptation
This word refers to a feature of a living thing that helps it better survive in its environment — or the process of that feature evolving in a population.
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AnimalsCloning boosts endangered black-footed ferrets
A cloned ferret named Elizabeth Ann brings genetic diversity to a species that nearly went extinct in the 1980s.
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MicrobesExplainer: Virus variants and strains
When viruses become more infectious or better able to survive the body’s immune system, they become a type of variant known as a strain.
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GeneticsJust a tiny share of the DNA in us is unique to humans
Some of these tweaks to DNA, however, may have played a role in brain evolution.
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LifeEven raised by people, wolves don’t tune into you like your dog
Dog puppies outpace wolf pups at engaging with humans, even with less exposure to people, supporting the idea that domestication changed dogs’ brains.
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FossilsDinosaur families appear to have lived in the Arctic year-round
Fossils of baby dinosaurs in northern Alaska challenge the idea that northern dinosaurs only spent their summers in the high Arctic.