23+ hour, 13+ min ago   (115+ words) The world’s staple grains may be on the verge of an identity change. Rice, maize and wheat, crops that have long been valued almost exclusively for their starch and protein, are emerging as promising biological factories for some of the…...

1+ day, 1+ hour ago   (681+ words) Across the flooded fields and scrubby foothills of South Asia lives a frog that most people, including many biologists, would struggle to tell apart from its close relatives. The burrowing frog Sphaerotheca maskeyi, a medium-sized member of the family Dicroglossidae,…...

1+ day, 12+ hour ago   (74+ words) Forests are often celebrated for what we can see — the towering trunks, layered canopies, and the birds and insects that move through them. Yet a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution suggests that much of the real action in…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago   (57+ words) Synthetic pesticides have long been the default weapon against the insects, fungi, weeds, and nematodes that erode global crop yields, but their environmental costs are mounting. A comprehensive review published in the journal Blue Biotechnology argues that an unlikely group…...

2+ week, 3+ hour ago   (94+ words) In 2015, a virus swept through a single Australian river and erased ninety percent of the turtles living in it. The Bellinger River turtle (Myuchelys georgesi), confined to a 60-kilometre stretch of freshwater on the mid-north coast of New South Wales,…...