Weekly Headlines (excerpts)

1. Smelly flies, phony fossils, and more stories you might have missed this week

A roundup of some of our favorite items from the ScienceAdviser daily newsletter

BY PHIE JACOBS  16 FEB 2024

2. ‘A tragic mistake’: Decision to close Duke University’s herbarium triggers furor

Century-old institution boasts many unique specimens and is considered a “poster child for modern curation”

BY ELIZABETH PENNISI  16 FEB 2024

3. AI tells beavers apart by the ‘fingerprint’ patterns on their tails

Computer identification of individuals could help researchers study recovery of the species without stressing the animals.

BY ERIK STOKSTAD 16 FEB 2024

4. Watch a beetle larva ambush snails from below, dragging them to their demise

Immature click beetles on the Ryukyu Islands of southwestern Japan display a behavior never before observed in their kind

BY DARREN INCORVAIA  15 FEB 2024

5. Amazon River may be altered forever by climate change

More extreme droughts and floods may become the new norm, challenging people and ecosystems

BY DANIEL GROSSM 15 FEB 2024AN

6. Serengeti’s ‘breathtaking’ mammal migration shaped by grazers’ diets

Camera traps, dung, and GPS capture new details of annual trek by zebras, wildebeests, and gazelles

BY ELIZABETH PENNISI  15 FEB 2024

7. New biosecurity group aims to prevent biotech disasters

Organization hopes to safeguard technology advances from misuse and abuse

BY ROBERT F. SERVICE 15 FEB 2024

8. Seeking clear skies and quiet, astronomers put telescopes on U.S. Moon lander

Small scopes on IM-1 mission would be first optical and radio observatories on the lunar surface

BY DANIEL CLERY 15 FEB 2024

9. Mysterious ‘comb’ drawings may be among oldest cave paintings in South America

For millennia, people returned again and again to remote cave to paint comblike motif on its walls

BY ANDREW CURRY 14 FEB 2024

10. Rice covered in cow cells aims to provide nutritious, sustainable food

“Microbeef sushi” costs about the same as plain rice, but how does it taste?

BY CHRISTIE WILCOX 14 FEB 2024

11. X-ray survey bolsters prevailing theory of universe’s expansion

eROSITA telescope shows galaxies’ “clumpiness” matches predicted effect of dark energy, dark matter

BY DANIEL CLERY  14 FEB 2024

12. ‘Tag!’ Other great apes share our affinity for playful teasing

Surprisingly similar teasing behaviors across species suggest it evolved at least 13 million years ago

BY SEAN CUMMINGS 13 FEB 2024

13. Mosquitoes may transmit West Nile virus to one another via feces

“Diagonal transmission” may maintain the virus in mosquito populations without the need for warm-blooded hosts

BY CHRISTIE WILCOX 13 FEB 2024

14. Vendor offering citations for purchase is latest bad actor in scholarly publishing

Unscrupulous researchers have many options for gaming citations metrics, new study highlights

BY KATIE LANGIN 12 FEB 2024

15. Strange wall of stones found beneath Baltic Sea may have helped humans hunt reindeer

“Sensational” find shows people built structure 8500 years ago to herd animals to their death

BY ANDREW CURRY 12 FEB 2024